Least True Movies Based on True Stories
Truth in cinema has more to do with performance than with correcting historical facts. If the action rings true and you believe the story on screen, then the movie did the trick. However, films based on real events also have to be believable, right?
The greatest biopics and documentaries don't even have to be completely true. We all understand that artistic licenses are taken and it's almost impossible to recreate life exactly as it was. But some movies are just a lot more fake than others. Some films that claim to be biopics are actually more fiction than not. People shouldn't draw their stories from movies, but the truth is that most of the time they do. And it is important for people to know what is true in their favorite films and what is fiction.
We have collected some of the most popular films based on real events that are just full of lies. For drama, for love, for whatever reason, the reality was ignored in favor of entertainment. It's not entirely bad, but at least it's misleading. "Based on a true story" and reality are not the same thing.
11 PHOTOS
1. Notorious for being historically inaccurate, the story of Scottish hero William Wallace is widely circulated with problems. First, the term "braveheart" is usually reserved for Robert the Bruce (who is a traitor in the film but a heroin Scottish lore). Also, the kilts featured in the film were not worn in Scotland for centuries after the events of the story. Wallace was not born into poverty, but into privilege. He never came close to sniffing Queen Isabella, let alone begetting her child. And the most egregious mistake of the film is the removal of the bridge from the famous Battle of Stirling Bridge. Screenwriter Randall Wallace (no relation to William) and director Mel Gibson acknowledge the inaccuracies.
2. The 'Braveheart' writer took on American history six years after 'Braveheart', this time with director Michael Bay. And they came up with similar fictional results. Pearl Harbor tells the story of two real-life army lieutenants (Affleck and Hartnett), but only their names are taken from reality. Their actions and personal lives are soap opera plots rewritten for big-budget spectacle. Using the backdrop of one of the most dangerous days in American history to tell such a flippant story is dubious at best from the start. But then again, this is a movie.
3. Many details of "A Beautiful Mind" are not true. Nash was diagnosed with schizophrenia as shown in the film, but much later in his life. Many of the people around him, real and imagined, are fictional. His first marriage and son are completely out of the question. His symptoms, which make up much of the film, are heavily dramatized. And little of his time at MIT resembles MIT at all. There were no Wheeler Laboratories. Many other liberties were taken, but few cared when the film won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2002.
4. Pocahontas is a symptom of a larger and more important problem with her main character. Historians consider much of the romance between the protagonist and John Smith that exists in many places in pop culture to be perpetuated by myth by Smith himself to curry favor with his benefactors in London. Smith did know Pocahontas, but his first stories about her were about a "ten-year-old". And while she did visit and feed Jamestown with her tribe, Smith didn't mention that she saved his life when they met. Only later did he begin to tell the story, winning many friends and favors (and untold money), and it has been around ever since.
5. Modern elements have been added to Marie Antoinette's style, including music and costume design, but there are some historical inaccuracies in the film that are worth noting.
First, Marie was handed over to France on an island near Kehl on the River Rhine, not in Schuttern as the film states. Marie and Louis XVI are depicted as married on a sunny day, but they were actually married at night during a rainstorm. The royal couple also had four children, not three as shown in the painting in the film.
6. Comic-styled movie 300 is another movie that we all understand is a fictionalized version of the story. However, facts are mixed with falsehood, so it is important to know what is true in the film. And a lot of it is based on facts. The tiny band of Greeks did hold back the huge Persian army for three days before being betrayed at Thermopylae. But a lot has been invented. Xerxes, for example, was bearded and did not participate in the battle. He wasn't some sexually ambiguous god-king with pet panthers. There were no ugly traitors. And, most importantly, although 300 Spartans participated in the battle, 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans also fought with them. They were not alone.
7. The Theory of Everything is the subject of Stephen Hawking's biopic's veracity: "It's hard to tell how true the movie is. The film is based on Jane's 2007 memoir, but this memoir is a revised version of her first book. about their wedding - Music to Move the Stars, published in 1999, which tells a more negative version of their life together. Whatever the case, Stephen Hawking saw the film and called it "generally true." It seems that this says it all.
8. Based on the life of P. T. Barnum and his famous Barnum and Bailey Circus, The Greatest Showman is a flashy and shiny version of a very dubious figure. Barnum was not a charming advocate for the common man. He was a street hustler looking to cash in on anyone he could find. The film makes no mention of his exploitation Joyce Haight, an elderly black woman whom Barnum told the crowd about, was George Washington's nanny. He even tried to cash in on her corpse after she died. This scam helped him make his career. In 2017, when the general public has been aware of animal cruelty for almost 100 years and the circus industry is dying, why make this movie?
9. Archeology Magazine said of this frustrating film about the dawn of mankind, about a caveman hunting his lover across rough terrain, “No wonder this tribe is starving, but it’s hard to sympathize with them because any culture that tries to hunt mammoths with gets what he deserves with the help of the network.” Almost everything in director Roland Emmerich's film 10,000 BC is inaccurate if you take into account the title. Extinct animals and those that haven't even evolved yet roam the wild. People train mammoths. Saber-toothed cats were not the size of hippos. Rotten Tomatoes says of the film, "Strict attention is paid to style, not content or historical accuracy, 10,000 B.C. it's a visually impressive but narratively flimsy epic."
10. Apocalypse is Mel Gibson's second film on this list - he seems determined to write his own version of events, no matter how legendary they are. Based on the Mayan culture, Gibson really understands the cruel aspects of life at that time. The largely peaceful Maya had their fair share of bloodthirsty tribes and may even have dabbled in human sacrifice, which is usually only associated with the Aztecs. Gibson uses this material in his film to startling effect. And that's what makes it dangerous. While watching the movie, the viewer might think that all the Maya are like the warring tribe in the movie.
11. "Shakespeare in Love" does not claim to be authentic, but uses many real names, places, events, and situations. So why not make it harder for yourself? The Oscar winner tells the story of playwright Will Shakespeare (Fiennes), Viola de Lesseps (Paltrow), and how their unhappy romance inspired Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, his most valuable work. Much of the film is an assumption that cannot be refuted, but the timeline when Shakespeare writes Romeo and then the Twelfth Night is incorrect, as the film suggests. Some props are also inappropriate for that time. And Queen Elizabeth would never come to a play outside the court, and certainly not to a play during the bubonic plague.
Keywords: Movies | True stories | Cinema | Movies | Real-life | Performance | Historical facts | Films