Sully

[Thumper]

Just saw the trailer for the Clint Eastwood biopic about Captain Chesley Sullenberger (famous for Miracle on the Hudson) staring Tom Hanks. I'll be excited to see this movie. Especially if it's big on facts and technical stuff, and a bit lighter on over emphasizing and making up drama.

Trailer here

Due out this September.

And if you don't like this movie, you're....whoops, nevermind.

[Swift]

Maybe that really is the "untold" story, because that is a heck of lot more negative and controversial than anything I remember about the event, but I'm also wondering if it is a lot of fictional drama added to make a movie.

[Thumper]

My thought process exactly.

[geonuc]

Hmmm. I don't remember any controversy such as whether he could have made it back to the airport or if one engine was still operable. This seems like fiction. Which, if you think about it, it needs to be. Besides the 208 seconds of drama in Captain Sullenberger's life that we all know about, what is there to wrap a movie around?

[SciFi Chick]

It looks like the trailer is emphasizing this aspect of the landing, but I highly doubt the whole movie is negative.

[Swift]

It looks like the trailer is emphasizing this aspect of the landing, but I highly doubt the whole movie is negative.

If it was in the WSJ it must be a lie (I'm only about 37% kidding).

[Sigma_Orionis]

Even that article makes quite clear that, sure, most of the simulations of the accident show that he might have made it back to the airport, yet all of the people who actually fly those things said that gliding a 70 ton brick with wings over heavily populated areas was not exactly a good call. So, I don't think the article itself is really all that negative. As for Captain Sullenberger declining to comment, it's consistent with the way the man is. Sure he made money with the rights of a book he wrote. But he doesn't seem the type that relishes publicity.

[SciFiFisher]

IIRC there were a lot of expert people who said that Sully made the right call. And that he was one in one thousand who could have made that decision and made it work. He was quoted as saying that he did not really consider himself to be a HERO.
The reality is that Hollywood will dramatize some things so as to make the story more interesting and/or to help the audience get into the story. That's what good story telling does. Sometimes it uses hyperbole to tell the truth in a way that makes it better. A really good example is Black Hawk Down. If you ask the people who were actually there they will tell you that the movie told the story the best way Hollywood could and that it was as close as it could be to the actual events. But, it wasn't EXACTLY detail for detail like the actual story. One way Hollywood cheats is to take several people and combine them into one character in the movie. It does this so several smaller events are combined into one more dramatic event and so that the story can be told in a 90-180 minute movie. There are other reasons story tellers exaggerate and or dramatize but those are a couple of them.

[Thumper]

Yeah, if you're not making a documentary, you have to have some drama, conflict. Or exaggerate it. And if your movie is a "based on a true story" sort of thing, you have to take some license.
Another Tom Hanks, "true story" example was Apollo 13. I mean we all knew they made it back, but thrust into the climax of the movie, you weren't really sure. They played up the conflicts between the flight crew, that never really happened. Rookie Jack Swigart wasn't the bumbling greenhorn they made him out to be. Few astronauts that make it to flight status are. He had as many airplain flight and simulator hours as Mattingly and the rest of them. That's one of the jobs of the back up crew. But if they don't take some literary licenses, the movie will suck and you might as well have made a documentary.