Why Are Films Based on Real Life Events So Damn Successful?

“It's on tomorrow night, we’re both free, you’ll love it. I promise.”

“Ah… I don’t think I’ll go, doesn’t seem like my sort of thing.”

“This is exactly your sort of thing, I know it is.”

“No, I don’t think I will, I think I’m doing something.”

It is at this point that a trailer for the film “The Founder” springs onto our television, and thus the opening title “Based on the incredible true story” accompanied with a loud cinematic thud, catches the eye of my stubborn mother.

“Oh, I’ll go and see this”.

I don’t mind telling you that my reaction to this was initially one of irritation. Why does she never go to the cinema to see something I recommend? Do my opinions mean that little to her? I’m only her son after all.

Upon reflection, I came to realise that of the many, many times I have attempted to drag my mother out to the cinema, the only times she was interested in actually going were when the film in question was based on a real-life event or person. The same thing happened a few months later when I was coaxing her into watching a film on Amazon Prime. We couldn’t possible watch something as boring as “Inception”, but the mention of a biopic on the life of Jackie Kennedy was enough to get the microwave popcorn out of the cupboard.

Needless to say, these occurrences definitely sparked an interest in me. If these “Based on Real-Life Events” films were attracting a non-cinema goer like my mum to the big screen, then exactly who else are they managing to draft in for the ticket sales. After a bit of research, I was stunned to find just how successful these stories really were. Generally speaking, a film that makes a very large amount of money at the box office will usually receive a mixed critical response. This can be due to claims the film is “Pandering” to a mass audience, or that at its heart, the film favours “Style over substance”. Conversely, it is often the smaller, more intimate and lesser known films that receive the greatest critical response. Critics claim that these films have integrity, and value subtlety in their storytelling. Very rarely do these two cinematic circles ever converge in fictitious work. It would seem a film has to give up its box office firepower in favour of a five-star critical reception, and vice versa.

However, there is a magical middle ground movie. A Goldilocks picture if you will. Films based on true stories. These are the kings of Hollywood....

Films like “Wolf of Wall Street”, “Erin Brockovich”, “Schindler’s List” all grossed over one hundred million dollars whilst gaining some of the highest critical praise of any films within and indeed, beyond their genre.

So, what is it about these true stories that appeal to audiences and filmmakers alike? Of course, this question begs many others. This question seeks to find the answer hidden in the audience’s consciousness. There is a quality to these films, a certain aspect of them, that has a significant draw to the general public. This is why so many adaptations are taken on by the big names in Hollywood, for the exact reason that they do make money and engage audiences. To begin understanding the answer to this bigger question, we must first ask a number of smaller ones.

Is there a formula to these “Bit Hit” biopics? Could it be that “True stories” just so happen to fit that formula? Or is it that the “Truth” element itself is the draw? That’s there is something psychologically ingrained into us to relate and empathise with a story that we know actually took place?

If that is the case, then one could argue that someone’s life story in its entirety could scarcely be called a cinematic story. So, in translating the truth into a screenplay that tells a condensed, tightly structured version of a story, surely necessary changes must be made in order to make that narrative work? In “A theory of adaptation” Hutcheon states that adapting a story into a screenplay “is foremost a labour of simplification” (Hutcheon, L. 2006). If that is the case, then by the very nature of simplification, the story begins to lose validity. It's “Truthfulness” is compromised for the sake of a cinematic story. Therefore, with just a little bit of digging, we already begin to bring into question the fidelity of these films, and whether this has a strong bearing on the success of the finished product. This naturally leads us to question the problems that would occur when making a film about a person who is either currently alive, or within living memory. Changing too much of the “Truth” element in these stories could cause a major backlash with audiences noticing the inaccuracies in the narrative.

Look at that. With just the briefest glance at the surface level of our investigation, we have already come across many elements that make up our bigger picture, and began asking questions that lead onto more questions. To stop us spiralling off topic, I’ll set some parameters. For the purposes of this, I am defining these “true story” films as stories that are directly based on a historical person or event. I will not include films “Inspired” by these people and events.

So, what started with an irritation at my mother’s viewing habits, has lead me to a genuinely intriguing investigation into a core component of the story telling industry. Let’s see where it leads.

The Tortured Genius Biopic

“See, I think that would be really interesting.”

“Why mum, it’s about chess? You don’t even play chess.”

