10 Times Movies Changed Real Life For Being Too Unbelievable
9. Dillinger Took Way More Guards Hostage With A Wooden Gun - Public Enemies
Michael Mann's biographical crime thriller Public Enemies depicts one of the more infamous pieces of "lore" surrounding legendary bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), when he staged an escape from Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana with a fake gun carved out of wood.
In the film version, Mann shows Dillinger using the fake gun to take around a half-dozen men hostage, when in reality the number is generally agreed to be almost three times that.
However, Mann felt that audiences simply wouldn't buy such a ridiculous ruse, and so pared it down to something more inherently believable. Mann himself said in an interview with Indie London (via Screen Rant):
"[Dillinger] didn't take six or seven people hostage, he took 17 officers hostage with that wooden gun he had carved. It wouldn't be credible if you put it in a movie, so we had to tone it down."
And Mann's absolutely right - audiences would've likely been pulled out of the movie or in the very least assumed that Mann had sexed-up and overtly mythologised the incident for dramatic purposes.