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8000 BCE
Brother Bear
"Set 10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age, the film centers on young Kenai (voiced by Joaquin Phoenix), who starts hunting a bear only to be turned into one."
https://web.archive.org/web/20031103012857/http://www.adn.com/life/story/4298933p-4309027c.html -
1000 BCE
Hercules
Phil trained Achilles, who fought in the Trojan War. Troy fell around 1180 B.C., so Hercules must take place some time afterward. Also, Thebes is suffering from fires and earthquakes when Herc and Phil arrive. The real Thebes suffered similar disasters during the Greek dark ages (1200 - 800 B.C.). Hercules must therefore take place either during or at the end of the Greek dark ages. https://www.ancient.eu/Thebes_(Greece)/ -
400
Moana
In Moana, it's been generations since her people have explored the Pacific. This puts the story at the end of "the long pause," a period when ancient wayfinders stopped exploring the ocean for awhile. The long pause ended between 400 and 600 A.D. See "On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact" by Patrick Vinton Kirch, published by University of California Press, p. 222. -
400
Mulan
"This poem was composed in the fifth or sixth century CE. At the time, China was divided between north and south.
The...Northern Wei dynasty ruled most of northern China from 386–534. ...one of the many reasons why the images
conveyed in the movie 'Mulan' of a stereotypically Confucian Chinese civilization fighting against the barbaric
'Huns' to the north are inaccurate." http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/china/mulan.pdf -
500
The Sword in the Stone
"We’ve all heard stories about King Arthur of Camelot, who according to medieval legend led British forces (including his trusted Knights of the Round Table) in battle against Saxon invaders in the early sixth century. But was King Arthur actually a real person, or simply a hero of Celtic mythology?" http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/was-king-arthur-a-real-person -
575
Prince of Persia
The Prince of Persia Movie Guide, published by Disney, places King Sharaman's birth at 520 A.D., placing Dastan's story around 575 A.D., in the Sasanid empire. -
900
Brave
"[At the D23 expo] director Mark Andrews and producer Katherine Sarafian presented footage on Saturday while production designer Steve Pilcher and art director Tia Kratter explained the visuals...It was more or less common knowledge that Brave takes place in ancient Scotland but there wasn’t confirmation of specifically when. Now we know. It’s the 10th century." http://www.slashfilm.com/11-learned-pixars-brave-d23-expo/ -
947
Aladdin
Aladdin is hard to pin down. The title "sultan" was given to Muslim rulers, and the first caliphate came after 632 A.D. Then again, Aladdin and Jasmine see the Sphinx being built, which probably happened around 2500 B.C. The Arabian Nights were compiled by 947 A.D. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Thousand-and-One-Nights
http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/how-old-is-the-great-sphinx
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sultan
https://www.britannica.com/place/Caliphate -
1194
Robin Hood
"In February 1194, [King Richard the Lionheart] was released. He returned at once to England and was crowned for a second time...He was succeeded by his younger brother John, who had spent the years of Richard's absence scheming against him." http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/richard_i_king.shtml -
1300
Sleeping Beauty
"Now, father, you're living in the past. This is the 14th century!"
- Prince Philip, Sleeping Beauty -
1482
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
"During the 1482 Festival of Fools in Paris, Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, is elected the Pope of Fools for being the ugliest person in Paris... Archdeacon Claude Frollo appears and stops the parade and orders Quasimodo back to Notre Dame with him."
