10 More Movies Based On True Stories (That Were Total Lies)
A few more facts, please.
Many fact-based movies take some liberties and the good ones usually acknowledge this. There are various reasons for this. Key events can be left out to speed up the pace of the film. Sometimes changes might be vaguely explained away as being for 'creative reasons'.
How accurate or inaccurate the final product is can actually have very little to do with the quality of the film. Braveheart was lavished with praise and an Oscar for Best Picture before historians understandably took it behind the woodshed. Similar events happened with A Beautiful Mind.
There are also other examples like Gladiator and Inglorious Basterds. Each take real historical figures and insert them in a fictional story. Many can take offense at things like this, but these films don't pretend to be documentaries and, at least for these couple of instances, audiences were largely accepting.
But then there are other movies: the ones like Braveheart and A Beautiful Mind. Biopics that claim to be presenting viewers with a portrayal of real events, but are actually in their own way re-writing history. 'With these so-called 'true stories', it may be that the only thing true is the names of those involved.
Sometimes not even that much...
10. Steve Jobs (2015)
Steve Jobs was the second movie in three years to spotlight the life of the co-founder of Apple, after 2013's Jobs. It had been plagued with many problems and controversies prior to its release, and was among the most prominent projects affected by the cyber hacking of Sony before it was later picked up by Universal. In the end, the film was met with critical praise and stars Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet were each nominated for an Oscar.
But it has also taken its hits for not being an authentic portrayal of the man and those around him. Many who knew Jobs, who was a famously difficult person, felt that the movie took its harsh portrayal of him too far, including Steve Wozniak and Tim Cook. Another key sticking point is the implication that Jobs founded NeXT simply as a ploy to get back into Apple.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin defended the movie, stating that it was not intended to portray 'actual events' or be a 'fact-based film', which are both bizarre and dangerous things to say about a biopic, especially one released so soon after the subject's death.