With Anonymous in theaters now, I've been thinking about movies that present the "truth" about history.
Indeed, there have been entire productions based around the concept of revealing what really happened, in both non-fiction and fictional circumstances. Take, for example, Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998), which removes all the supernatural elements from the fairy tale, is set during the Renaissance, and has a much more proactive protagonist.
These revisionist tales differ in quality, with Ever After being enjoyable enough but Anonymous (I haven't seen it) not getting the greatest reviews. The problem is, more often than not, these new tales coast entirely on their concept and forget to make it good. I'd cite The Brothers Grimm (2005), a movie that posits the brothers wrote their tales from personal experience. That movie was slap-dash at best, boring and lacking the imagination of the original tales.
So what are the most successful revisionist tales, whether they be of a non-fiction or fictional basis, and what fall short of their inspirations?
