Despite all of the sci-fi storylines and CGI special effects you can muster, to this day some of the best movies are the ones featuring real life people in real world situations. As a result, political figures have always been a great source of good film making, though that doesn’t mean that the storytellers aren’t unwilling to tweak some historical details to add some drama and action into places where it wasn’t before. Typically, the history of political figures in movies falls into either the hyper realistic category, or the based on a true story category, which mean as long as some of the story portrayed is accurate the filmmakers can do whatever they want with the rest.

 

There are some film makers like Stephen Spielberg who strive to make movies involving political characters that they believe accurately show to near-perfection how some of the historical events they were involved with would have taken place. Spielberg’s film Lincoln is a great example of this, while Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, while entertaining in its own right, adds in quite a number of liberties.

 

The King’s Speech, featuring a story revolving around King George VI’s inability to deliver speeches in a tone and cadence necessary for a head of state, is another great example of a film that focused on the historical figure, rather than ramp up the action needlessly.

 

From Malcolm X to JFK and Selma, there has been no shortage of great, realistic portrayals of famous historical characters. More artistic licensing has been generally accepted in movies depicting battles and stories from times where we don’t have nearly as much historical records to go off of (Such as Braveheart and its story of William Wallace).

 

Still, Hollywood for the most part has done a fantastic job at giving us at least a semi-accurate look into these important people and what it was like to live in their era.

 

A handy infographic created by Planet 7 Casino explores the gambling traits of famous heads of state. Did you know that so many important historical figures liked to gamble?