History Discussion Group

A 14th-century English knight (Heath Ledger) fights in tournaments and meets some famous people.

Brian Helgeland wrote and directed this 2001 release, loosely based on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to medieval history, with intentional anachronisms like the Queen song "We Will Rock You." (Helgeland imagined what might have happened to Chaucer in 1372 when he disappeared for six months.) The supporting cast includes James Purefoy as Edward the Black Prince and Paul Bettany as Chaucer.

In 1787 Great Britain's Royal Society sent the Bounty, a Royal Navy ship under captain William Bligh with a crew of 46, to the Tahitian islands in the still little-known Pacific Ocean, to acquire breadfruit trees for planting in the Caribbean colonies to provide slave food. After a long, difficult voyage, in which the ship failed to round Cape Horn, the Bounty finally arrived in Tahiti in October, 1788. The ship remained there for five months, during which discipline slipped badly and Bligh, a well-intentioned but often inept commander, became more and more heavy-handed.

Things came to a head after the Bounty resumed its voyage. Unrest among the crew culminated in Fletcher Christian taking over the ship on April 28, 1789. Bligh and eighteen loyalists were put in an open, overloaded launch and abandoned. Conditions were desperate, but over the next six weeks Bligh's brilliant navigation brought the boat to Kupang in Indonesia. From there Bligh sailed home to report the mutiny to the Admiralty. (He later served as Governor of New South Wales, but got deposed again!)

There were 25 men left on the Bounty, including several who would have accompanied Bligh if the launch had had more room. The HMS Pandora arrived in Tahiti in 1791 and seized all the sailors they could find on the island, but failed to locate the Bounty. After the ship's return, ten sailors were court-martialed in September, 1792. The ship's blind fiddler was acquitted, as were three Bligh loyalists he'd allowed to stay behind. The rest were sentenced to death and three were hanged on October 28, but the other three won reprieves.

Christian had sailed the Bounty to remote Pitcairn Island, where he arrived in January, 1790. He was accompanied by seven fellow mutineers and twenty Polynesians, fourteen of them women. The island was a fertile place for a settlement, but as time passed Christian's authority waned and tensions rose. In late 1793 and early 1794, the English and Tahitian men largely killed each other off. After 1800, besides women and children, only Jack Adams remained. An American ship discovered Pitcairn Island in 1808, but Adams was eventually granted amnesty.

For background reading, you can try Diana Preston's Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia.

A great ape falls in love with a city girl, leading to mayhem.

The 2005 version of this 1933 classic was directed by Peter Jackson from a Fran Walsh-Philippa Boyens script, based on the Edgar Wallace-Merian C. Cooper original. While the 1976 remake updated the story, the third version is a period piece. The cast includes Adrien Brody, Jack Black and Naomi Watts in the Fay Wray role. It won Oscars for sound mixing, sound editing and visual effects.