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  1. #1

    Default Why Are Biopics So Inaccurate?

    I've decided to watch Ip Man movies (all 6 that I know of, not just the ones starring Donnie Yen)... and any time there is a Chinese martial artist biopic the movie is basically turned to a superhero movie.

    Let's look at the non-Donnie Yen Ip Man movies:

    *The Legend Is Born:
    • According to some texts about Man's past, he didn't have an adopted older brother, and he did not fight him while stopping a gang of Japanese smuggled spies sent as children to invade China. The movie does this stuff.
    • He did not get taught new techniques to Wing Chun because he was a pride of the place he was in, apparently his story was different.



    *The Final Fight:
    This movie made him fight a gang leader in an enclosed area inside a wall, and not only did none of the events described happen, the villain in that movie was fictional.


    *Donnie Yen movies:
    I am yet to watch the final film, but the rest made him a spiritual hero who fought against all kinds of oppression with his fists, like a twister (there's a pun in there, you'll get it if you watched movie 2 or read about it and remember the made up nonsense) removing trees from their roots. Or he fought gangs and hordes of enemies that are made up for these movies.



    Why are they called biopics when the 'biography' part is disregarded?

    American movies about Ip's most famous disciple share a similar guilt of course, but I'll spare making this a rant about turning biopics to superhero movies to move on to other stories that feel at least realistic.



    In movies like Catch Me If You Can they make the character more of a troublemaker than the real character was, something Frank Abignail jr himself was shocked to know about the film adaption of his autobiography and how people reacted to it.

    Why do directors and screenwriters do that? They don't need to add so much fictional content to make a movie engaging, show it as it is, don't put misinformation there just cause your movie is based on true events.
    Movies inspired by true events can get a leeway because they create new characters with different stories and names, and some of them point someplace that the real characters lives are different from the onscreen people.
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  2. #2
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    Movies need a narrative, beginning middle and end and a villain.

    Real life rarely provides something so neatly.

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    sometimes there's also the part that some people have are very unpleasdant world views I. E. Martin luther (the refomator) was known to be an anti semite.
    it goes also the other way I.E Ip Man hated the communist.
    othertimes reality is so freaky people wouldn't believe it. Amon Goeth from Schindler's list is a good example (this beast in human skin you see in the movie is the toned down version. In RL he was tried by the SS for unneccesrary cruelty among other things.)
    Last edited by LordLeviathan; 11-12-2020 at 04:30 PM.

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    Astonishing Member AndrewCrossett's Avatar
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    Yeah, real life rarely follows the three-act structure. Movies need to.

  5. #5
    Extraordinary Member Derek Metaltron's Avatar
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    This video by Patrick Willems did a great job poking holes with the issues with biopics (music based ones especially).


  6. #6
    Extraordinary Member Cyke's Avatar
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    I agree with several points here. From a narrative standpoint or to find a way to provide some context and uplift why this individual should be spotlighted sometimes requires these changes to fit in a movie format.

    Then there are other cases that are super egregious. I flash back to the disaster that was Stonewall and its near total erasure of Martha P. Johnson. For LGBTQ folks, it would have been like having an original white male character delivering the historic "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial with an actor playing MLK looking on in approval.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyke View Post
    I agree with several points here. From a narrative standpoint or to find a way to provide some context and uplift why this individual should be spotlighted sometimes requires these changes to fit in a movie format.

    Then there are other cases that are super egregious. I flash back to the disaster that was Stonewall and its near total erasure of Martha P. Johnson. For LGBTQ folks, it would have been like having an original white male character delivering the historic "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial with an actor playing MLK looking on in approval.
    Yeah agree with the above--also most people just don't have lives that are that interesting.

    Roland Emmerich should have just advertised as Stonewall historical fiction, then he could have thrown in explosions and tidal waves and end of the world scenarios. It would have been a bigger hit!

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    Extraordinary Member Cyke's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by titanfan View Post
    Yeah agree with the above--also most people just don't have lives that are that interesting.

    Roland Emmerich should have just advertised as Stonewall historical fiction, then he could have thrown in explosions and tidal waves and end of the world scenarios. It would have been a bigger hit!
    Oh no, it wasn't a black trans woman that threw the first brick in protest of the NYPD, it was actually an earthquake caused by a Soviet weather satellite that gained sentience through alien interference and wanted to live its best life, dammit!

