Review of The First Emperor

If the Discovery Channel is going to play a docu-drama, they should at least have the sense to get all of the facts straight. This...we'll call it a film...was somewhat interesting, but a lot of the facts were just completely inaccurate. The only facts that they got right were Qin Shi Huang's name, the year he became emperor, and the year he died. That's pretty much it. Qin Shi Huang did, in fact, build a wall to protect the whole of his kingdom, but it wasn't the Great Wall. The Great Wall was built during the Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century AD. Quite a bit off from the Qin dynasty of the second century BC. Another misconstrued fact was that, though it was rumored that Qin Shi Huang was the illegitimate son of Lu Buwei, it was never proved as fact. Yet, the Discovery Channel tried to pass this off as fact in this film. Also, the emperor's death was hidden from everyone until the return to Xianyang. This was the doing of Li Si. He did so because he didn't want to start an uprising before the emperor's body could be returned to Xianyang. There are other inaccurate facts throughout the film, but these stand out the most. I would give this film a six for entertainment quality, but I deducted three points for trying to pass fiction off as fact. ***