'Noah," it's a movie and that's all

Some Christians are atwitter these days about the movie "Noah." It seems, in their view, the movie does not follow the Biblical story of the great boat builder as laid out in Genesis.
One irritant surely is that Russell Crowe doesn't look 600 years old as it says in Genesis 7, verse 6. He doesn't even look like Charlton Heston. Oh and there's hot rain and castration and incest and all manner of events that outrage some evangelicals (not that the Old Testament isn't ripe with
disquieting episodes).
Some say they won't see "Noah" because of what they view as the perversion of the Biblical story. That's fine. But lost in all the breathless criticism of the movie, a cross between "Titanic" and "Gone with the Wind," is one undeniable fact: it's a movie.
Hollywood doesn't make films to be viewed in Sunday School. It makes movies to make money. Period. All the talk about art is just so much eyewash if the numbers don't pencil out. You make money by attracting audiences. If you want an accurate reading of the Bible, the great voice actor Alexander Scourby has beautiful one available on-line. The whole book. And there's no need to buy a movie ticket.
Of course, the Bible isn't the only subject with which Hollywood routinely takes a certain license. "Based on fact" movies about historic events come in for revision all the time. Does anyone think "The Butler" was a true depiction of actual events? OK, there were (and are) African American house staffers in the White House. And there were some really bad things going on in America during the period the action takes place. But that's about it  The rest of the story was fudged, as they say, for "dramatic effect."
Film makers have been doing this since the beginning, often without any warning to audiences. That leaves it to viewers to try to separate fact from fiction, assuming we not talking the likes of "Star Wars, which -- spoiler alert -- was all fiction.
The "based on fact" and "based on real events" movies, especially those arching toward history, present their own problem. Because Americans are so ill informed about their own history, such films easily play into our high school history understanding of events and our various biases. D.W. Griffith's 1915 obscene ode to the KKK, "Birth of a Nation," was the first motion picture shown in the White House. It allegedly prompted Woodrow Wilson, so far the nation's only president with a doctorate, to say, "It is like writing history with Lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
The authenticity of the quote is questionable. That the film reinforced widely held prejudices is beyond question.
The only safe position for viewers, then, is to treat movies as entertainment, storytelling, and not documentaries.
In the case of "Noah," it is the story of a boat builder, a big boat with a big mission, but just a tale about a boat builder nonetheless.