Movie Fact Check

As avid filmgoers, we all take certain prerequisites into any film we see.  Certain things that either enhance or detract from our enjoyment of any particular film.  For instance; some love shaky-cam, that visual style filmmakers utilize to make you question that popcorn purchase, others detest it.  Some insist on random explosions in the desert, others snicker at it.  Lately, one thing that has been taking up way too much time on the interwebs has been a film’s adherence to ‘facts’. 

Historical, scientific, pragmatic…whatever your poison or position, facts have come under attack.  Not from documentaries, mind you, but stemming from standard, Hollywood affairs.  Gravity, Captain Phillips, The Butler and 12 Years A Slave all have come under fire within the last few months for their apparent misrepresentation of facts.  Which brings me to the question I have to ask – Does a movie, or its filmmakers, owe it to us to offer 100% factual accuracy?  Or are people just utilizing that hipster mentality of breaking things down that are getting more traction than their own tired arguments?

From countless hours reading up on these specific films and the points some skeptics have raised, I have come to the conclusion that the answer is unequivocally: Yes.  And no.  With a touch of maybe. So allow me to elaborate.

Certain kinds of films carry a certain responsibility to their audience to present materials as factual as possible, if the intent is to inform the audience of a historical event, BUT, that accuracy also must work in the context of a film.  This means that dramatic license must also be taken if it serves the greater purpose of telling a story.

Take 12 Years A Slave.  The true, untold to this point, story of Solomon.  A free, black man who was viciously sold into slavery and spent over a decade attempting to reclaim his rightful freedom.  This is a subject that is of a very sensitive nature to an entire population, which I would argue gives validity to the argument that the filmmakers should do everything possible to ensure the historical accuracy of the story.  Dramatic license is allowed to come into effect here, but not at the expense of detrimental facts.  This is because entire generations will look at this film as a retelling of THEIR story, their past.  And that past needs to be represented, for better or worse, factually.

Now, when you take films such as Captain Phillips and The Butler into account, well these films are of a different breed.  They are of the ‘Inspired by a true story’ ilk.  Yes, that means ‘sure, we know it’s not completely true, but we really want to sell tickets and Tom Hanks being all heroic sells a lot more tickets than some jackass ignoring nautical certainties’. It also means that to illustrate the plight of the African-American movement, and do it justice, you might just have to infer events happened to the lead character that actually did not.

Was Captain Rich Phillips a stubborn steward who put his entire crew at risk with Somali pirates by ignoring repeated warnings and plotting a course too close to shore in effort to save money?  Possibly.  But would the movie suffer from it? I would argue most definitely.  Does The Butler’s Cecil Gaines, mirrored after true White House butler Eugene Allen, actually run across every single prominent figure in African-American history?  I doubt it.  But it made the movie a heck of a lot more interesting than if it showed him, yet again, fetching coffee for a congressman.

For these ‘Oscar Bait’ films, we as an audience need to be more accepting of the facts being ‘twisted’.  The filmmakers are not intending to make a documentary, nor are they representing a historical horror story such as slavery or the holocaust.  They are using pieces of history to tell an entertaining movie, about a subject or a situation, and we all know that movies are far more entertaining than a retelling of the facts.  This is the magic of movies, and it rightfully applies.

That brings me to the last one, and for my money the most ridiculous.  When astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to point out several scientific impossibilities for the film Gravity, it was worth a laugh.  Not that he pointed them out, if anyone can and should, it is Tyson.  What made me laugh were the many taking siege upon the internet proclaiming, after the film’s roaring success of course, that these scientific inaccuracies, in some way, invalidates the enjoyment, or ability to enjoy, a film such as this.

These are hipster arguments that bear no fruit.  Did Gravity take place in a sort of hyper-reality, with a varying use of true-life satellites and equipment?  Sure.  Does the film ever, in any frame, proclaim this to be inspired by, based on, taken from the memoirs of or in any single other way say that these events are FACTUAL?  No.

So how could this possibly hinder your enjoyment of the film? How does knowing that Sandra Bullock’s character would probably not be up there on her space exploration mission, ‘if this was real’, eliminate your enjoyment?  How does the fact that the distance between two satellites are too far to make a successful transition, ‘if this was real’, change your experience watching it transpire?  How could any, a single one of Tyson’s points, affect your viewing or reflection of the experience, if it is NOT REAL?

If the film never pretends to a factual film, how can any of this negate your enjoyment of a fictional film?  Anymore than me telling you what Tyson illustrated that the filmmakers got factually correct should enhance that enjoyment.

The facts simply do not matter here.  If you subscribe to the theory that they do, then you also must accept that all films based in a basic reality must always showcase real science…and no, you don’t get a ‘BUT’ on this argument, so pick your side.  Armageddon fans, guess what?  They’ll never ACTUALLY get an oil driller and his entire team space ready in a month, even Harry Stamper’s.  Anaconda fans?  Sorry to disappoint you, snakes don’t scream nor do they swallow people that quickly, even if those people are creepy Jon Voight.  Poor E.T., he’ll never beeeeeee able to communicate with his mother ship with a Speak ‘n Spell, so he’ll just have to placate himself while sucking down those dirty Reese’s Pieces. Don’t even get me started on how depressed you would be watching Demolition Man with this mindset.

Sometimes we let our cynicism get the better of us, and this is a prime example.  There are films that bear a responsibility to present a factual representation of events, most do not.  If you are finding your enjoyment for a fictional film squashed by scientific realities that you would never have known about without a renowned astrophysicist informing you?

Well, in that case, I am afraid even Harry Stamper might not be able to save you.

 

Aaron Peterson
The Hollywood Outsider

www.TheHollywoodOutsider.com