The Doors leans hard into chaos at the expense of who Jim Morrison actually was. Ray Manzarek said the violent, constantly drunk version on screen felt unrecognizable and missed the band’s core ideas about freedom and idealism. Some of the film’s most memorable moments are made up, including Morrison throwing a TV at Manzarek or quitting film school. | © TriStar Pictures
The Aviator shifts Howard Hughes’ timeline to make his story flow more smoothly on screen. His meeting with Ava Gardner is moved up by years, and key figures like Jane Russell are left out entirely. The film also sidesteps his marriage and allegations of sexual harassment, presenting a far cleaner version of Hughes than reality suggests. | © Miramax Films
Green Book reshapes real history to heighten its drama. The actual Green Book was more likely to steer travelers toward reputable establishments, not the grim motels shown in the film. More controversially, Doc Shirley’s family says he was never isolated from them or the Black community, and that the movie ignores his deep civil rights ties and friendships with figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Duke Ellington. | © Universal Pictures
The Greatest Showman turns P.T. Barnum into a polished crowd-pleaser by scrubbing away his most troubling behavior. In real life, Barnum exploited performers and played directly to racist appetites for spectacle, something the film avoids entirely. It also leaves out his use of blackface minstrel acts and the disturbing story of Joice Heth, an enslaved woman he falsely promoted as part of his show. | © 20th Century Fox
The Imitation Game invents tension by tying Alan Turing to a Soviet spy plot that likely never crossed his path. John Cairncross was real, but he worked in a different part of Bletchley Park and almost certainly never met Turing at all. Portraying Turing as someone who might protect a traitor angered historians and was widely seen as unfair to his real legacy. | © The Weinstein Company
The Blind Side tells a feel-good story, but it does so by underselling its own subject. Michael Oher objected to being portrayed as slow or clueless, a view many of his teammates openly disagreed with. The film also implies the Tuohy family created his talent, even though Oher has said he was already a strong player long before the adoption. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
A Beautiful Mind cleans up John Nash’s backstory by leaving out some of its most uncomfortable realities. The film ignores his relationships with men, his illegitimate child, and the far messier dynamics of his relationship with Alicia. It also pushes the misleading idea that schizophrenia can be overcome through willpower alone, a notion many experts strongly reject. | © Universal Pictures
The Social Network reshapes Facebook’s origin into a neat good-guy-versus-bad-guy story. Eduardo Saverin wasn’t a betrayed best friend, and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t acting alone while the company struggled for money. The film also sidelines real contributors like Adam D’Angelo and even gets small personal details wrong, including Zuckerberg’s rowing background. | © Columbia Pictures
The Favourite gets partial credit for acknowledging Queen Anne’s relationships with women, even if the intensity is pushed for effect. The real problem comes from the film’s love of theatrical shock over historical record. No matter how much the rivals disliked each other, there was never any poisoned tea involved. | © Fox Searchlight Pictures
Battle of the Sexes reshapes real events to land its emotional beats more cleanly. The post-match monologue about Billie Jean King’s sexuality was likely invented, adding a moment that never actually occurred. The filmmakers also compressed roughly three years of real-life events into a single year, trading accuracy for a smoother, more dramatic timeline. | © Fox Searchlight Pictures
The King’s Speech softens real history to make its relationships feel warmer and more inspirational. The film suggests Winston Churchill was a close ally of George VI, when in reality Churchill’s loyalty lay with Edward VIII, not the stuttering king. It also sidesteps George’s limited intellect, a trait his contemporaries were far less charitable about than the movie lets on. | © The Weinstein Company
Amadeus builds its entire drama on the idea that Antonio Salieri was consumed by jealousy and actively sabotaged Mozart’s career. In reality, the two composers were on good terms and even collaborated, which completely undercuts the film’s central rivalry. Mozart respected Salieri enough to travel with him to The Magic Flute premiere, a detail that doesn’t fit the movie’s villain narrative at all. | © Orion Pictures
Braveheart plays fast and loose with Scottish history, starting with the title itself. William Wallace was never called Braveheart, that honor belonged to Robert the Bruce, who also didn’t betray Wallace the way the film suggests. Even the iconic kilts are an anachronism, since they didn’t exist until centuries after Wallace’s lifetime. | © Paramount Pictures
Bohemian Rhapsody bends Queen’s real history to fit a cleaner, more dramatic rise-fall-redemption arc. The film invents characters, rearranges timelines, and even suggests the band had split up before Live Aid, which simply wasn’t true. Most misleading of all, Freddie Mercury likely didn’t know he was HIV-positive at the time, making the movie’s emotional motivation for the concert largely fictional. | © 20th Century Fox
Hidden Figures takes real barriers these women faced at NASA and reshapes them into tidy, crowd-pleasing moments. Several scenes exaggerate racial conflict while inventing heroic gestures from white colleagues to smooth the story into something more inspirational than accurate. That famous bathroom scene where Kevin Costner’s character tears down the segregation sign never happened, and it turns systemic injustice into a single, fictional act of allyship. | © 20th Century Fox
Biopics love to promise the truth, then quietly bend it when the facts get inconvenient. Timelines shift, personalities are simplified, and real people turn into cleaner, more dramatic versions of themselves. These films may be entertaining, but history often tells a very different story.
