Corrected entry: Some more errors about Princess Isabella: at the height of William Wallace's rebellion Edward I sends her as an ambassador to negotiate with Wallace (and spy on the Scots) instead she falls in love with Wallace. Princess Isabella was born in 1292: Wallace's rebellion was at its height during 1297-8, so she could have been no more than 6 at the time. (Somebody else has already observed that she was only 13 at the time of Wallace's execution.) Isabella's first language would (obviously) have been French, a 13th century Scotsman would speak either a heavily accented Scottish version of English, or Scots Gaelic, but Isabella has no communication difficulties in Scotland. The Wallace-Isabella affair is also absurd, since it is implausible that, at the height of a war, an unaccompanied young woman, let alone a princess engaged to the heir to the throne of England, would be sent into the heart of a war zone as an envoy and a spy.
Corrected entry: At Stirling right before Wallace drops his sword and picks up an axe you can see some black duct tape on his sword. A man then swings his sword at the exact position of the duct tape. This is an obvious test take where they rehearse the scene, and was not meant to end up on screen. (01:27:00)
Correction: That's not black tape. It's a leather wrapping which covers the ricasso on the sword. It's meant to move.
Corrected entry: At the funeral of William's wife, you can see that she's moving her arms when the men pick her up to lay her in the grave.
Correction: Of course her arms move. She is wrapped with her hands on her stomach. When she is picked up, her back bends downwards which causes her thighs to push her hands upwards, towards her chest. The man who lifts her upper body also pulls the body towards him which gives the impression of her moving.
Revealing mistake: During the first large battle between the Scots and the English, there is a clear, quick shot of an English soldier getting quite eviscerated on the right side of his body. For a fraction of a second, you can see a couple drops of blood splatter against some sort of protective glass between the camera and the soldier.
Suggested correction: Not a mistake, it's done on purpose to add drama to the scene.
Other mistake: At the end of the movie when Wallace is being executed and the crowd starts chanting "Mercy," one girl towards the front left looks directly at the camera with her eyes twice in two different shots.
Suggested correction: Yes, it was done on purpose. It is the same child he locked eyes with prior to being hanged and while he is being disembowelled.
Continuity mistake: In Wallace's father's burial scene, when the young girl goes to give William the thistle, the camera goes to just their hands which are supposed to be those of young children. They are however clearly the hands of an adult woman and man.
Suggested correction: Just watched this scene. The hands are far too small to be those of an adult. The size of the thistle gives it away. Oh, and the fact that you can see the children's bodies.
Other mistake: In one of the very last scenes of the movie, when William's friend Hamish takes out William's sword to throw it as a sign of honor for William, when Hamish extends his arm back to throw the sword he only takes a step or 2, but he does not hit any of the men standing in formation directly behind him with this 5 foot long sword.
Suggested correction: The blade on a claymore is 43 in which is 3.5ft. The men behind him were more than 3.5ft away. Plus, when he swings the sword, his arm isn't parallel to the ground, the sword is pointing towards the ground at first.
Continuity mistake: When Mel Gibson is disembowelled, in one shot there's no blood on his neck, but in the very next shot there is.
Suggested correction: Could that be because in the first scene his shirt is torn open, and they haven't started the disembowelment. Then they start the process and blood spurts up across his chest and neck?
Revealing mistake: In the scene where Princess Isabelle gives Wallace the remedy to dull his senses, she pours the liquid in his mouth and then kisses him. Then on her way out, you can see Wallace swallowing before he spits out what is supposed to be the poison.
Suggested correction: Yes, you can swallow with a small amount of liquid in your mouth and not ingest the liquid. Not a mistake.
Continuity mistake: At Stirling when the Scottish attack on horse, there is a scene where an Englishman is being sliced by a sword and is quite bloody. Then it cuts to him being run over by two horses and you can see that it is not the same man nor are there any traces of blood on him. Then it cuts to him falling to the ground and he is again quite bloody. (01:26:50)
Suggested correction: You answered your own correction, it isn't the same man.
Continuity mistake: At the end of the movie the executioner bends down to bind William's feet. The scene shows the rope starting around his feet and then a second later William is yanked into the air with a complicated noose-like knot holding his lower body to the ground. How did they make that knot so fast?
Suggested correction: The scene was obviously clipped to save time. His lower body isn't held to the ground, it's pulled outwards by a couple of horses. The executioners hold ropes attached to his wrists.
Continuity mistake: In the battle scene where they flanked their forces and and were going to use the long wooden spears on England's knights, they already had the spears out when it showed England's horses coming closer. Just look around them. It only shows for a second when it is zooming in pretty fast.
Suggested correction: Of course they were out. It would have been pointless to still have them covered when the charge was under way and the cavalry were so close.
Continuity mistake: During the first major battle scene, Wallace's sword has a leather looking binding around the blade at the hilt. As the battle progresses, the binding moves a third of the way down the blade and then back again.
Suggested correction: They're supposed to move. It's there so the sword can be held by the blade and the hilt in close-combat scenarios.
Visible crew/equipment: In the execution scene at the end, right as Wallace is being quartered, you can clearly see (on widescreen) a plastic spray bottle on the upper left part of the screen, presumably filled with fake blood.
Suggested correction: This is absolute rubbish. Even on wide screen. The main reason for this being is we are never shown him being quartered. We see the executioner bringing the axe down to behead Wallace but that's where it all ends. The next scene is on a battlefield. Yes, we are told he was quartered but not shown. Being beheaded is not being quartered. For obvious reasons.
Other mistake: Near the end of the battle of Sterling after Wallace nearly hits one of his allies on the horse, look on the right side of the shot. An English man wearing metal armor is fighting some Scots. He doesn't make much effort, barely swinging his sword. The Scots fighting him also don't put up much of a challenge either.
Suggested correction: Because they're exhausted.
Continuity mistake: During the scene in which William Wallace is being executed, the camera pans the crowd and shows the ragged peasants staring in silence. An extra, who is a young woman with light hair and a dirty face and is standing near the front of the shot, stares directly at the camera for a few seconds while all the other extras look in a different direction towards the execution. (02:44:00)
Suggested correction: That is purposely done. It is meant to show her locking eyes with Wallace.
Correction: Her age has already been marked as an error. As someone well travelled, Wallace knew several languages and as an educated princess, Isabella would have likely known several (and this could all simply be a translation convention). And the king admits that he knew of the danger, and hoped that if Wallace or his men killed her, her father the King of France would help him defeat the Scottish rebellion.
Greg Dwyer
I concede most of your points, and, as you observe, if Isabella and Wallace can converse, this is 'translation convention'. Another error in the film that has already been marked: while the historical Wallace was a minor nobleman, Braveheart shows him as a common man, with no aristocratic or upper class traits, so the Isabella-Wallace romance forms a stock element of many romantic stories, a princess or prince defying social convention to fall in love with a lower class man or woman, entertaining as a story, but implausible in reality. And I think we agree that Isabella was only 6 at the time of Wallace's rebellion, so, in reality, she would have been far too young to have been involved in events.
Rob Halliday
First, both historical inaccuracies and things that you consider unlikely are not mistakes. Second, history is riddled with accounts of nobles having affairs with commoners and slaves.
Greg Dwyer