It's a common complaint of films rooted in a specific era that they eschew historical accuracy in favour of entertainment value, and often it simply goes too far, drawing viewers out of the narrative as a result. However, some films have actually told bare-faced lies and made a far greater film as a result; it requires the filmmaker to either subvert a known event through alternate history, or to tell a little-known tale with some embellishments to make the story more interesting in a way that doesn't offend too many people. It all hinges on how much inaccuracy a viewer is prepared to withstand; if the fudged facts are intentional, and more to the point, facetious, audiences may well applaud it, and similarly, if the event is niche enough that most viewers won't know the difference, it tends to go down far easier. Whatever the reason, here are 10 movies that improved upon history through blatant subterfuge.
10. Gladiator
Ridley Scott's Gladiator went on to win Best Picture honours at the Oscars, and a Best Actor Oscar for Russell Crowe among other awards. It was heralded as an emotional, visceral, potent epic, but is riddled with inaccuracies; first of all, the lecherous Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) depicted in the film is a total embellishment - in reality he was well-respected for most of his tenure (and served for a whole 13 years as opposed to just a few months), but moral ambiguity apparently doesn't make for as commercial a film. Furthermore, in the film, Commodus meets his death at the hands of Maximus' blade, but in actual fact he was killed by a wrestler while in the bath, a decidedly more embarrassing - and less cinematic - way to meet your demise. Scott gets away with changing things because the result is so much more entertaining, and the true story doesn't lend itself well to cinema, like, at all.