10 Movie Biopics That Were Far Too Easy On Their Subjects

Bill Condon is a thoroughly frustrating filmmaker. He started out his career interestingly enough, working in eighties B-horror films and eventually directing the better-than-expected sequel to Candyman.

His turn to biopics even started out promising, with a clever take on Frankenstein director James Whale called Gods and Monsters. His openly gay-themed work continued with the complicated Kinsey and personal love for musicals that translated into Chicago and Dreamgirls. Then he started work on the latter Twilight films, and his attempts to return to biopics hasn't been easy.

One would hope Condon would be an interesting choice for a Julian Assange biopic, the controversial founder of Wikileaks. But ultimately, Condon played it so safe he wound up with a film that no one wanted.

On the left, critics were quick to point out that, without sufficient context, audiences wouldn't be able to digest the multitude of information it was doling out at rapid-fire speed. Other critics felt that one scene in which it's implied he was inappropriate with women while he was hiding out from two Swedish sexual assault allegations wasn't really enough. It doesn't appear to be, as Assange's gamble to wait out the charges succeeded. The prosecutor dropped them in November 2019, citing the lapse of time for the reason the evidence had weakened.

Regardless of glossing over some very serious charges, the film also jumped the gun, trying to tackle a hot-button issue in a timely fashion. One wonders what it'd look like now.