“Yeah, but it would be interesting to see the mind of someone who is amazing at chess”

Of all the films based on true stories, the ones that absolutely dominate the box office (with the exception of “Titanic”) are biopics. Specifically, biopics centring on a tortured genius with limited social skills and super human knowledge. It also doesn’t hurt if they’re unrealistically handsome and talk really fast. Sure, you get some incredibly successful biopics on historical figures like Jackie Kennedy or Margret Thatcher, but if you really want that Oscar worthy critical and financial sensation, then you can’t beat the Geniuses. The Social Network, A beautiful Mind, Catch Me if you Can, all films we know very well, and all film that have received sensationally good reviews, managing to garner impressive box office numbers in the process. Clearly these films have a lasting and significant effect on people. In fact, fourteen out of twenty-six Oscars for main actors have gone to people playing real-life figures since 2000.

The question then is why? It isn’t simply a one-off hit. Genius biopics have captured the public’s imagination (Not to mention my mother’s) without us being able to put our fingers on exactly why this is. Is it that these stories naturally have compelling characters at the centre of larger than life stories? Or is it just the very fact that we know these people really existed, that the story we are watching about an unimaginable human being is in fact, real.

Let us begin by examining the first question posed there. Do the real-life stories that these films are based on naturally include compelling characters and narratives? To establish this, we have to take a look at what changes filmmakers adopt in their versions of the real-life events.

An example of this would be a pivotal scene in Benedict Cumberbatch’s Alan Turing biopic “The Imitation Game”. The scene has Alan Turing talking to a codebreaker in the social hall. She is explaining how she has been having a flirtatious affair with a German radio operator. Upon revealing to Alan Turing that the German ends every message with “My love”, Alan is immediately able to figure out the Nazi enigma code since he predicts that every message will end in “Heil Hitler”. This of course, is not how this revelation was made. The real Alan Turing came to this conclusion on a bike ride to his radio hut. But that’s not cinematic. That’s not going to create tension, or satisfy an audience hungry for an amazing, larger than life story. So, the film makers adjusted history in favour of a more compelling narrative.

Filmmakers are known to interject dramatic flourishes into their screenplays in order to create a heightened world that the audience can lose themselves in. This is not the only example of this in The Imitation Game.

The film also goes to great lengths to convince you that Alan Turning was a narcissistic, humourless man, which, according to Andrew Hodges’ Alan Turing: The Enigma, simply isn’t true. So, we see that the film is happy to rearrange and outright change aspects of its source material, but clearly, due to its very positive critical reception, they were necessary changes in order to achieve success.

To accurately come to a conclusion on the issue as a whole, we must now look at the opposite side of this argument. What are the factually “true” elements of these genius biopics that are consistent thought their many successes? What are the core components of these films that are rooted in history, that keep bringing audiences back? We already know that these “genius” biopics often glorify a tortured protagonist. So maybe a key, attractive aspect of these film are characters that overcome adversity, or some major challenge in their lives.

We know this to be the case in film like “The Pursuit of Happiness”, “The Kings Speech” and “Erin Brockovich”. All of which grossed well over one hundred million dollars at the box office. What’s more relatable that characters facing challenges in their lives? We all face challenges every day, and seeing characters overcome their significantly bigger challenges only brings us hope for our own struggles. This is made all the more vivid with the knowledge that this wasn’t just a writer magically solving their problems, but an actually human being who lived and fought for their success.

Watching them achieve the success in the cinema is the closest thing we have to seeing them succeed in real life. It creates this illusion that a friend of yours have achieved their goals. It’s that identification with have with these protagonists that lead us to having strong emotional engagement with the films, which leads us to multiple viewing and recommendations to friends, all of which positively affect the film in both monetary sense, and a critical sense.

Of course, it is hard to ever know exactly how “true” these true stories are. By the very nature of a writer typing a script based on second or third hand information, there will always be a degree on inaccuracy in these films. But it appears that if the audience is unaware of the inaccuracies, then the film’s success is unaffected. So long as that certain formula of an underdog story is followed, then the public, and it would seem critics too, shall flock to the film in droves of praise and outstretched wallets.

The Social Network Vs Good Will Hunting

“I never got the appeal. I don’t see how inventing a website can make a good film.”

“I think that’s the point. I think it’s supposed to show you this amazing untold story.”

