Movies based on the lives of real people need to balance on a tightrope between sticking to the true story and throwing parts of it in the wind to make things more exciting. The ape-themed Robbie Williams biopic "Better Man" found out first hand that making things too strange is risky, as the bizarre movie became the first big box office bomb of 2025. On the other hand, stylish exaggeration can also benefit a film -- for instance, 1984's "Amadeus" is the best music biopic of all time and also cheerfully inaccurate.

Clint Eastwood's controversial 2014 war movie "American Sniper" was a big box office hit, and the film's "based on a true story" nature means that it deals with the usual biopic challenges. The movie tells the story of Chris Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper) -- a famous Navy Seal sniper with over 160 confirmed kills -- and is based on...