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    "In this book I will write the biographies of King Alexander and of Caesar...Now, given the number of their exploits available to me, the only preamble I shall make is to beg the reader not to complain if I fail to relate all of them or to deal exhaustively with a particularly famous one, but to keep my account brief. I am not writing history but biography, and the most outstanding exploits do not always have the property of revealing the goodness or badness of the agent; often, in fact, a casual action, the odd phrase, or a jest reveals character better than the battles...just as a painter reproduces his subject's likeness by concentrating on the face and the expression of the eyes, by means of which character is revealed, and pays hardly any attention to the rest of the body, I must be allowed to devote more time to those aspects which indicate a person's mind and to use these to portray the life of each of my subjects, while leaving their major exploits and battles to others.
    "
    — Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Life of Alexander, proving that the problem of reconciling biography with history is Older Than Feudalism and common in all mediums (fiction, non-fiction, literature, film).

    Biopics are inaccurate because biographies are an imperfect genre at heart.

  10. #10
    Extraordinary Member Güicho's Avatar
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    Default Why are biopics so inaccurate?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyke View Post
    I agree with several points here. From a narrative standpoint

    Then there are other cases that are super egregious. I flash back to the disaster that was Stonewall and its near total erasure of Martha P. Johnson. For LGBTQ folks, it would have been like having an original white male character delivering the historic "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial with an actor playing MLK looking on in approval.

    ....Oh no, it wasn't a black trans woman that threw the first brick in protest of the NYPD, it was actually an earthquake caused by a Soviet weather satellite that gained sentience through alien interference and wanted to live its best life, dammit!
    Ironically.... Even in history ^ people (either knowingly or not, for better or worse) choose, embellish, lie, fantasize, and spread their own preferred made up narrative as an idea of "reality".
    Your own tongue-in-cheek example above, meant to convey an examples of a hard truth vs narrative fiction, is unwittingly and ironically the best proof of why biopics (and the likes) exist, and are obviously going to be embellished and inaccurate.

    Unless you were there, have documented proof, you are an unwitting tool, in spreading someone else's (true or false) narrative.
    In the end, they (for their fantasy biopic) are no more accountable than you are, for spreading your agreed upon fantasy above.
    So yeah Biopics are just a reflection and extension of the same.

    A difference might be they know what they are doing is to "sell" a story and assume their "audience" would know going in. Not sure the person here is even aware how they are an unwitting tool in spreading an embellished fantasy.

    The difference is just one is captured on film, the other on a random message board, there shouldn't be any surprise by how and why we tell stories and embellish "characters" even when loosely based on facts.

    Last edited by Güicho; 11-14-2020 at 06:43 PM.

  11. #11
    My Face Is Up Here Powerboy's Avatar
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    That question could be asked in many genres. Why are the Kurt Russell and Henry Fonda versions of the Wyatt Earp story so much more respected that the Kevin Costner version when the Costner version is considered the most accurate version ever done while the Russell and Fonda versions could be called alternative facts? The Gunfight at the O-K Coral and the events that led up to it are the most well-documented in the history of the Old West for those who would argue that it's all speculation.

    It's because they were considered more entertaining movies. The Old West dime novel writer, Ned Buntline said it nicely, over a hundred years ago: When the facts and the myth contradict each other, print the myth.

    Personally, I disagree. I find the Costner version far better specifically because it's true to what really happened. I generally find anything that stays true to, well, the truth to be better. But that's not a common opinion when it comes to movies.
    Last edited by Powerboy; 11-14-2020 at 10:58 PM.
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  12. #12
    My Face Is Up Here Powerboy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Güicho View Post
    Ironically.... Even in history ^ people (either knowingly or not, for better or worse) choose, embellish, lie, fantasize, and spread their own preferred made up narrative as an idea of "reality".
    Your own tongue-in-cheek example above, meant to convey an examples of a hard truth vs narrative fiction, is unwittingly and ironically the best proof of why biopics (and the likes) exist, and are obviously going to be embellished and inaccurate.