“But is Mark Zuckerberg a real genius though? I just don’t see him on the same level as a Will Hunting.”

“But Will Hunting isn’t a real person Mum.”

“Oh… Isn’t he?”

What we have here are two films about geniuses hidden in plain sight. Both start as unknown, overlooked young men and over the course of their films become highly sought after and widely recognised geniuses. Both men experience their share of girl troubles due to their repressed eccentricities. Both men have a lovable but ultimately overlooked best friend to act as their trusty sidekicks and gawk at their high IQs. Both are narcissistic and egotistical, just one is the introvert version and the other the extrovert. But here is the key difference and the reason we are looking at the two films side by side. One is a real person, and the other is fictional. Because the two films are so similar from an objective standpoint, it allows us to use “Good Will Hunting” as a control film, when looking at the fidelity and “Truth” aspects of “The Social Network” and the affects these have on the films success.

Let’s start by first looking at the cold, hard numbers of each film. On the financial scale, Good Will Hunting stands taller than The Social Network, grossing $138,000,000 US Dollars domestically, looming over the $97,000,000 US Dollars that The Social Network grossed domestically.

Looking exclusively at these numbers, the figures suggest that Good Will Hunting is vastly more successful in its lifetime run since it has made significantly more money that The Social Network. But, one has to remember that these films are a product of their setting. Good Will Hunting is about a young man coming out of the mean streets of Boston, whereas The Social Network, whilst still set primarily in the United States, has roots elsewhere in its narrative. A significant plot point in the film unfolds in the Cambridge Henley Regatta. The nature of The Social Network means that the film deal with business all over the world as “Facebook” spreads to all countries on the globe, in comparison to Good Will Hunting, which stays local to Boston thought the entire runtime.

Taking this into account, let’s look at the two films worldwide grosses, and see if the numbers don’t even out because of this. Good Will Hunting comes in at $226,000,000 US dollars in its worldwide, lifetime gross. The Social Network now boasts some $225,000,000 US dollars in its worldwide, lifetime gross. What is amazing here, is just how close the two films now stand when talking into account a global audience. With both films sharing such similar narratives, and both dealing with same themes and demographics, is it really such a surprise that they are almost indistinguishable based solely on their commercial success?

Before looking at these numbers, my hypothesis would have been that the “True Story” aspect of The Social Network would have propelled it ahead of its competition in this field. I would have theorised that the audiences, who would have been using Facebook for four years at this point, would see a huge draw in having the opportunity to see the real story unfold in a cinematic form. Not to mention having such enormous names in the industry behind the film. David Fincher is one of the highest respected film directors making films today, and Aaron Sorkin is almost peerless in the screenplay writing field. It would stand to reason then, now being about to use Good Will Hunting as the control here, that the “Truth” factor behind The Social Network, had very little effect on the film’s success, at least financially. It would seem that the particular narrative structure that we talked about before, the tortured genius overcoming adversity, was the prime selling point of these films.

This gives us one possible answer to one of our opening questions “Is there a formula to these hit films that true stories naturally mould too?”. A possible conclusion to draw here is yes, there is a certain formula for success that these true stories fit into, but they aren’t exclusive to these true stories. They can be replicated in fictional narratives to seemingly the same positive outcome.

It would appear then, that to gain any kind of understanding as to whether the “Truth” aspect of a biopic film as any meaningful effect on its success, we must turn out attention away from “financial” success, and shine our metaphorical spotlight on the films “Critical” successes. Here, we might begin to see a difference in how the films were received critically, and draw some conclusions as to why these diverging outcomes came to be.

Let’s start with looking at how the two-film’s faired in their respective award seasons. Looking at the 1997 Academy Awards, Good Will Hunting managed to gain itself a total of nine award nominations including “Best Picture”. For any film, that is an impressive number of nominations. Of those nine, the film won two of them. Best supporting actor and best original screenplay. Without question, the film performed well at the Academy Awards. Fast forward the clocks thirteen years to the 2010 Academy Awards. The Social Network was able to achieve eight award nominations also including “Best Picture”. The film received one less nomination the Good Will Hunting, but The Social Network actually won three of its nominations, awarding itself one more “Win” then Good Will Hunting.

