[Pirate]

If you have a different story to tell, why bother basing it on true events? If an historical figure inspires someone to write a film about their life, why tinker with their story? In my opinion, presenting the story of an historical person, like William Wallace, and wildly disregarding historical fact, is irresponsible and disrespectful.

I agree that, in most cases, the story should come first, but since you’d have no story without the historical figure, respect for that figure must be taken into consideration. And if they can’t tell their story without destroying or skewing the integrity of the history, perhaps they should stick to original ideas.

Take Cameron’s Titanic as an example. As far as I know, the technical aspects of the disaster are intact—at least as far as their research understood. For his story, Cameron, instead of using actual passenger names or historical figures, implanted the fictional Jack and Rose. Sure, they interacted with Molly Brown, but not enough to be detrimental to her historical image. So the film serves the purposes of the storyteller without comprising the history.

Unless one is skewing or altering history for the sake of social deconstruction, or perhaps for reasons of satire, I don't think we should automatically give them the benefit of doubt for the sake of "artistic license."