I was interested in seeing Firebrand, as I'm a fan of both Alicia Vikander & Jude Law who were terrific in the lead roles of Queen Catherine Parr and her third husband, King Henry VII. Most of the movie was quite good, until about the last 20 minutes, which goes way, way off the rails.
Catherine Parr was a well-educated, twice-widowed young woman who caught Henry's eye after he'd executed his fifth wife, Catherine Howard for adultery. When Henry pulled England out of the Roman Catholic Church (after the Pope had refused to annul his marriage to his first wife), his new Church of England was basically "Roman Catholic Lite" and not particularly Protestant. But Catherine leaned, mostly quietly, towards being a Protestant. WHen Henry asked her to be his wife, Catherine married him.
I know movies about historic figures are often not at all accurate. This one was very frustrating as it was careful with things like costuming, music, lighting and messy facts around religion in most of the movie. I couldn't quite understand how this movie could only have a 6.5 in IMDB ratings until the movie started to diverge from the facts.
[[spoilers]]While there was a warrant for Catherine Parr's arrest for heresy, it got lost in the shuffle of papers and she was never arrested, never imprisoned, and certainly never had to prepare to be executed. But certainly she feared she might be arrested on heresy as an old acquaintance of hers, Anne Askew, had already been executed for heresy.
Catherine was kept away from Henry while he lay dying. So the scene with Catherine at Henry's deathbed, breaking his neck (I kid you not) was complete fiction.
[[spoilers]]Two minor complaints about casting - it looks like they based the casting of Prince Edward on a famous Holbein painting of him when he was a chubby toddler. But by his early childhood, he was somewhat sickly and serious (he died at 16 probably of TB). And Princess Elizabeth was cast as a bit old, she was closer to 13 in 1546 when most of the movie was set.
So Firebrand could have been a stronger movie except that it was ruined by historic fantasy.
