Best Medieval film?

Sorry for the delay in replying: I was flummoxed by the task of picking examples from this sea of inaccuracy, and then a real-life crisis rolled over me. However, now I have had time to pick some. Just please don't think that this is all or even anything like most, of what is wrong with Ironclad….

Fundamental plot idiocy. In real life, when the barons' council in London heard that Rochester was threatened they sent a force of between 90 and 140 knights (depending on how you read the sources), headed by William d'Aubigny, to hold it. Given that a knight couldn't function without a support crew any more than a fighter pilot can, that means getting on for three hundred men at the absolute minimum. But in a witless attempt to create 'a medieval Magnificent Seven' (the director's own words) , Ironclad has the council sending no knights at all, so that d'Aubigny has to wander through SE England looking up half a dozen misfits to hold the most important strategic place in the campaign. This is not just a dramatic departure from the historical facts; it's a complete military absurdity. While it's true that a few score men could successfully hold a well-built castle against a besieging army many times their number, a dozen men could not do it, ever. If you didn't have enough men to man all the walls simultaneously, you had no chance. The military plot of Ironclad is not just untrue to the historical siege of Rochester; it's something that couldn't have happened in any place or time in history.

(Incidentally, it is also absurd that there are only half-a-dozen men there when the misfits arrive. That's not enough even to act as caretakers to a castle the size of Rochester . Also, in a time of civil war the High Sheriff of Kent - which is what Reginald de Cornhill was - would certainly not have gone anywhere without a good-sized armed band. Doubly so if he had his wife with him.)

Pig idiocy. You cannot use pigs as fuel to help burn anything. In fact it takes a lot of fuel just to burn pigs at all - because pigs, like people, are more than 60% water. John did collect 50 pigs, but he had them killed (and presumably eaten) and their fat rendered down, and it was their pure rendered fat that was used to accelerate the fire in the mine under the castle tower. This scene is pure nonsense, presumably a dumb attempt to add ‘animal abuse!’ horror.

Pagan Danes idiocy. It’s true that John’s army – like that of just about every other 13th-century king – included a large mercenary component, but most of these were from France, not Denmark. And even if they had been from Denmark, they couldn’t have been ‘pagan Danes’ because by 1215 Denmark had been Christian for well over two centuries. Nor would John have had any way of persuading anyone from Denmark to fight for him except by paying them well; this weird notion that John actually has some way of coercing these Danes to do his dirty work for him is a pure fantasy. (Incidentally, they speak to each other in Hungarian.)

Weaponry idiocy. Lots of this. First example: Thomas's five-foot sword, which does not resemble any sword in use in the 13th century (two-hand long swords came in around 200 years later), and cannot be wielded using techniques in use in the 13th century; I can only assume that the director said ‘Mel Gibson had a big one in Braveheart and he was a big hero, so we’ll give our guy an even bigger one!’. Second: the ‘pagan Danish’ chieftain’s axe, which would be a reasonable approximation of a Viking-era double-headed axe if it were symmetrical, but it has been made so lopsided that the imbalance would make it utterly unuseable if it were real steel - thus making it blatantly obvious that it is rubber! Third: John’s army have incendiary weapons that cause anything they strike to go whump! and produce a ball of flame just like, well, a tank of petrol being ignited. No medieval army had any weapon that could produce anything like this effect.

Templar idiocy. Can’t anybody leave the poor blo*dy Templars alone? The Templars were of course not directly involved in the war as they weren’t John’s subjects, but actually they were generally on his side. There were no Templars involved in the siege. Nor would any Templar simply be trundling through the countryside by himself; all monastic orders held to the principle that their members should only travel in parties.

Setting idiocy. In real life he castle of Rochester sits in the City of Rochester, which dates back to Roman times and probably earlier, and is slap-bang next to the Cathedral of Rochester which dates from 604AD. But in the film it sits in a totally uninhabited moorland. Come on, a couple of matte paintings wouldn’t have been that expensive!

Also, the interior of the castle is slummy - the walls even of the chapel and the castellan's living quarters are bare rough stone, just as they are now when it's a roofless ruin. The director admitted that he knew perfectly well that in the Middle Ages the walls would have been neatly plastered with painted decoration, but didn’t want the castle to look as smart and comfortable as it was in real life.

