Gross historical inaccuracies

Just because you put up the money for something doesn't make it OK to rewrite real life history to make you and yours look better. I am black. If I come into a lot of money and want to make a movie about the Alamo, it would not be cool for me to have the movie suggest that black people were the reason that the Alamo was held for so long. Also doesn't matter that this has happened in Hollywood before.

Would love for you to tell me about all the British movies that appropriate American achievements as British achievements.

BE YOUR OWN FANBOY

British war films don't tend to take credit for major events of other people - the fictionalised accounts tend to be dialogue and sub-plots to add pace and drama.

We would rather something reasonably accurate even if we don't always win at the end than see trip which portrays us and uber-heroes who always win in the end because it assumes we are so culturally insecure that we cannot handle defeat as well as victory in films.

I know this is not true of all Americans of course - but it does seem to be true of large sections of the American film industry (Mel Gibson comes to mind - according to him my country commits war crimes akin to Nazi Germany...burning civilians in churches and having medieval Lords who raped peasant brides despite no historical evidence suggesting we ever did this). Films are of course entertainment but taking such liberties with history rubbishes one of America's best allies and it's cultural and political motherland. I think US film makers should trust domestic audiences more and show more factual events (with all the drama and fun we like in film of course) - America won't collapse if they find out that World War 2 was an Allied effort and that the US part was actually quite small and at the end but economically favoured the US and allowed it to rise while the people who did most of the fighting had to pay the US for the next 50 years (oh yes, you were paid by Britain for decades - look it up).

N.





"You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts"

Yeah, and the Germans put the money up for the bullets that time they executed all the Americans...what a ridiculous thing to say. "Putting the money up" excuses zero - it just aids in finding the locus of responsibility and guilt.

And how exactly is someone to know whether any given film is just entertainment, or might actually have a basis in history or fact, and intend to inform?

The makers of U-571 did the world a disservice and can offer no excuse. If Mostow had tried this idiocy in From the Earth to the Moon he'd have been used to prop up State Route 210.

I never said that people should expect 100% factual accuracy from a movie (particularly one made in Hollywood, although, I do question the logic and intelligence of taking an historical event and almost completely subverting the facts. If you're gonna do that, you might as well use your creativity and skill to come up with your own original story and then tell it in whatever way you think is the most entertaining and profitable. That is, of course, unless you're not creative or skillful to begin with).

That being said, my issue was that regardless of Hollywood's typical practices regarding factual accuracy, some historical events are important enough that they should be treated with respect, even by Hollywood. Further, if England took an important American historical event and subverted the truth to make it appear that British people rather than American people were primarily responsible for a positive outcome under the guise that they thought it would be more profitable, we would cry bloody murder.

BE YOUR OWN FANBOY

[deleted]