The Academy Awards have always been something of a jumped up publicity stunt to generate more prestige and profit, which is why many movies who got Oscars are not necessarily all that great.
While I mostly liked No Country for Old Men and have fond memories of the LotR movies, I really think Braveheart was genuinely damaging, revisionist bullshit. While increasing Scottish autonomy was inevitable and already in effect especially after what Margaret Thatcher did, Braveheart added a lot of unnecessary venom to the proceedings and distorted the complicated history between England and Scotland which wasn't really one sided oppression. Mel Gibson, a recently fallen actor who was outed as an unpleasant and harmful fucktard steeped in primitive bigotries and addiction problems, played the titular hero of the movie and is on hindsight the moment he Jumped the Shark as a Hollywood star.
While 21st century ethics certainly do not apply to the Medeval era and King Edward the 1st really was an asshole, the English were uniformally either seen as 2D Snidely Whiplash villains or brainless cannon fodder, with nobody who was 3D in their personalities and motives. The obsession with the English as the antagonists seemed misplaced if England was not really England as we know it today, with Edward Longshanks and his regime more strongly associated with France. And then there is the snide homophobia, with the spineless prince being depicted as a unpleasant clown who pines after his dead boyfriend.
While I mostly liked No Country for Old Men and have fond memories of the LotR movies, I really think Braveheart was genuinely damaging, revisionist bullshit. While increasing Scottish autonomy was inevitable and already in effect especially after what Margaret Thatcher did, Braveheart added a lot of unnecessary venom to the proceedings and distorted the complicated history between England and Scotland which wasn't really one sided oppression. Mel Gibson, a recently fallen actor who was outed as an unpleasant and harmful fucktard steeped in primitive bigotries and addiction problems, played the titular hero of the movie and is on hindsight the moment he Jumped the Shark as a Hollywood star.
While 21st century ethics certainly do not apply to the Medeval era and King Edward the 1st really was an asshole, the English were uniformally either seen as 2D Snidely Whiplash villains or brainless cannon fodder, with nobody who was 3D in their personalities and motives. The obsession with the English as the antagonists seemed misplaced if England was not really England as we know it today, with Edward Longshanks and his regime more strongly associated with France. And then there is the snide homophobia, with the spineless prince being depicted as a unpleasant clown who pines after his dead boyfriend.
