10 “True” Movies That Glossed Over Major Controversies

9. The Walk

The Lie: In reality, Philippe Petit was a difficult man to be around, who cheated on his girlfriend. Robert Zemeckis' visually impressive The Walk, which tells the story of tightrope daredevil Philippe Petit, is currently wowing audiences in cinemas around the world. Petit is most famous for his highly illegal 1974 stunt in which he walked a wire hung between the towers of the World Trade Center. The stunt was the subject of James Marsh's 2008 documentary Man On Wire, which went on to win the Best Documentary Feature prize at the Oscars. Petit was heavily involved in the production of The Walk, teaching star Joseph Gordon-Levitt how to walk on a tightrope in order to enhance the realism of the central stunt sequence. Possibly as a result, the film glosses over the more difficult aspects of Petit's personality, including the fact he cheated on his girlfriend with a total stranger almost immediately after coming down from the towers. It seems that, when you're telling a story based on an incredible human achievement, there's no room to actually humanise the protagonist.