    Unless you were there, have documented proof, you are an unwitting tool, in spreading someone else's (true or false) narrative.
    In the end, they (for their fantasy biopic) are no more accountable than you are, for spreading your agreed upon fantasy above.
    So yeah Biopics are just a reflection and extension of the same.

    A difference might be they know what they are doing is to "sell" a story and assume their "audience" would know going in. Not sure the person here is even aware how they are an unwitting tool in spreading an embellished fantasy.

    The difference is just one is captured on film, the other on a random message board, there shouldn't be any surprise by how and why we tell stories and embellish "characters" even when loosely based on facts.

    But there are also biopics that nobody ever claimed events happened as portrayed in the biopic and they are knowingly "printing the myth".
    Power with Girl is better.

  13. #13
    My Face Is Up Here Powerboy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    "In this book I will write the biographies of King Alexander and of Caesar...Now, given the number of their exploits available to me, the only preamble I shall make is to beg the reader not to complain if I fail to relate all of them or to deal exhaustively with a particularly famous one, but to keep my account brief. I am not writing history but biography, and the most outstanding exploits do not always have the property of revealing the goodness or badness of the agent; often, in fact, a casual action, the odd phrase, or a jest reveals character better than the battles...just as a painter reproduces his subject's likeness by concentrating on the face and the expression of the eyes, by means of which character is revealed, and pays hardly any attention to the rest of the body, I must be allowed to devote more time to those aspects which indicate a person's mind and to use these to portray the life of each of my subjects, while leaving their major exploits and battles to others.
    "
    — Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Life of Alexander, proving that the problem of reconciling biography with history is Older Than Feudalism and common in all mediums (fiction, non-fiction, literature, film).

    Biopics are inaccurate because biographies are an imperfect genre at heart.
    Yes but there's a point where even solid facts that nobody is disputing are thrown out.

    Doc Holiday didn't die at the O-K Coral as in the Fonda movie. He didn't shoot it out with the Ringo Kid as in the Russell movie. Bruce Lee didn't have a negative relationship with Van Williams as in Dragon: the Bruce Lee story but Williams became a lifelong martial arts enthusiast because of Lee and I'm really sure Bruce didn't fight a demon as he did in "the true story of Bruce Lee".

    I'm not talking about "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" here. I'm only talking about movies that promote themselves as legitimate portrayals of what historically happened.
    Power with Girl is better.

  14. #14
    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    To be fair, we celebrate Columbus because of a highly inaccurate biography by Washington Irving.

    Even a movie like Ford vs Ferrari, which was pretty accurate in telling the story took a number of liberties.

    As for Emerich, he got most of Midway right as far as the timeline and figures. So maybe he could do Stonewall....just kidding.
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    Astonishing Member CellarDweller's Avatar
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    My own opinion, biopics tend to be skewed to tell the story the filmmaker wants to tell.

    A good example is the recent film "I, Tonya". (Before I go on, I must admit that I've not seen the film, but rather have researched it, and spoken to people who have.)

    The film tends to be sympathetic to Tonya Harding, and make her into woman who had everything piled against her. That is the view that Tonya and those in her camp have had since the start of her skating career.

    As a fan of figure skating, who started watching before Tonya started skating on the national level, I can tell you that's not true.

    Was Tonya a favorite of the judges? No. However there are other factors to her not winning competitions. She constantly changed coaches, which makes it impossible to effectively train. She is asthmatic, but insisted on smoking, which further reduced her lung capacity, she cut down her training time, and put on weight, which made it harder to land her jumps. The majority of the problems Tonya had in the skater world were her own doing. (I'm not talking about her personal or family relationships).

    As for the courtroom scene where Tonya was shocked at her sentence and ban, Tonya accepted a plea bargain, and it's my understanding that when that happens, the defendant is aware of the sentence that will be handed down. Tonya also never made that scene in the courtroom, it was added to the movie for the sake of 'drama'.

    There is also the view that Nancy Kerrigan was a spoiled rich kid. In real life, Nancy's mother was a stay-at-home mom with no job, as she was legally blind. Her father worked three jobs to pay the bills and afford Nancy's skating. Nancy herself went to public school instead of a tutor and she also held a waitressing job to help raise extra money.

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