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Notes -
But it is also a convention that for "dramatic purposes" characters can be dropped, amalgamated, and even invented for the movie, even ones based on true stories. 'Lack of realism' has not been a criticism much seen before in such cases.
for movies that purport to be based on true stories, maybe lack of realism should be?
I'd agree that lack of realism should be a criticism for 'based on a true story' but the accepted interpretation seems to be that for dramatic purposes, sometimes you can/have to do a bit of inventing.
In which case, if you were perfectly fine with "the last true-story movie totally made up the character of Benji Bestboi and in fact the ending in reality was not that they won a gazillion dollars and shut down the evil Rice Krispie manufacturing plant, but they had to cease their protests since they were being nuisances and the Rice Krispie plant was sold for a gazillion dollars so the Wicked Owners made a fortune", then you don't get to suddenly be all "in scene 94 of this movie, the calendar shows 1st July 73 when in actual fact that particular visit to the bar happened on 30th June 73" about this.
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