In today’s world, historical movies serve as tools to help students learn, but separating fact from fiction can be difficult to do. Even with this difficulty, historical films have more of an impact on people than they may think. Specifically, historical movies create a fun and captivating way to share the past, even if true stories are sometimes modified for dramatic purposes.
“I love historical-based movies as they always tell interesting stories,” social studies teacher Mr. Laugen said. “As a history nerd, I enjoy these movies more than others because I often believe truth is more entertaining and interesting than fiction.”
The recent success of historical movies becomes even more impressive considering the lengthy running times of these films. “Occupied City,” “Oppenheimer” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” all average around 3 hours, 30 minutes for their run time. Typically, films exceeding 3 hours tend to be less popular among the younger generations, yet these historical movies still manage to captivate audiences of all ages.
Students expressed mixed feelings, acknowledging how interesting historical movies are but noting that lengthy runtimes lead to a loss of focus.
“I think historical movies are interesting, but due to the extended length, they get boring at times,” freshman Aditi Parikh said. “I think they do better than made-up stories because they show people the reality of how life was or how it could be in the future. They snap people back into reality and keep them away from delusion.”
“I think that historical movies are very informative and interesting, but I lose focus since they can be hard to sit through sometimes,” freshman Leo Loiacono said. “I personally do not enjoy watching historical movies, but I understand why people do. I do not think that historical movies do as well as fictional stories because people usually watch movies for entertainment, and they are more informative. I have watched ‘Oppenheimer’ before, and although I believe it was mostly boring, there were a few scenes that really interested me. I enjoyed watching how they tested the bomb drop and the plot twist at the end.”
