Hollywood Portrays Churchill as a Weakling (Opinion)

Don’t rely on Hollywood for history lessons.

This year there have been two movies released about Winston Churchill.  Both appear to be weak on facts.  The latter has some great acting thanks to Gary Oldman but the screenwriters went for added drama versus accuracy.  I have multiple biographies about Churchill on my bookshelves.  Indecisive wasn’t a fault when it came to the man who saved Western Civilization during the last century.

This isn’t the first time Hollywood has rewritten the past.  A dozen years ago a big production about the Crusades gave the impression the Christians got what they deserved as the Muslims chased them from Jerusalem.  In the movie the Arabs allow the Christians to go home when the city falls.  In reality one-third were released.  One-third were enslaved and one-third were executed.  Hollywood wanted to atone for the miscreants who killed 3,000 of your fellow citizens just a few years before the film hit the big screens.

I’ll toss in one more for good measure.  A new movie about the late oilman, J. Paul Getty, portrays him as cold-hearted when a grandson is kidnapped.  Getty did pay a ransom but he negotiated because he feared meeting the initial demands would endanger his other 14 grandchildren.  He was also not the world’s wealthiest man at the time as the movie trailer claims.  He was never the richest man in history as the production would have you believe.