Midway - a new Roland Emmerich's movie...

[ChuckD]

Just got back from seeing it.  I went in with really low expectations, thinking it would be another "Pearl Harbor" sh*tshow.  Turns out, it actually does a pretty good job of depicting the first 6 months of the Pacific war.  As much as it's titled "Midway" it's really a decent beer n' pretzels-level overview of 12/7/41 - 6/4/42.  Yeah, the flight scenes are over the top, but they serve to draw the general audience in and aren't distracting enough to turn off a curmudgeon like me.   

 

A couple interesting points:

• They glossed over the whole "let's bait the Japanese into telling us where AF is by faking a failure of the desalinization plant" bit.  Layton seems surprised.  Odd.
• In a case of art mimicking life, the Wildcat is an utter write-off.  Not a single one makes an appearance.  Amazingly, the B-26 Marauder does.
• I love the that the dive bombers seem to descend at a leisurely ~200fpm.  Cessna 172's dive faster. 
• Quaid did a good job of portraying Halsey.  Harrelson did farily well with Nimitz too.
• The USS Nautilus makes and appearance, which was a surprise.

Anyway, the movie was utterly panned in this very thread before its release, and I'll admit, I wasn't too excited about it.  I suppose that could be part of the reason why I was so pleasantly surprised by it.  It's worth the time and the money, in my opinion.

 

As an aside, my eight year old, who is an airplane nut, was absolutely thrilled with it.

[Dave Williams]

Just saw it, and thought the 1975 movie was better about telling the story.  Aside from almost all of the actions scenes being completely unrealistic, I was most disappointed that they omitted or glossed over a number of items, and seemed to rush through the timeline of the battle so quickly that how it unfolded was lost.  For example, no depiction of the spotting of the Japanese fleet by the PBYs, the fact that the American fleet was delayed in being spotted because of a launching delay on the Tone, plus the initial report not mentioning a carrier, the electrical bomb release failure on the SBDs, and so on.  All of this was better explained in the 1975 movie.  I guess they needed more time to squeeze in the Dolittle and Marshal Island raids.  Finally, whatever backstory they were going for with Pete Best was simply not very interesting.

[Big Texan]

Saw the movie with my son, it was pretty good. A few inaccuracies, but nothing that took away from the story. I was surprised there were no PBY's, who actually first spotted the Japanese fleet, not one Wildcat was to be seen, and yes, there were B-26's that participated in attacking the Japanese fleet, but they dropped torpedoes, not bombs. A lot of other inaccurate or not portrayed items are mentioned above.  All in all, it was well done. The CGI even looked good. I just wish they would tell the story of what happened accurately.  One of the most important battles America has ever fought, and we still can't get a good movie out of it. 

[Out2gtcha]

1 minute ago, Big Texan said:

Saw the movie with my son, it was pretty good. A few inaccuracies, but nothing that took away from the story. I was surprised there were no PBY's, who actually first spotted the Japanese fleet, not one Wildcat was to be seen, and yes, there were B-26's that participated in attacking the Japanese fleet, but they dropped torpedoes, not bombs. A lot of other inaccurate or not portrayed items are mentioned above.  All in all, it was well done. The CGI even looked good. I just wish they would tell the story of what happened accurately.  One of the most important battles America has ever fought, and we still can't get a good movie out of it. 

 

 

I think likely that is the attitude that has to be taken going into this film; more entertainment value, and less historical value. Which is a bit disappointing yes, but value is still value

 

[CATCplSlade]

On 11/17/2019 at 4:45 PM, Dave Williams said:

Finally, whatever backstory they were going for with Pete Best was simply not very interesting.

 

Gosh, and here I was all excited to learn about the military career of the Beatles's original drummer.

[Bstarr3]

I went and saw it by myself yesterday morning. Just me and another solo middle aged guy in the theater .

I loved it. Yes there were inaccuracies small and large, and the action sequences were definitely overdone. Would have been interesting to see the CGI dialed back about 50% for a more realistic effect. I agree they compressed the actual battle to the point that they had to cut some things out. However, the screenwriters obviously wanted to tell a cohesive story of the 7 months from Pearl to Midway, which means the actual battle had to be somewhat truncated, or else it would have been 3 hours long.

One ommission that I don't understand, however, is Dusty Kleiss. He was on board the Enterprise as a member of scouting 6, and received the Navy Cross for his actions on 6/4. Especially since they mentioned that Best was "one of only two pilots to score direct hits on multiple carriers in the war", I thought it strange that they didnt even mention the second. Actually, if you look at the roster of pilots in the ward room, his name isn't even mentioned among the squadron. I wonder if for some reason his family didnt authorize the use of his name and likeness for the film.

[JeepsGunsTanks]

On 11/17/2019 at 12:56 PM, Gewehr 43 said:

Just got back from seeing it.  I went in with really low expectations, thinking it would be another "Pearl Harbor" sh*tshow.  Turns out, it actually does a pretty good job of depicting the first 6 months of the Pacific war.  As much as it's titled "Midway" it's really a decent beer n' pretzels-level overview of 12/7/41 - 6/4/42.  Yeah, the flight scenes are over the top, but they serve to draw the general audience in and aren't distracting enough to turn off a curmudgeon like me.   

 

A couple interesting points:

• They glossed over the whole "let's bait the Japanese into telling us where AF is by faking a failure of the desalinization plant" bit.  Layton seems surprised.  Odd.
• In a case of art mimicking life, the Wildcat is an utter write-off.  Not a single one makes an appearance.  Amazingly, the B-26 Marauder does.
• I love the that the dive bombers seem to descend at a leisurely ~200fpm.  Cessna 172's dive faster. 
• Quaid did a good job of portraying Halsey.  Harrelson did farily well with Nimitz too.
• The USS Nautilus makes and appearance, which was a surprise.

Anyway, the movie was utterly panned in this very thread before its release, and I'll admit, I wasn't too excited about it.  I suppose that could be part of the reason why I was so pleasantly surprised by it.  It's worth the time and the money, in my opinion.

 

As an aside, my eight year old, who is an airplane nut, was absolutely thrilled with it.

 

 

HAH Someone else noticed, I don't think there was a single US Fighter in the whole movie. I wonder if they just ran out of CGI budget or casting budget or what. 

 

Overall I thought this movie was a mixed bag, it's like someone read a interesting trivia article about Midway, and tried to get in all kinds of little factual tidbits, since they got so many in. They CGI for the ships and the sets looked great, though the ships had some more modern AA guns than they should have. 

 

The aircraft CGI was mostly bad, from the new than they should have been B-25s in the Doolittle raid and even control surfaces not moving. 

 

The worst part was the portrayal of the pilots as drama queens.   I agree on the Portrayal of Nimitz and Halsey, they should have given Spruance a bigger role though. 

 

The flying in Pearl Harbor was way better, because they rented a bunch of airplanes from the Planes of Fame Air Museum, including a real Zero, one of the only working ones around. They barged the planes to Pearl Harbor and had Steve Hinton and other expert pilots fly them around at very low level. The movie was trash, but most of the flying was worth the watch. 

 

The opposite is true for this movie, the flying scenes are terrible, but the ship scenes and sets are amazing. It's worth the watch if you have nothing better to do and are locked inside because of the covid... 

[LSP_Matt]

You folks might like this doco about the Battle of Midway. I found it excellent.