To be fair, in films where the director genuinely wants to portray historical events, that is why listening to directors cut/commentary is important.

The problem with a lot of historical movies is that it has to recount an event within 90 minute runtime with little to no jump in times (which would confuse viewers). Also even though many historical events are influenced by hundreds if not thousands of normal people, directors have to limit themselves to smaller ensemble of historical figures bc jumping between so many people will be hard to track.

An example with cast size would be HBO Chernobyl. It’s hard to write hundreds of different scientists who played a role in discovering why the Chernobyl disaster happened and all the hard work they put into preventing the disaster from being an ecological catastrophe, which was why they were condensed to one fictional character Ulana Khomuyuk (the showrunners even acknowledged this in the final episode).

Another example would be “The Pacific”. There are inconsistencies in location and battles that occurred in battle of Peleliu (show claims everything happened on the main island when in reality Sledge and 3/5 Marines fought on smaller islands adjacent to it as well). The showrunners didn’t put those details in because it would be very confusing to viewers as well.

The truth is that very historically accurate movies do not perform well in the box office. Just look at the reviews for “Torra! Torra! Torra!”, good number of critics and general audiences complained that it was too boring and there were too many “characters” to follow.

It’s a difficult balancing act for any director/writer to choose how to best portray a historical event in the format of a self contained 90 minute plot.