Now, to sidestep a little before we go any further, an interesting factor in this investigation, is that the one Oscar win that both of these films had in common, was the “Best Screenplay” award, with one obviously being “Best Original Screenplay” for Good Will Hunting, and one being “Best Adapted Screenplay” for The Social Network. Looking at this fact, and knowing just how similar these two screenplays really are, its draws me to a similar conclusion that we came to before. That there could be this magical formula for a successful screenplay. We saw that the tortured genius overcoming a great many challenges played well in the financial world of the films, but now we see that this same screenplay formula won both films an Oscar for that very category. The fact that one was an adapted screenplay and one was an original piece of work, has made no difference on the financial or critical success of either.

Since both films performed more or less the same at the academy awards, the last avenue for us to look down to attempt to determine any contrasts at all, is looking at the responses from both the critics and audiences who saw the films.

A good place to get accurate reading of both is the popular website “Rotten Tomatoes” since both audiences and critics alike can use the website to leave their ratings and reviews. If we first look at the critic’s responses specifically to both films, we once again see a near indistinguishable result. Good Will Hunting has a score of 97%, and The Social Network holds a 96%. Taking into account that The Social Network has a larger number of reviews by critics that Good Will Hunting, we can safely say that the critical responses to the films are outstandingly similar. Not only are they outstandingly similar, they are both overwhelmingly positive. Some of the highest rated films on the website.

This goes to show, whether the protagonists were real or not, people are so drawn to these characters that it’s amazing that there aren’t more of these films being made. That being said, there are quite a lot of them already. The only place where there is any measurable difference in the reception of these two films are in the audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Good Will Hunting just pips The Social Network with a 94% rating over 86%. Even this is hard to define since The Social Network once again has more reviews that Good Will Hunting.

So, what we’ve found through our side by side compassion is that both of these films are phenomenally successful in both the commercial and critical senses. The stories are so similar in structure and tone that it’s hard to imagine that they’re not both fictional and written by the same person. That does bring into question whether Aaron Sorkin, whilst writing The Social Network, didn’t look at Good Will Hunting and use it as a possible mould for his Genius Biopic?

If that’s the case, surely there are significant chunks of The Social Network that are rearranged or even made up altogether, to better fit that mould. Perhaps my mother was right? Maybe a film about the invention of a website isn’t necessarily the most gripping narrative. The film could well have been injected with false glamour and given a more “Sexy” makeover.

All of this is backed up by the writer himself, Aaron Sorkin. In an interview, he explained “his script took liberties with the story because depicting the social-network ethos of a new generation mattered more than getting precise details about Mr. Zuckerberg and his circle right.” (Tommasini, 2018).

Therefore, I come to the conclusion that although Genius biopics rooted in “True Events” will continue to be as popular as they always have been, I would argue that it is more important that the biopic fit a certain formula and structure, rather than stick rigidly to the true events that took place. From our investigation today, we can see that that does seem to be the key factor in the film’s success above anything else. If a fictional film like Good Will Hunting can achieve the same level of success as a “Real Life Story” biopic like The Social Network just by having the same structure, then that further illustrates our hypothesis.

How well is the story known, and the effect on the film’s success?

“Plus, mum, Spielberg is the director, so you know it’s doing something right.”

“So, it’s about a detective chasing a teenager across the world?”

“Yeah, basically it’s Tom Hanks trying to catch the conman DiCaprio”

“Oh my god, we have to see that! I love those two!”

“I Hope one of those two is Spielberg…”

Due to the nature of a genius biopic being a film about the work and life of a remarkable person, there is a very good chance that the “Story” that the film is based is either already quite well known, or even embedded in the publics general knowledge.

Such is the case with a film like “Steve Jobs”. The story of the entrepreneurial genius and founder of Apple. With Apple products being nigh on ubiquitous in the modern world, you could ask anybody in the street who “Steve Jobs” is and chances are you’ll get the right answer. With his story, or at the very least his name, being so widely recognised, then it wouldn’t be ridicules to assume that when a biography titled “Steve Jobs” is advertised, that people will want to go and see it since they know who the person is. Without even explaining the plot of Steve Jobs, people are going to know what the film will be about since they know that he was the founder of one of the biggest companies on the planet today.

Or perhaps it there are some downsides to that? Maybe if people think they know what the film will be about, then they won’t be interested in spending money to see it? Removing the mystery aspect of the film by making it about an incredibly well-known figure might lead people to think that there will be no surprises. That they already know the ending, so what’s the point?

