'Captain Phillips' Movie Version is All Hollywood

I just caught a fascinating piece on the NY Post on the differences of events portrayed in the movie, Captain Phillips, versus, what really happened.  And though initially, I'm not totally shocked, there does seem to be such a huge disparity between the facts and the fiction that I'm sort of glad I did go see Gravity instead!

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As we all know, any movie that is made based on actual events or actual people, gets blown out of proportion in different ways to make the movie an entertaining platform.  I mean face it, how real life events take place is just not that thrilling and yet Hollywood can make a good attempt at making grass growing look good.

Thus, as we all know, the magic disclaimer of "based on ..." is creative literary license to sometimes say, "Well, we took the name of this character, and that was about it.  Everything else, we made up to make the movie about underwater basket weaving a more exciting adventure for the movie-goer."

And it seems that this may very well have been the case, to some degree, about Captain Phillips, which starred Tom Hanks.

On top of the disparity of fact vs fiction, it would seem that Sony paid some crew members and had them sign lifetime non-disclosure agreements (NDA), which binds them to legal silence about events the movie is based on.

That seems even more insidious than the "based on" misnomer.

What's fascinating from the piece is the differences between the movie captain and the alleged real captain, per the article.

Some of the points made were things like Phillips intentionally sailing through waters know for pirates; Ignoring established plans designed for situations just like getting attacked by pirates and other issues.

In one point, all other references say he piloted the boat within 235 miles of the coast, and later called it 300.  When queried, he says he didn't know how far away he was.  Aren't boat captains supposed to know these things?

Any way, it's a fascinating piece for reading at the Post and as far as I'm concerned, has veered me away from seeing the movie.

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