"Based on true events" movies: Is there any truth in them or is it just Hollywood fiction?
Times of discover News: When you watch a movie, and see "based on true events" on the screen at the beginning... you have to believe it, right? Wrong. Hollywood is just making up stories to get more views, which means more money. What I'm going to tell you might surprise you.
Jack and Rose were not in the movie "Titanic." The two characters were created so that there is a real story besides the shipwreck that people can like. And if the two main characters are fake, then the family and friends around them are fake too, so the thriller is a fictional story. The only real thing that is accurately portrayed in this movie is the ship hitting the iceberg.
Like "Titanic," "The Blind Side" is a popular movie that can emotionally distract people from the story. "The Blind Side" is an acclaimed movie that is considered the shocking story of how NFL and NCAA legend Michael Oher became a legend.
The story again starts with "based on a true story," but that is far from the truth. Oher was adopted by the Tooheys, a loving couple with two children. The story is far from the truth. Oher said the Tooheys tricked him into signing the 18-year-old over to a conservatorship. They never actually adopted him. And also, Michael didn't get any profit from the movie or book sales. The Tooheys kept everything.
A new story based on lies is the "Monsters" series on Netflix, specifically the story of Erik and Lyle Menendez. The show will tell the heartbreaking story of two brothers who killed their parents and why they did it.
The brothers were allegedly sexually, physically, and mentally abused by their father from an early age. But the writers on the show present the brothers as antisocial people who love each other? Erik Menendez said a few days after the show aired that "pure lies were spread on the show," and he did not reveal the location of the sexual relationship between the brothers. Menendez called it a "dishonest portrayal" of history.
Those three movies and shows are just the beginning of the list of stories that Hollywood writers fabricate because of greed. Instead of accurately telling stories for learning purposes, the stories are mostly made up for money. Kaitlin Klotz is a freshman Multimedia Communications major, Sports Media major, and staff writer at The Wood Word. Along with The Wood Word, she is the TV Floor Manager at Marywood.