Retrospectively speaking

“The scene in the middle of that battlefield, when everybody rides out and they're all talking and stuff, I should have just killed the conversation.

“He should have just galloped out there and hit the guy on the head and killed him and said ‘okay’ and then run back, and it would have saved a lot of talking,” Gibson jokes.

Gibson and Toll have only rose tinted glasses for the laborious production, and an inherent fondness for the fruit of that labour.

“It’s like a boy’s own adventure in a way,” says Gibson “it’s exciting, it’s tragic, it’s funny. And also it does something spiritual - it’s inspiring.

For a film that was almost four hours at first cut, Gibson was forced to leave a lot of footage on the cutting room floor, something he likens to ‘killing your children’.

“A lot of the stuff that we filmed, we couldn't put out on the screen, because you’d look at it and you’d go ‘no, that's too much.’

“So I pulled way back. But when you're shooting it, you just go for the whole hog, and it’s good to do that because then you can pull back and just suggest it, or maybe more than suggest it.

“My assistant actually put together a gag reel of all the most violent bits in the film, and set it to Julie Andrews singing These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things,” Gibson laughs, “it’s horrible, it’s hideous.”

“That something you certainly won’t be seeing on any extras.”

To say the production had a profound effect on all involved is an understatement.

“For me, the biggest thing was just the fact that we actually got through it,” remembers John Toll. “It was incredibly emotional, for everybody, because it was so ambitious.

“We walked away feeling like we’d really done something. You never really know how a film is going to turn out, and we accomplished what we intended to do, and that was to make a fantastic film.

“That’s true,” adds Gibson, “we did get what we wanted to get. That doesn't happen all the time, but I think the most emotional moment for me was the last day we shot.

“I went and had a little cry in my tent. It was like, ‘wow…  huh.’  I had directed once before and it was like a toe in the water movie for no money.  So doing something like this seemed like a juggernaut.”

“I feel like at times there were the ghosts of kilted clansmen rising from the moors going ‘yeah, yeah, put the camera over there’ – it really felt like that sometimes.”

“I mean you just have to go and visit the battlefields and it breaks your heart.  So you know, we were sort of operating on something else, something coming out of the earth.”

15 years on, the pair talk as though they finished the shoot last week, but they are also looking to the future - ensuring the legacy of Braveheart survives for future generations to enjoy and debate.

Next: A new lease of life