[W David Lichty]

You make some good points and I can understand your argument. On the one hand. On the other hand, I understand that movies are movies and not documentaries, and if I want to learn about history, movies aren’t the best place.

My guess is that many of us agree broadly: On one hand, movies aren’t the best place to learn history. On the other hand, if you’re going to tell your own story, then why not just make up your own story. Those are far ends of the spectrum, and we may be at different positions in between them. My specific issue is that “It’s a movie” isn’t a broad umbrella, a free-for-all, or good enough to be a default. And we know that many, especially kids just learning history, have no reason to expect someone to be fabricating critical events when they claim to tell a true story. “Caveat emptor” is a flag waving mostly over those who want to dupe us, and it’s not a good social compact. Diversions beyond, as I think I said above, some necessary things like filling in gaps of unrecorded dialogue, should be warranted by the film making case, rather than the tendency’s ubiquity and the reliably offered excuses.

Do a little work and either:

1. Make the actual scene or story as interesting as it was to those who lived it or told it. Find the drama rather than fabricating it. Just do the work.

2. If you simply want to make a big romp, then extract the contra-historical elements altogether and tell your story. If Raiders was about the spy who kept the D-Day plans from falling into the hands of Hitler, rather than an archaeologist rescuing the Lost Ark of the Covenant, which presents not an unhistorical object, but an easily discernible unhistorical quest, the same movie (minus melting faces) could be as good. But since there was no need to return the stolen D-Day plans from the princess before June 6th, it would also be dinged for being needlessly historically preposterous, and every other historical inaccuracy would be noticed, and would join it on a bunch of lists. It would be an “I enjoy it, but…” movie.

A great example of just that, U-571, didn’t need to be about The Enigma, which the Brits obtained, not the Americans. It’s a MacGuffin, so pick another one, like Notorious did. Invent something, you storyteller you. Make the movie about trying to find Atlantis before Hitler can claim their giant heat rays and warrior dinosaurs, film the same film, and then listen to reviews saying, “This fantasy action picture actually gets a lot of details about submarine warfare in the 1940s right, and what a romp!” By being honest, it would be championed for the things it nailed, rather than given caveats at every turn because of a needless deception, which I think is a fair word to use for these, whatever the motivation. It’s still a knowing lie.

And if you can’t do either of those things, dear film maker, be straight.

3. Start with “Loosely based on the true events of …” or some such.

That’s my issue, the blanket excuse, and those rarely work well in general. Historical movies can get the feel of a time across in a way textbooks can’t, certainly the look, the sounds, music, allowing us to be immersed in that time and place. That’s the kind of useful (and enjoyable) thing that can anchor events into memory, so why not get them right? To put your stamp on it, Mr. Producer? “I can’t just tell it like it was, anyone could do that, I need to bring something, make it my own, otherwise why was I here?” Maybe. Honestly, I think it’s just done because it’s done. Often, each new person who enters the writing process on a picture looks at the existing story not as a nearly finished sculpture, but as raw material, whether it’s a Gremlins or a Bohemian Rhapsody. “I’ve got to turn what I’ve been given into something, or I’ll be replaced next” all but necessitates diverging.

But some oversight wouldn’t hurt. “You’re not here to change the story, but to make this one work. Or to tell us there’s no way to do it without boring people into disconnection, so we can chuck it and really make the movie we want to see.”

It can happen, the fabrication, but it’s hard to excuse its being de rigueur.