The Virginia Museum of History of Culture wants you to know that Colonel William Tavington wasn’t so bad after all.

“He’s based on a real historical person called Banastre Tarleton,” says Sam Florer, referring to the villainous British officer in the 2000 historical adventure film, “The Patriot.” On Friday, July 25, the Revolutionary War drama starring Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger will be the subject of the first live version of the museum’s “Movie Mythbusting” series, normally found online.

As portrayed (with cold-blooded aplomb) by actor Jason Isaacs in “The Patriot,” Tarleton is a barbarous killer, a “deeply evil man,” says Florer, the director of public programs at the museum. “He burns down a church full of women and children, and he’s just brutal. But in reality, the real Tarleton may have [done] some questionable things during the war, but he was not as he is portrayed.”

The villain’s backstory is but one example where the film exaggerates, even invents, history, he says. “We picked ‘The Patriot’ for a couple reasons. One is because it is particularly easy to mythbust different parts of it. It’s also a really popular movie, and so a lot of people reference it, especially now as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which is coming up next July 4th.”

The event ties in with the museum’s own focus on the 250th anniversary, specifically the special exhibit, “Give Me Liberty, Virginia’s Role in the American Revolution.” “We thought the screening would be a great companion to the exhibit,” he says. “There’s plenty to talk about because the film gets a lot of things wrong.” Ticket Holders will get the opportunity to tour the exhibit and soak up Revolution fever, before showtime.

VMHC has hosted online “Mythbusting” events for years. In the past, members of the museum’s staff have cast a critical eye at purportedly historical flicks ranging from the tear jerking sports drama, “Remember the Titans” to Terrence Malick’s Jamestown epic, “The New World,” to horse-racing classic, “Seabiscuit” to the American history puzzler, “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” starring Nicolas Cage.

Live, participants will see a different format than they saw online, Florer says. “With the virtual edition we didn’t watch the movie as a group. We asked folks just to watch it on their own. This time it’s more like ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000.’ We’ll actually play the movie. We won’t watch it from start to finish because we won’t have time to do that, but we’ll stop it at various points and talk about specific things.”

Most of “The Patriot” takes place in South Carolina, but it ends with the siege and battle of Yorktown, the big victory for George Washington that helped to cement American independence. “The movie shows the battle happening on big hills. It does not accurately represent what Yorktown looks like at all.” He adds that people have long had misconceptions about what Yorktown looked like. “And it’s because a lot of the artists that depicted the battle never visited Virginia or Yorktown.”

Artifacts from the museum’s collection will be featured as examples, such as a French rendering of the battle of Yorktown titled “The Surrender of the English Army Commanded by Lord Cornwallis” that is just plain wrong. The piece is a hand-colored engraving made in Paris in 1781, and shows Yorktown as a walled medieval city — referencing medieval France not Colonial Virginia. “It also shows the French navy as right off the coast and bombarding the British, whereas they were actually more far off in the Chesapeake Bay,” he says. “So even in the 1780s, myths were already being spread about what Yorktown looked like and what the actual true history was.”

The legendary film director John Ford is credited with saying, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” but — a little mythbusting here — it was actually a line from one of his films, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” Still that philosophy has often been the rule of thumb with moviemakers, and historians have been criticizing Hollywood’s bowdlerization of the past since moving pictures began.

Florer says that, as a moviegoer, he doesn’t let film inaccuracies bother him. “I personally enjoy ‘The Patriot,'” he says. “It’s a fun blockbuster movie that is enjoyable to watch.”

But with all of the criticisms, which movies have gotten it right? The museum’s movie mythbusters have tackled more than a few films that earn high marks for accuracy.  One was “Hidden Figures” from 2016, which tells the story of the pioneering  African American women who contributed to NASA’s space program. “That was one of the movies that got a lot right,” he says. “Another one is the movie, ‘Loving.’ The filmmakers gloss over some things and don’t show the entire story, but the characters and the way that the Supreme Court decision was decided is pretty accurate.”

Along with dispensing history, the Mythbusting series encourages people to be smart viewers, he says. “You have to keep in mind when you go see these movies that some are meant to be entertaining, and not necessarily educational. You can separate the two because a movie is doing something different.”

“Movie Mythbusting: The Patriot + live commentary” will show at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture on July 25 at 6 p.m. Tickets include 5 p.m. access to the exhibition, “Give Me Liberty: Virginia & The Forging of a Nation.” $12 / $10 (members). For more information, go to https://virginiahistory.org/