Hairstyles and body builds 
Any movie or show made post-2015 implies that 98% of adult males have or should have body-builder physique.
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Great point there!
Actually a very great point, the more I think about it. We went from media that balanced but prioritized accuracyâGettysburg, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Pacific, Black Hawk Down, Master and Commanderâto media that has been prioritizing visual effects and drama to the point of imbalanceâRed Tails, 300, the Right Stuff, Midway.
I think Dunkirk was the only well-balanced, accurate historical movie in recent memory. Midway teeters the edge for me. It did a really good job of putting things into context, I think, but the physics-defying visuals were insane with IJN AAA that was 1000x more effective than it was in real life, and the transitions between the major events were very jarring. I suppose to maintain the tempo of action so todayâs ADHD audiences wouldnât walk out halfway through.
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Apart from a supernatural gravity defying Spitfire 
Movies about real life events, that are made for our entertainment, need to entertain the audience. This almost always mean they have to jazz it up a littleâŠor a lot. War is rarely entertaining, nor is science projects like going to space, unless you go there as part of a mining crew to stop a huge astroid⊠No, wait! That was pure fiction.
If the producers actually had access to trancripts from actual dialogue, they would have to think twice about using it. Humans are rarely as eloquent as actors will have us believe. There are notable exceptions, of course.
To accurately portray a real life event you would also need to show what people were thinking and what mood they were in. Not all movies can use a narrator so this has to be conveyed to the audience in another way, perhaps with background movie music and exaggerated expressions to set the mood. Ever seen an old silent movie, or a theatre? In one the actors are deprived of speech and in the other the distance is too large to convey small expressions. In both cases the actors need to exaggerate their expressions, to get through to the audience.
Modern movies suffer somewhat from the same limitations in that they have to adapt to make the audience understand what is going on.
So no movie ever gets it right. There will always be some concessions.
When weâre talking about âThe Right Stuffâ, the movie or the series, I thought they were entertaining. No, I most certainly donât think that they portray actual events exactly as they happened. Nor do I understand some of the choices that the script writers and producers did. But it was a movie/series about aircraft and the cool kids who got to ride them. Some of it was true, other stuff has been made up or was based on conjecture. But it was well made. It was entertaining. Thatâs all there is to it.
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I guess interpersonal conflict and drama just ainât my cup of tea then. The most entertaining part, and the part that kept me watching, was to see what kind of excessive drama they would write into the next episode.
I get that stuff needs to be entertaining, but thereâs a point where it crosses a line. Like that gravity-defying Spitfire, which, to be honest, would have been fine without the gratuitous Stuka kill. But unlike the Right Stuff, the gravity-defying Spitfire didnât dominate the entire story.
What I am trying to say is that even if it was possible to make a movie, based on real events, exactly the way it was, producers would still change the narrative.
They will have to decide what part of the story to tell and what not to tell. It would be impossible to cram everything that happened into a 2hr movie, so somethingâs gotta go.
But then they may miss critical information, that is needed to understand the plot, so that must be added⊠They are basically just telling a story, and they tell it like they see it. Some better than others and then thereâs personal taste, thrown into the mix.
Like you I often ask myself why they chose to change or exaggerate events that I think wouldâve been much better if left just as is⊠But I guess itâs a bit like filming a movie explosion. You need to add some gasoline or you will miss the whole bang.
Steve Zarelli got back to me today. He has finished his examination of my envelope with the John Glenn signature and could report that it had passed as being genuine.
Now, this is according to his knowledge and best analytic efforts. In the end you can never be 100% certain, unless you witnessed the subject write the signature. But Zarelli comes highly recommended and with great credentials. If he says itâs Glenns signature, it most likely is.
I will find a good photo of John Glenn and frame the envelope with it.
Photo suggestions are welcome.
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Iâd frame it next to a pic of him and his Mig Mad Marine Sabre, but thatâs just me. Always been more of an atmospheric flight kinda guy myself.
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I feel such a fool that I didnât realised Mig Mad Marine was Major Glennâs machine.
Iâm thinking of maybe framing the envelope with pics of Glenn surrounding it. Zarelli, who examined the signature, says his opinion is that the envelope was signed in the 90âs, judging from the pen and style of signature. This put me on the idea of a picture collage of Glenns career.
Mig Mad Marine would definitely be part of that collage. 
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I had forgotten until I checked the box art on an Academy 1/72 Sabre that Iâm about to start on 
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If itâs not a documentary, then there are going to be instances of poetic license, dramatic flair, heightened action, whatever you want to call it.
If you prefer documentaries, thatâs fine, but I think history has proven most viewers do not. If you want people to watch it, there needs to be buy in from the people who donât know every detail beforehand and want to be entertained as they learn (if they do).
That said, you canât blame the audiences only. The studio execs have their own shallow biases and you can bet that if something confuses THEM they wonât let it stand and will demand changes until they get it. Of course, theyâre not all scholars who are capable of seeing nuances, a lot of them are basically those who graduated from car sales to film sales.
You know what happens when you donât let the brightest but instead the biggest and loudest make decisions? Hollywood.
I watched The Right Stuff on D+ and also The Real Right Stuff. Thought both were good and worth watching.
From my understanding Band of Brothers was a bit inaccurate in a few places, the book and mini series. Still one of the best mini series, ever, imo.
Yeah, Iâve never understood why Hollywood believes, or seems to, that what really happened, and accurately, is less interesting (not counting comedy, ROMCOMâs, etc, and they occasionally do a good job).
Iâm curious about TopGun II given Tomâs interest in aviation. The obligatory âRomantic elementâ will make an appearance Iâm sure.
Perhaps part of the problem is too few of the writers/directors are actually good at it.
Apollo 13 was great with a minimum of liberties taken.
The problem with many historical films is their distance from today. With Apollo 13, they had Jim Lovell as a reference along with many of the others who were there.
Go back more than 50 years now, though, and whoever is still alive, how well do they remember the why and how? The what is historically documented, so the plot is easy to get right. But how well that person got along with that other one, or how this one liked their coffee, or why that one decided to run TOWARDS the explosion when everyone else ran away⊠The things that people seem to need to connect with the characters is almost never in these histories.
Pull out all the character details that let people understand and feel what they were feeling at the time and you get a documentary. So if you donât have it, you need to make it up. When you make it up, you tend to go bigger and more dramatic than the more likely low-key interactions that happened.
I mean, just look at the Lord of the Rings. Itâs a fantasy. There are dragons, wizards, orcs, elves, magic, and a continent that never existed. Yet people complain about the appearance of tomatoes! Of stirrups! Of all these âahistoricalâ things like LOTR was REAL history.
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