Newsies
The 1992 Disney musical Newsies is based on a real event, the Newsboys strike. The boys involved just didn’t happen to sing and dance in the streets in 1899. They chose to strike in order to protest increased profits for newspaper bigwigs. While the general events remain pretty accurate, the characters are not. For instance, the lead character, Jack Kelly (Christian Bale), was based on a composite of actual strike leaders.
Marie Antoinette
Historians were mad at Sophia Coppola’s biopic in which Kirsten Dunst plays the French queen, arguing the film depicted the famous ruler as a shallow teenager in love with fashion and excess. The record rather shows Antoinette as intelligent and politically savvy. And she probably never said her famous line: “Let them eat cake.”
A Beautiful Mind
Russell Crowe plays the real-life math genius John Nash, but critics felt that the biopic didn’t accurately portray the actual man or his mental illness. Nash had schizophrenia, which manifested differently than the depiction in the film would indicate. The movie doesn’t accurately capture the complexities of Nash’s diagnosis or his treatment.