Truth or Fiction?

Historical inaccuracies in movies drive me absolutely crazy. I am under the firmest most staunch belief that if a filmmaker decides to include a serious subject or event, he should take on the research and present it in the most realistic way possible with the available information. I know, I know films are supposed to be fiction apart from regular and historical accuracies. Frankly, I don't care. It bothers me when I realize something in a movie isn't historical correct, it downgrades my view of the movie. Heck even animation movies, if something in it is too unrealistic, I get angry. For example, it drives me nuts that kid in the movie UP can catch a blimp on the back of a leaf blower. That's absurd and doesn't fit in with the way the rest of the narrative is presented.

This one of many reasons I love Zero Dark Thirty. It presents the Navy Seals raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in a tremendously realistic fashion given the information that has been declassified and released. The length of the attack in the film, 27 minutes, even matches the length of the attack in real elapsed time, 27 minutes.

However, there are ways to draw off of history in ways that do not insult history in various ways. For example, The Dark Knight Rises uses terrorism in the main conflict of the plot. The villain, Bane, terrorizes Gotham mortifying its citizens. However, it doesn't take on historical events that have taken place in real life. Moreover, it also meets the serious issues in a serious way. An even though unrealistic things take place in this movie, it becomes all plausible within the world of Gotham. It seems realistic even when it is not.