The other side of the genius biopic, is the story of the lesser known genius. A story about someone who didn’t invent the iPhone or redefine general relativity. Maybe it’s the story of a teenager from New York who successfully performs cons worth millions of dollars before his 19th birthday. “Catch Me If You Can” is a film about Frank Abagnale who does exactly that. A fascinating story about a genius young boy, but a story that, before the release of the film, barely anybody had ever heard of. This means that even thought that mystery factor is re-introduced into the film, the lack of familiarity might negatively impact the likelihood that people will want to go and see it.

It is for this reason that the film decided to employ some of the biggest names in Hollywood to both the cast, and production side of the feature. The directorial titan that is Steven Spielberg was brought in to direct the two leads Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, neither of which need any introduction. Attaching such enormous names to the film, printing them on every poster and plastering them over every trailer, vastly increases the “Hype” over a film like this. Suddenly, with people like this behind the picture, audiences are naturally going to come flooding to the cinema to see their favourite actors and film makers do what they do best.

So, the question becomes, after all of these tactics and marketing strategies are implemented to sell as many tickets as possible, which film was the greater success? The universally known story of the creation of Apple, or the star studded, glamorous “flick” about a conman jetting across the globe? Both films are “Based on the incredible true story” and so share that same “Draw”. The defining factors here will be the stories exposure pre-the film’s release, and the star power behind them.

Once again, let’s look at the numbers. Steve Jobs, despite being a figure known globally, only managed to gross $18,000,000 domestically, and even factoring in the global audience, the film currently stands at a $34,000,000 USD grossed worldwide. That’s even with the illustrious Aaron Sorkin behind the screenplay. It’s not like the film was received badly. Critics and audience members alike beamed over the films snappy script and stellar performances, gaining a high 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. So why is it that the film only just managed to scrape back its original budget? Could it be, that the story is so well known, that it is no longer extraordinary? Everybody has already marvelled over Steve Jobs and Apples immense success, so what does the film have to offer other than presenting that story to us again in a structured, well-paced narrative? The audience probably thought that they had very little to gain from seeing the film since there would be no shocking revelation. If people already know the narrative, it doesn’t matter how “finely-tuned” the instrument or story is, there is still a lack of entertainment. A lack of a journey, because they’re already sitting on the destination.

If we now take a look at the numbers for Catch Me If You Can, we see the opposite end of this spectrum. This film was a box office juggernaut. With a domestic gross of $164,000,000 US Dollars, and a global gross of over $350,000,000, Catch me if you can is the sixth highest grossing biopic film of all time. The only Genius biopic to top it is Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind”.

Putting aside the obvious draws of DiCaprio, Hanks and Spielberg, I think audiences were intrigued by the idea of such a young man achieving all these amazing, larger than life, elaborate cons. A genuinely unbelievable “True story” that crucially, nobody knew the ending too. There was still a journey. There was still a mystery, and a reason to want to go and find out what happened. Am I saying that it would have been just as successful without the big names attached? No. of course not. But Steve Jobs has Fassbender, Winslet and Sorkin?

What I’m suggesting, is that beyond the initial “Eye-catching” cast and crew, people were compelled to go and see the film simply to find out how this character got away with such audacious stunts. Not knowing the story beforehand, far from being a hindrance to the film, was actually its ace in the hole. The fact that it was an amazing true story that no one had heard of before, was the icing on the cake. If it wasn’t true, there wouldn’t have been the “I can’t believe this actually happened” selling point, and audiences would have dismissed it as “Unrealistic”.

Catch Me if you can found that “Goldilocks” story of truth and anonymity. And it really, really paid off.

Acceptable Artistic licence and how it changes with age

“You can’t beat Titanic though can you Marcos? And it’s a true story”

“Well not really mum. It did sink but the whole love story was totally made up”

“Oh, don’t say that. It makes it more personal. It’s still great. All the old costumes and lights. There’s something magical about it all”

There are a lot of films out there that take a real-world event, and place within it a fictionalised narrative in the hope the real event will help “Ground” the narrative and help implant it in the views mind as something that actually happened. This helps audiences relate to the story more viscerally since their minds are tricked into the illusion that it actually happened. Like hiding a small lie by wrapping it up in the truth.

