I saw the Dawn Wall film the other day in Cambridge. Overall it was a very good film, well made and tells (most of) the story well.
It was a bit like the film adaptation of Tommy's book Push, so much of the material was familiar but I don't think that detracted from it at all.
However I was a bit peeved that there was no mention whatsoever of Warren Harding's historic first ascent of the wall. The film makers failed to make the distinction between free-climbing and aid climbing and claimed that Tommy was the one who put up all of these new routes on El Cap instead of freeing existing aid routes.
They made it seem like Tommy was the first person to ever set foot (probably not the correct idiom) on the Dawn wall and was the one who created the line of the route instead of following the line that Warren Harding originally bolted and Aided.
This seemed a bit disrespectful to the whole history of Yosemite really and I think history is an important aspect of top-level climbing, with all of todays pros standing on the shoulders of the achievements of the earlier generations.
I don't that Tommy is to blame for this omission, as in his book he does make it clear that he is freeing all these existing lines in Yosemite instead of putting up his own lines from scratch. And having seen him give a talk in London he came across as a very humble person.
It just felt like the film makers were trying to make a Hollywood blockbuster instead of a climbing movie and didn't consider things like history and factual accuracy to be important. I guess given the media hype around the ascent they were trying to make the film more appealing to non-climber audiences but I think it lost something in the process.
Tommy's achievements stand proudly on their own and don't really need any embellishments or false boasts to make them seem more impressive.
