Fiction Over Fact – Why Our Best Heroes & Villains Are Figments Of Our Imagination

Critics and movie snobs insist year after year, through glowing reviews and countless award nominations, that films based on true events or real-life characters are consistently better than those that emanate solely from a screenwriter’s mind or a novelist’s creative vision. Take a trip down to your local Blockbuster (or more likely the nearest Redbox machine or your Netflix queue) and spend 4 hours with “Frost/Nixon” and “Valkyrie”. I defy you to tell me that you came away from those historical dramas with any more of an emotional charge or understanding of humanity than if you had just sat through ninety minutes of the latest Jason Statham action fest. Consider it a challenge, homey.

Yes, this is essentially the first “Frankenstein Vice” DVD review posting, but I want to also speak to the fallacy that the heroes and villains of reality (or near-reality, as portrayed by Hollywood) are more deep & colorful than the John McClanes and Luke Skywalkers of the film world. For every moving & effective biopic like “Schindler’s List”, there seem to be fifteen that bore those of us without PhDs in Russian Literature to tears. First, let’s look at “Frost/Nixon”. What insight does the film offer us into the troubled mind of Richard Nixon that we desperately needed to know to make our oh-so-common lives better? That Tricky Dick was a jealous and bitter man? Wow. Didn’t see THAT coming. I am in no way trying to degrade the performances in “Frost/Nixon” (Michael Sheen & Frank Langella are fine as the titular adversaries) but the film itself, despite being helmed by Ron Howard, is two hours of television history that now feels curdled and insignificant...2 Eddies out of a possible four...

As opposed to the stage play atmosphere of “Frost/Nixon”, “Valkyrie” wants to be a rip-roaring real-life adventure based on a failed attempt to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Instead, we get what I like to call the “undercut climax”, a situation in a film where we already know part or all of the pending outcome. For example, we know the hero isn’t going to die despite the fact that he or she is on the verge of certain death. Much of the tension is drained away instantly because we already know what comes next. Historical epics and biographical films are almost always hamstrung by this “undercut climax” because the result is already recorded in history books. That being said, “Valkyrie” is a tad bit better than “Frost/Nixon” in that our sympathies resonate stronger for a group of men trying to stop arguably the cruelest dictator in history than for a talk show host trying to achieve greater heights of fame & fortune by eliciting a shallow confession from a disgraced U.S. President. Still, we know Hitler survived a while longer (sorry, no spoiler alert needed for something someone who made it past the seventh grade should already know), so “Valkyrie” is a fairly pointless exercise in moviemaking...2 Eddies...

In summary, give me fictional creations like Batman or Forrest Gump any day of the week over real-life protagonists such as Harvey Milk and Che Guevara. I get the feeling they’d be much more fun to hang out at a bar with...