The problem with this elaborate method of storytelling is that the filmmakers cannot always portray the real-world event in the exact manner that it actually played out. It’s for this reason that successful films of this variety tend to skew people’s perceptions of the actual event the film is based on. They begin to paint over true history with their inaccurate, fictional versions of history.

This is what happened to my mother and I when we watched James Cameron’s “Titanic”. Before doing my own research into this period in history, I would have happily gone about my life believing that passengers on the real Titanic actually smoked mass produced filter cigarettes, or that the workers used battery powered tungsten torches in the engine rooms. Of course, I was never taught these falsities, I had passively seen such things when watching “Titanic” and had unconsciously slipped those imagines into the part of my brain that stores facts. Why wouldn’t I? The other pretty costumes and set dressing looked accurate and of the time. Seeing these inaccuracies presented in the same frame as the true history, my brain swallowed the fiction as fact without even realising. Of course, if I was alive in 1912, I would have known that these details were incorrect, and immediately have been taken right out of the emersion of the film.

Where the film “Titanic” gets away with its untruths is that it takes place in an era that is no longer within living memory. The fact that audiences watching the film today were not alive at the time the film is set works in its favour. The filmmakers have more freedom to make these changes under the banner of “Artistic licences”. Yes, there will be the odd expert able to nit-pick out the exact details the film took liberties with, but the average film viewer isn’t going to get sucked out of the immersion because Leonardo DiCaprio’s rucksack was an Army issued bag that wasn’t in production until twenty years after the Titanic sunk. In general, these little changes are harmless, and only done in the effort of furthering the films cinematic potential. People are unlikely to take offence to the minor changes made for the sake of the plot. As long as areas of common knowledge are kept consistent, the film shouldn’t attract too much negative attention.

Issues do begin to arise however, when obvious changes are made to the real-world events that take place in films set within living memory. When a film is set in a time period that the general public has recently lived though, filmmakers have to worry about a lot more than just ruining people emersion with their inaccurate changes. If the event in question was a topic of great controversy or trauma, the film has the very real potential to upset and offend members of the audience to whom the event had a personal effect on.

This is very much the case with the 2006 film “United 93”. The film depicts, mostly in real time, the events that took place during the September 11th aircraft hijackings, on the only plane that didn’t reach its target. At the time of the film’s release, it had only been five years since the events recreated in the film, actually took place. This places it well within living memory. The events of the September 11th terror attacks were still fresh in the public’s consciousness. Knowing this, the filmmakers went to great lengths in an attempt to not misrepresent, mislead or offend any members of the audience. The film opens with a written disclaimer that “Some” imagination had been used. All the names of the passengers were changed to respect the anonymity of the passenger’s relatives, and most of the dialogue feels improvised and deliberately devoid of specific detail, as not to misrepresent any specific characters. With an event as fresh and harrowing as the one this film is based on, any small change, however seemingly insignificant, could easily be noticed and heavily criticised as not being “Respectful” to those most affected by the tragedy. This leaves very little room for “Artistic Licences”. United 93 does have the benefit of being perceived as “relevant” due to time of its release. This means people who see it advertised might be more inclined to go and see it since its almost definitely something that they can identify with, what with having lived thought the news coverage of that day only a few short years previously.

Both “Titanic” and “United 93” were very well received by audiences and critics at the times of their release. Financially, Titanic made a great deal more money that United 93, Grossing, at the time, a record breaking $2 Billion dollars worldwide. This utterly dwarfs United 93’s $76 Million dollars worldwide, but the films “R” rating has to be taken into account.

I’m not suggesting that if it had the same rating as Titanic, it would have made the same amount of money, but the rating certainly does detract a large demographic away from the cinema. But I think the key difference in the respective successes of each film lies in the filmmakers’ freedom to write fictional narratives. As we have previously managed to establish, the primary ingredient in a “Based on true events” films success is not the “Truth” element, but the stories structure itself.

With “Titanic” taking place long enough ago to pass beyond living memory, it had a great deal more freedom to write its own fictional narrative. It was able to inject a highly cinematic, and highly marketable love story between two of Hollywood’s superstars. That was the selling point of Titanic. If it had just been an accurate, beat by beat representation of the sinking of the Titanic without any dramatic flourishes and lucrative love stories, it would not have been the iconic film it stands out as today. If the makers of United 93 had injected at story of star crossed lovers played by two members of Hollywood royalty, there would have been outrage. Audiences would have been up in arms claiming that the filmmakers made light of one of the most important days in American history. Using it merely as a vehicle for a convoluted and disastrously misplaced love story for the pure interest of making money. It is my conclusion, that ability to make such large, fundamental changes to a story, and still market it as “Based on true events”, is the ability to essentially print your own money.

