A lot of these reviews seem to come from Tesla fans who really misunderstand what I took to be the point of this movie. I don't think the movie is trying to portray who should have gotten the most credit or who was the most moral person or intelligent inventor of this era.
If that was the film's goal, then Tesla would have been the protagonist of the film and the central character.
It seemed to me that the movie's goal was to tell the story of how these inventors lived and how they were perceived by people within their time period. And how those perceptions impacting their goals to not just invent the best products, but get their products out and accepted within society.
Edison was perceived by the public as a star long before he ever invented a solid lightbulb for the time. Tesla wasn't a known entity. Westinghouse was successful, but not much of publicly known name to the public as Edison.
Edison and Westinghouse were the two big figure-heads of the AC and DC battle of the late 19th century. Even though Tesla is really the one who contributes the importance finding to give AC the edge, at the time, virtually no one knew who Tesla was or had good merits for taking his genius seriously. Tesla didn't demonstrate a lot of his ideas which were correct and didn't seem to understand how conmen could manipulate people by making the same kinds of claims as him without a model that actually would work.
Tesla worked for Edison, Westinghouse and independently over the course of his career. Tesla was probably the most visionary and innovative thinker conceptually among all of the characters in the film. But Tesla was an immigrant, which made it difficult for his ideas to gain traction within a racist and nationalist time for America. Plus Tesla was arrogant and the least practical or compromising in his aspirations, which made it even more difficult for his ideas to manifest themselves within society as he wished they would. Good intentions and correct ideas aren't enough if they don't get implement within one's culture.
What Tesla really had going for him was that he was really smart and he could figure out solutions that the other inventors couldn't figure out.
For all of these reasons Tesla couldn't be accurately portrayed in a manner that a lot of reviewers seem to have preferred and expected.
This movie's goal wasn't to orchestrate some narrative about what should have happened in the past. It's clearly more about showing what did or didn't happen back then and why.
And I think the story the movie tells is very interesting and provides for a lot of relevant lessons and understandings for people today. Even if it doesn't support Tesla's genius in a way that a lot of people were hoping for. Ultimately, its good to remember that even if one is a genius like Tesla, that doesn't mean that Tesla's didn't have some personal flaws that got in his way of achieving his own goals for the specific type of better future world.
I also don't really understand the common opinion from other reviewers that Edison was over-romanticized within the movie. Perhaps they could have made him seem more like a scumbag, but I easily was on Westinghouse's side and liked Tesla more as well.
If anything Westinghouse is the main character who is portrayed with the fewest imperfections. They show a lot of issues in Edison's persona. Not just in his invention, but in his interpersonal, business and family decisions.
I think one of the things that I liked the most about the movie is that it never shows the two main characters together in the same scene until the memorable scene at the very end.