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/hunchback/summary.html -
1500
The Emperor's New Groove
"The Inca civilization flourished in ancient Peru between c. 1400 and 1533 CE, and their empire eventually extended across western South America from Quito in the north to Santiago in the south, making it the largest empire ever seen in the Americas and the largest in the world at that time." http://www.ancient.eu/Inca_Civilization/ -
1550
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White gives very few clues about its setting. One Disney princess aficionado places it in 1500s Germany. https://www.buzzfeed.com/eugeneyang/if-disney-princesses-were-historically-accurate?utm_term=.ndM79mO41#.kuQlEkaj0 But the dwarfs mine diamonds, which cannot be found in Europe, and Bashful plays the concertina, which wasn't developed until the 1830s. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/diamonds-a-history/ https://books.google.com/books?id=0Rjn2wL0NzMC&pg=PA316#v=onepage&q&f=false -
Pocahontas
"When the English arrived and settled Jamestown in May 1607, Pocahontas was about eleven years old. Pocahontas and her father would not meet any Englishmen until the winter of 1607, when Captain John Smith (who is perhaps as famous as Pocahontas) was captured by Powhatan's brother Opechancanough." https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-and-legend.htm -
Squanto: A Warrior's Tale
"Squanto was born circa 1580 near Plymouth, Massachusetts. Little is known about his early life. In 1614, he was kidnapped by English explorer Thomas Hunt, who brought him to Spain where he was sold into slavery. Squanto escaped, eventually returning to North America in 1619." https://www.biography.com/people/squanto-9491327 -
Beauty and the Beast
"Beauty and the Beast's 1740s setting places it smack in the middle of the rococo period, and the elaborate, luxurious style lent itself perfectly to the idea of an enchanted castle." http://ew.com/movies/beauty-and-the-beast-sets-production-design/rococo-redux -
Pirates of the Caribbean
" 'Jack is actually captured and brought in to visit the King of England. [He] makes an escape, and we have a chase through the streets of London in the 1750s.' "John Myhre, the production designer on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is excitedly describing a sequence near the beginning of the film." Read more at http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/features/73513-pirates-of-the-caribbean-on-stranger-tides-set-visit#V8oO9rwq5jz0idtu.99 -
Frozen
An astute viewer noticed that in the map of Arendelle shown in Frozen Fever, the number 1840 is written in Roman numerals. -
Cinderella
"Since this is a fairy tale, we didn’t have to remain faithful to one specific time period, but Ken Branagh wanted the look to be sort of 19th century, which gave us the opportunity to incorporate earlier styles of architecture into our designs." - Production designer Dante Ferretti http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/cinderella-behind-magic-oscar-winning-782586 -
John Carter
On-screen text reveals the beginning of John Carter's story happens in 1868 at the Fort Grant outpost. Narration sets the outpost in Arizona Territory. -
The Lone Ranger
During the opening of the movie, on-screen text reveals the story is set in Colby, Texas, 1869. -
Pinocchio
Pinocchio appears to take place in the late 1800s, in or around Tyrol. The story was written by the Italian author Carlo Collodi in 1881. In the film, Pleasure Island features a Ferris wheel, which debuted in 1893. Pinocchio wears a Tyrolean hat. http://www.ryerson.ca/childrenslit/group3.html
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-ferris-wheel-180955300/
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20633126 -
Newsies
"In 1899, several thousand newsboys, who made about 30 cents a day, called a strike, refusing to handle the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer." https://www.gilderlehrman.org/content/historical-context-newsies -
Mary Poppins
In the song "The Life I Lead," George Banks sings "It's great to be an Englishman in 1910/King Edward's on the throne. It's the age of men!" -
Saving Mr. Banks
"In 1962, the author Pamela Travers...arrived in Los Angeles on a flight from London, her first-class ticket having been paid for by Walt Disney. Disney also put her up at the glitzy Beverly Hills Hotel, and gave her a chauffeur to ferry her every day to his studios...to meet the team assigned to adapt her popular children’s novel, Mary Poppins, into...an even more successful film." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/saving-mr-banks-true-story-walt-disneys-battle-make-mary-poppins/ -
Remember the Titans
Remember the Titans is based on the true story of the 1971 T.C. Williams High School football team. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/petey-jones-immortalized-in-remember-the-titans-still-works-at-tc-williams-high-school/2014/10/13/bdb5f0a4-4e36-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html?utm_term=.e53797f15758 -
McFarland, USA
"David, Damacio and Danny Diaz all ran for coach Jim White on McFarland High's first state championship team in 1987, a journey portrayed in the film, "McFarland, USA." To a man, each of these brothers credits his unique endurance to a childhood spent picking almonds and grapes in the massive fields that stretch out to the horizon in all directions from their town." http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/12352044/family-elite-distance-runners-portrayed-mcfarland-usa -
Million Dollar Arm
"Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, their two India-born pitchers who had never seen a baseball game before being the top two finishers in a TV reality show designed to find potential major league arms, are nearly ready to make their professional debuts." -Associated Press, 6/13/2009 http://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=4298148