My Conclusion

“Mum, you haven’t even seen the rest of the trailer yet?”

“Yeah but it’s a true story, it has to be interesting otherwise they wouldn’t make it.”

“What if it wasn’t about founding McDonalds? What if it was a made up fast food chain?”

“Well then it would be boring.”

From my initial “Hunch” that film based on true stories have a certain quality that appeals to the masses, I geared my research towards finding out what the certain quality was. But over the course of this essay, my answer very slowly began to reveal itself and it was not what I expected at all. Granted, this one possible conclusion is being drawn by me and the unique perspective I have. Standing on the shoulders of the academics before me, this is what I found.

I was able to begin understanding the success of “true stories” in the form of their statistics, bringing in questions of fidelity and emotional resonance. After questioning whether success came from compelling characters and a great story, or simply just from the fact the film is “True”, we looked at two very similar films, both with compelling characters and narrative, but one the biopic of a real-life genius, and the other fictional one. Though using a “control film” we were able to accurately put to the test just how affective the “Fidelity” element of a film really is. Our results show that the primary reason for the films successes were not because they were based on real events, but because they had the structure of an underdog overcoming great challenges in his life. It was the idea of a relatable and uplifting narrative that drew in crowds to the theatres.

Beyond that, we questioned whether there was a correlation between how widely known a story already was, and the affect that has on the public wanting to go and see it. To my surprise, it seemed that telling a story that was already “common knowledge” was actually a hindrance to the film. For the film to be successful, it was more important to preserve the inherent “Mystery” of the story, so the audience still has an unpredictable journey to go on. Not a journey where they already know the destination. We also made the astute observation that attaching the biggest names in acting and directing to the project helps bring in a massive audience to the film. This conclusion was less surprising to me.

We then began to hone in on the inaccuracies of these “True to life” films, and how much freedom the filmmakers had to change history. After looking at the key moments in the structures of both “Titanic” and “United 93” we came to the conclusion that if a film is set in a time that has since pasted out of living memory, then there is a great freedom to change fundamental aspects of history and inject convoluted Hollywood drama.

Films set in recent living memory come under much harder scrutiny, as most of the audience lived though that time. Injecting a fictionalised narrative into these film is harder for audiences to pallet because it’s very clear that what they are watching is false. Filmmakers also have to be more careful with the very real possibility of offending people in their depictions of recent events. This is probably the largest reason for the films stricter limitations. Looking at the numbers of both films, it became clear that audiences loved the fictionalised story in Titanic, and accepted it within its “real life events” housing. It was more important that they had compelling, relatable drama than strict historical accuracy.

The one thread that seems to have remained a constant thought all our research and analysis, is that audiences want the stories based on true events, and at the same time don’t want these stories to be entirely accurate to those events. What I mean by that is people want to look at the past. They want to be transported to the world of a real-life figure or the time of a historical event, but they don’t want to be told the “story” of it. They want to feel it. As long as it looks right, audiences accept it. The stories they really want to be told, are high concept, easily digestible, highly formulated and structured pieces of fiction all hidden under a veneer of “Truth”. It only need to be “True enough” that they will suspend their disbelief. Underneath that, they want a classic Hollywood film.

I believe this stems from our desire, as humans, to have our lives neat and structured like a Hollywood film. Not the messy, unpredictable series of unlinked events they really are. “Stories are literally as old as time itself. Time as a concept, linking past, present and future, beginning, middle and end, is simply the master narrative we’ve contrived to give our existence direction and meaning.” (Mighall, 2013). That fact that we can have these neat little narratives play out for us in an apparently “real world” setting, brings us comfort, and leads us to believe that our lives can have similar meaning. Similar structure and neatness.

This is only my interpretation of the data. Studies will be ongoing into the matter long after this is finished and other conclusions will be drawn.

But for my money, I’d wager that the next film to come out based on “The amazing true story”, to be set outside of living memory, to have “A list” actors and a big Hollywood director, and to have a larger than life, fictional story at the centre of it, will break box office records. Just like the last time.