Why is hollywood so frightened about including historical accuracy in their movies.?

Question

Mel Gibson is aprime example Braveheart The Patriot e.t.c.

Answer 1

I would worry less about how realistic the "blood and guts" are and more about historical events. Movies that are "based on a true story" or fictionalized characters are annoying.

Remember the movie "Black Hawk Down"? All of the central characters were the real names of real people _except_ for the character of John Stebbins (played by Ewan McGregor).

Why did they create a fictional character? Because the real person in those events, John Grimes, raped and molested his daughter after his return from Somalia. They rewrote history instead of admitting one of the "heroes" was a despicable excuse for a human being.

That's like putting a fictional character in place of Stalin to when showing his World War II leadership to avoid associating him with his brutality. It's ludicrous.

Conversely, it's amazing how uppity some morons get when the film makers _do_ strive for historical accuracy. "Alexander" was a piece of crap, but that didn't bother people as much as Oliver Stone's factual depiction of Alexander's bisexuality.



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Answer 2

I think it's a combination of ignorance of true history, and the idea that real events just won't sell movie tickets, so the idea that "dramatic license" needs to be taken.

A lot of times truth is stranger than fiction though. An example is the TV miniseries a few years back about the late billionaire Howard Hughes. The miniseries wasn't really that inaccurate, but left out a lot of the more bizarre stuff about his life that was probably deemed to fantastic for even a made-for-TV movie miniseries

Answer 3

Because historical accuracy is seldom as exciting as the public has come to expect movies to be.

The filmmakers aren't interested in becoming educators of the public....they are about making money, the best way that they know how.

They might loosely base a film on a true story....but, don't think they aren't gonna jazz it up Hollywood style! It's all about the money.

Answer 4

Because they're too afraid of facing the controversy that would arise. People have many versions of events, true or not, there would be pros and cons.
And then Hollywood can say, "It's fiction blah blah blah... Any similarities to people or events are unintended blah blah blah..."
And they can't be sued, they just get away with it.

And of course, sometimes the true events were just too plain and boring to be made into movies.

Answer 5

Well, historical accuracy is not exactly the stuff that blockbusters are made of, is it?

But, my guess would be that it is for the same reason that historians are afraid of historical accuracy. They just do not know what happened.

Answer 6

becuase the movie is a piece of art.
that means it's not necessary to be accurate but to express the director's vision