Mel Gibson was disappointed with his performance and the finished movie. He later said of the movie, "I think the main problem with that film was that it tried to be a fresh look at the dynamic of the mutiny situation, but didn't go far enough. In the old version, Captain Bligh was the bad guy and Fletcher Christian was the good guy. But really Fletcher Christian was a social climber and an opportunist. They should have made him the bad guy, which indeed he was. He ended up setting all these people adrift to die, without any real justification. Maybe he'd gone island crazy. They should have painted it that way. But they wanted to exonerate Captain Bligh while still having the dynamic where the guy was mutinying for the good of the crew. It didn't quite work."
This movie is generally regarded as the most accurate depiction of the actual mutiny.
There is a persistent, but unsubstantiated rumor that the real Fletcher Christian did not die on Pitcairn Island, but made it back to England. Several of his relatives later swore that they had spoken with him, and that he lived out the rest of his life in hiding.
One significant historical event, which is completely omitted from this movie, is the initial attempt by Fletcher Christian and the mutineers to found a colony on the island of Tubuai, south of Tahiti. Christian landed on Tubuai shortly after the mutiny and, after finding nearly three thousand hostile natives, established a fort on the northern side of the island, using weaponry from the Bounty. After nearly two months of constant skirmishes with natives, Christian and the mutineers abandoned the island, and only then returned to Tahiti for more men and supplies, before heading east towards Pitcairn. Thomas Burkett, who had been severely wounded on Tubuai fighting natives, stayed behind in Tahiti, even though he was clearly a mutineer, and would be hanged if ever found by the Royal Navy (Burkett was in fact captured and executed for mutiny).
This movie was originally supposed to have been made in 1975, when Sir Anthony Hopkins would have been closer in age to the real William Bligh.