Inaccurate Hollywood Movies

Joshua Edwin Ronadhi

Roseanne Giannini Quin

EWRT 1A

De Anza College

July 30, 2015

Essay #3 Final Draft

Inaccurate Hollywood Movies

        Hollywood is a renowned motion studio company, which has made hundreds of thousands of blockbuster movies over the past decades. However, little do people realize that some Hollywood movies forget the purpose of the movie itself. As a result, some people might find the slight modification to be disturbing. Such minor details might lead to a false deception of an ideology by the viewers. As it is important for people to fully understand a person’s bibliography because then people can admire the achievements and heroic actions done by the heroes of war. There is a list of Hollywood movies that are considered to be inaccurate because of the directors’ self-interest in pursuing a higher sales, such as the movies American Sniper, Lone Survivor, and Pearl Harbor.

        Firstly, the movie American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood, depicts the story of Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle, who was known to be the most lethal American sniper in history. In the beginning, the movie depicts Kyle being shocked when he sees the 9/11 tragedy on TV.  He said “I’m gonna kill this fuckers who did this”, which indicates his hatred towards the terrorists. The seamless transition between Kyle watching the footage of the attacks to him serving in Iraq, made it seem like it was his motivation to join the Army. Unfortunately, based on the book that Kyle wrote, he always wanted to join the United States Armed Forces, since he was a child. The transition also implicitly suggests that the United States went into Iraq to retaliate on the attack, instead of to liberate the nation and disarm any weapons of mass destruction. This particular scene might lead to a misinterpretation by viewers regarding the American history. The story’s inaccuracy is further enhance by the scene where it reveals Mustafa’s, the antagonist, picture on the wall winning a medal in an olympiad. Its purpose was to emphasize his professionalism in using long-range weapons. However in Kyle’s book, Mustafa wasn’t a prominent character as portrayed throughout the movie. The character Mustafa was only written in the book for a paragraph long. In comparison to Kyle’s book that I’ve read, the movie’s story line has been tweaked by Clint Eastwood in order to have a more interesting plot. His intention was to make the movie to be more dramatic by having a vicious antagonist. It is evident that the movie American Sniper is a clear example of a misleading and inaccurate Hollywood movie that may cause viewers to misinterpret history. Personally, I think it is important for Clint Eastwood to stay in focus in delivering a historical bibliography of a person. The reason for that is because it would be pointless for people to admire Chris Kyle for things that he did not do.

        In addition, the movie of Lone Survivor, directed by Mark Wahlberg, depicts the infamous Operation Red Wings where a four man SEAL team is tasked with locating and surveilling an enemy militia leader from a mountain in Afghanistan. However, his team’s surveillance position is quickly compromised by unarmed goatherds. The team debates the benefits of killing them to protect themselves or freeing them out of moral or military obligation and suffering the consequences. Such consequences has led to the death of Luttrell’s three brothers in arms. In short, he was rescued by Muhammad Gulab, an Afghan villager, that brought him into his village. Upon the arrival, the movie depicts Luttrell threatening one of the villagers, who completely disagrees having him in the village. Luttrell yelled, “I will fucking kill every single one of you, mother fuckers!” to the contemptuous villager, while holding a grenade in his hand and a finger through the safety pin. In comparison to the Lone Survivor book that I’ve read, this scene is fictional and is not described in the book. Clearly, it is Wahlberg’s intention to make the movie to be more dramatic and less-boring for the viewers, which implicitly suggests his determination to achieve higher sales. Furthermore, the movie’s inaccuracy is also enhanced as it depicts the attempted beheading of Luttrell by the Taliban and Afghan villagers dying in his defense. In reality, there was no attempt to behead him and no assault on the village by the Taliban when Luttrell was discovered by U.S. Army Rangers as the movie portrayed. Luttrell’s book does not mention any of this detail. Mark Wahlberg must have been afraid of an anti-climax, so he simply imposes complete fiction over actual events. Perhaps making a film “based on a true story” is accompanied by no particular rules, which means that the director may have the privilege to tweak a story line in order to pursue a better historical action movie. Nonetheless in doing so, public perception is manipulated by fiction which might results into the misunderstanding and misconception of histories or biopics.