5 Storylines & Topics Hollywood Loves to Explore

The average Hollywood flick is a hardboiled piece of fiction. Even stories billed as ‘based on true events’ might only have a passing grasp of reality despite gaining attention for their treatment of ‘real life’. Still, audiences aren’t necessarily complaining. After all, the bigger and more aggrandized a story becomes, the more entertaining it is to watch unfold on the silver screen.

But which topics does Hollywood treat with more care? After all, the accuracy of a film (whether in terms of science, history, or some other measure) all comes down to the writer’s interest in research. In other words, not all narrative subjects are treated carefully, and it’s very easy for viewers to see something in a film and then mistake this for reality. 

Let’s dive into some of these subjects, which are often so misinterpreted in Hollywood films that the average person mistakenly thinks they know more than they do. First up: the mythic casinos of Las Vegas.

Casino Gaming
If there’s one game that is continually twisted by filmmakers, it’s blackjack. The title is now more often played online with virtual providers, which offer different variations and can be accessed remotely. Still, plenty of people who travel to Las Vegas will immediately head to the casino floor to play a game of blackjack. 

Many imagine they’ll be able to keep track of the game like Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man or even Alan from The Hangover. In reality, the blackjack floor is more like it is in the film Swingers. In one scene, a friend convinces another to double down on elevens, which is solid advice. Unfortunately, his friend only hits 18 while the dealer hits blackjack.

Hacking
Hacker films could be considered their own subgenre—and this subgenre might be one of the most poorly handled in Hollywood. Even hacker scenes from flicks like Ocean’s 8 fail to do this type of work justice. Even more celebrated films like Independence Day and Blackhat failed to depict hacking in any type of realistic or understandable way. 

In fact, most of the early 1990s hacker flicks have stood the test of time—which is odd considering the lackluster tech available back then. Sneakers (1992), for example, bothered to show and explain things like encryption and penetration testing.

Athletics
Sports dramas are one of the most popular film categories. There are multi-genre hits like Space Jam and more hardboiled approaches to the game, like Moneyball. Throw in sports comedies like White Men Can’t Jump and rom-coms like Fever Pitch and the category is incredibly developed. Unfortunately, most films fail to represent a sports game accurately.

Mr. 3000 did a horrible job of portraying the wonders of professional baseball. The same goes for football in Bend It Like Beckham, which did a ghastly job of portraying women’s soccer while apparently trying to uplift it. Only when studios involve real athletes, like with the NBA’s participation in Like Mike, does there seem to be any notion of true athletic prowess.
 
Space Travel
Hollywood’s inability to portray sports at the correct caliber of talent feels unacceptable given the availability of real-life athletes. But filmmakers should receive a bit more of a pass when it comes to space travel. Though the errors are numerous and egregious, the gaps in knowledge are easier to explain. 

Still, let’s list a few things that make just about every space travel film unrealistic. In Gravity (which won seven Oscars), actual astronauts found the idea of changing orbits and the depiction of combustion silly. Combustion and orbit science aside, here’s one fact many audiences would be floored to learn: spaceships don’t make noise because sound needs air to travel—and space is largely empty.

History
Some call the truth stranger than fiction—which might be why storytellers continue to delve into the past in search of new narratives. Unfortunately for audiences around the world, writers tend to take dozens of liberties with real-life events. And if there’s one amazing case study, it’s the exploration of the ‘new world’ in the Americas.

From Disney’s Pocahontas to Terrence Malick’s The New World, the historical colonial era has been retold from dozens of perspectives. None have proved too accurate. Both examples listed above cover the history of Pocahontas—from two wildly different and historically erroneous angles.