The King’s Speech just won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2011, besting out the character assassinating fictional drama The Social Network. And to that, I say Amen, even if I’m not Christian.

Hollywood movies portraying real life always takes liberty with the truth, but some go too far. That’s fine for me if they promote it as such, but The Social Network does no such thing despite taking some extreme liberties like inventing characters which influences viewer impression of the main character. Modifying events is one thing. Altering people is another thing. But inventing totally new characters to get a job done you couldn’t with the real characters, that’s stepping over the line. It’s not like Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook’s story didn’t have enough real drama and interesting content to make a great movie out of it that writer, Aaron Sorkin, had to ruin it with his fiction. Writers should put themselves in the shoes of the people they write about to see if they’d like what they’re doing to the characters before they do it! I hope that when someone writes a story about Aaron Sorkin someday, they’ll add a few characters to degrade his morality lower than it is now. It’ll just be karma.

I know The Social Network did well at the theatres, but what do you expect a movie about the people and story behind something used by more than half a billion people around the world? The problem was they advertised it as if it were the real Facebook story, and those preppie prick Winklevoss twins, Winkie and Twinkie, are pimping it like they’ve got nothing else to do being rich preppie pricks, as it it were the truth and will win them a court case for more money. There are lots of people I know today who still thinks that The Social Network was the real Facebook story, and that Mark Zuckerberg is really like the person portrayed in the film, and that’s disgraceful on the film for its marketing.

The King’s Speech, meanwhile, portrayed a real drama that was really inspirational, and has meaning to people the world over with a stammer. Too bad many who don’t realize they do couldn’t also benefit so much. As for accuracy in the King’s Speech, events in the life of a king is hard to find out in exact details, so some portions were made up, but would have been quite possible. It didn’t make the film or story that much better, just filling in the details of the gaps in a reasonable way. The acting in it was magnificent, requiring real skills by Colin Firth to convincingly play the role of a person with a speech impediment, and the emotional toll that impediment has on a person. That’s great acting, if I’ve ever seen great acting! Congratulations to Colin on his Best Actor Oscar!

Winning the Oscar always gets a film a lot of extra attention, some sales and such, and it’s nice to see a film with a story deserving of it win, rather than some fictional character assassination get further “approval” as somehow being worthy.

Congratulations to all those involved with the King’s Speech, and the Academy voters for choosing the right film for Best Picture!

p.s. Wasn’t that a nice story by King’s Speech Director Tom Hooper about how his Mom almost didn’t go to a reading of the screenplay in 2007, but did and came home to phone him and say she thought she found his next film?