Costume idiocy. Much of the costuming is not merely not historically accurate, but outright fantasy costume. Isobel's off-the-shoulder studded leather corset outfit is not just not medieval; it's something no woman would have worn, ever, outside a leather fetish party; certainly not to fight in! Costumes in general are sprinkled with metal grommets (invented in the 19th century) and modern punk- or biker-style pyramid studs, not even in any way that might have functionality for fastening, reinforcement or protection but blatantly for decoration. And poor Charles Dance as the archbishop is dressed as a 16th-century bishop: he would actually have looked fine in Wolf Hall or Elizabeth, but in 1215 he's absurd.

And then there's the 'pagan Danes' covering themselves with blue paint. WTF??? That was silly and unhistorical enough in Braveheart (where they certainly cribbed the idea from); but nobody has ever suggested that anyone in Scandinavia painted themselves blue at any period in history.

Oh and BTW, hair worn loose and flowing was a mark of virginity in the Middle Ages: married women in the 13th century plaited and covered it. I know it's implied in the movie that Reginald de Cornhill is gay or impotent; but even so he would hardly let his wife go around advertising by her hairstyle that he's never managed to sh*g her!

Naming idiocy.
The names of the invented characters go well beyond unhistorical into the outright surreal; it's as though the makers were actively picking the most unsuitable names they could think of for England in 1215.
- Two of the characters have names that famously belong to somebody else in the period - Marshal, Becket. (Especially as the character 'Becket' is recruited by D'Aubigny in Canterbury of all places; I kept expecting the revelation that he was anti-Angevin because he was the illegitimate son of Thomas Becket or something, but no.)
- 'Phipps' is a surname (Philip's son). In 1215 the bulk of the population hadn't even cottoned on to the notion of surnames at all, and even people who had them wouldn't have been addressed by them.
- 'Marks' is a post-18th-century Central European Jewish surname!
-'Jedediah' in the Middle Ages was exclusively a Jewish name. And a Jew couldn't possibly have fought as a soldier, had a farm, or dressed like everyone else; by law and custom (and a hefty dose of universal anti-Semitism) he would have been confined to the official Jewish quarter of a town, worn distinctive clothing and engaged in moneylending.
- 'Tiberius' is the name of a Roman Emperor (the uncle of 'I Claudius', if you're interested). It wasn't used as a name by anyone anywhere in the Middle Ages, and how anybody thought it an appropriate name for a 'pagan Danish chief' is a surreal mystery.

Random packets of stupidity:

- D'Aubigny twice announces, for no reason that I can figure out, that he's not a baron but a wool merchant. Not only was this not true - D'Aubigny was an important baron - but 'I'm a wool merchant' is high on the list of Things That a Medieval Baron is Least Likely to Say, and indeed would be likely to kill anyone else for saying about him.

- 'Open in the name of the Rebellion!' is another thing on that list. Everyone in the Middle Ages agreed that rebellion was Bad. That's not to say that people didn't do it, but they always claimed that they were simply trying to rescue the king form his evil advisers, or trying to unseat a usurper and restore the true heir, or something. Not rebelling, no, no, perish the thought.

- The Archbishop says to Thomas with sympathetic concern, 'I hear you lost your faith on crusade? Yes, that often happens'. No, it didn't. It simply didn't. (If crusaders coming home with lost faith had been in any way a thing, the Church wouldn't have continued - as it did - advocating crusading as a valuable religious exercise long after if became perfectly clear thet the Holy Places were never going to be won back.) And the Archbishop's response would be to lock Thomas up in an ecclesiastical bolt-hole and have him preached at till he d*mn well got it back, not wave him off to a secular life with a girl in tow.

- 'Bad news, guys. There's no moat.' Leaving aside the historical fact that Rochester Castle had (and indeed still has) a moat on all the sides except the one directly above the river, it is absolutely impossible to ride into a castle without noticing whether you've had to cross a bridge over a moat or not.

Who cares what nationality was playing the King? Actors do not having to be from the same country as someone they are portraying.