I mean, Emmerich has been quoted as saying he has been wanting to tell the story of Midway for a while. I was hoping this meant he’d be trying to bring some insight and nuance into the battle and the men that fought. I suppose I was expecting too much from the man who gave us 1998’s Godzilla.
We open with an Hawaiian estate that apparently fronts Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row where you can get a front row seat to the attack on Pearl. The house quite literally has Pearl Harbor waterfront.
We have Zero’s making strafing runs at an altitude of about 10ft as they swarm down the streets of Oahu.
We have a flock of what might be Dauntless dive bombers swanning across the sky in the charlie-foxtrot formation. I am not sure flock is really a fair description, birds would fly an actual formation.
Frankly it looks like an ahistorical mess. We even get a guy who seems to be trying to recreate President Whitmore’s speech from Independence Day: “Today we prove the American navy isn’t a joke!”
Sheesh.
I think I’ll go pop my VHS of 1976’s Midway in the old Betamax. It’s not perfect. They reused a lot of film from Tora Tora Tora and had to shoehorn in a love interest, but it is a solid tale of both sides that faithfully tries to tell the story of the battle. The John Williams score is great and the cast is one of those epic war movie casts that even includes Tom Selleck and Erik Estrada.
Hmmph. Anyone know how to make this darn thing stop flashing “12:00”?
From the thread title, I thought the movie was actually called Midway 2019. I suppose the modern U.S. and Japan could fight it out again, but I daresay the odds have shifted enough to remove all dramatic tension.
Are the CGI aircraft historically accurate and consistent, or do TBFs magically transform into SB2Cs once they’re airborne? :dubious:
At the risk of sounding “anal” :mad:, I was watching a documentary the other day in which a B-52 was shown bombing Italy in 1943. Way to go, H2! :rolleyes:
Can’t be any worse than the actual original Midway movie where in a climatic scene a burning SBD Devastator lands on a carrier deck and suddenly turns into a literal jet fighter in the stock footage of an aircraft crash landing happens.
Granted I went into that movie with low-expectations and came out pleasantly surprised. It’s no “Tora Tora Tora” or “A Bridge Too Far” but miles better than any of the recent WW2 movies like “Pearl Harbor” or “Fury”. The worst part about it is the stock footage that most of the time doesn’t match the filmed aircraft at all.
Rather sad that the only thing you judge a movie on is that they get the technical details correct.
The only important thing in the quality is the story and characters. Anything else is trivial.
The movie may be a disaster (it is Emmerick, after all), but judging it on trivia like that (and not grasping the concept of “dramatic license”) is no way to make a critical judgment.
I’ve seen this. I love how at the end President Lincoln (played by Dakota Fanning) flies down in his F-14 and personally sinks the whole Japanese navy by dropping those metal-eating robot piranhas in the water. I know that some of those details weren’t technically correct, but boy what a story and character! And to think, I might not have utilized the one and only proper way for judging a film if you hadn’t set me straight!
Rather sad you assume it’s the “only” thing I care about. Also rather sad you object to my opposing ignorance on a site devoted to fighting it.
How much effort would it take to get the technical details correct? Gee, you might actually have to study some of the history of the events you’re portraying. Heaven forbid! :eek:
If seeing crap like planes change form in midair makes me “anal,” then I’m anal. It ain’t “artistic license,” it’s the producers saying “We don’t give a shit,” and it’s jarring to the point where I lose my suspension of disbelief. :mad:
Stock footage is almost always used wrong; better to just leave it out wherever possible. With today’s CGI, there’s no excuse for boners like the above, though the physics of the animation are usually laughable.
It’s also insulting to the audience. They may be ignorant enough not to know the difference, but it’s wrong to automatically assume that. I certainly know it, as do many of the people I know.
This movie is going to suck so bad they will have to devise a new standard to measure the suckiness.
RC - This isn’t a made-up battle with made-up characters. Therefore the “technical details” are the only thing that matters. The story is known, the characters are set in history. It’s all rather well documented. Besides, it’s Emmerich. He doesn’t employ actors - he rents props.
I’m fully prepared to demand his execution if they get so much as a single unit marking wrong.
Sorry, but the SBD (Scout Bomber, Douglas) was the Dauntless. It was the TBD (Torpedo Bomber, Douglas) that was the Devastator. The Devastator is what VT-8 (Torpedo Squadron 8) was equipped with at Midway, and what Ensign George Gay had shot out from under him so he could see three of the four Japanese fleet carriers get blown all to hell a few minutes later.
[VOICE OF PETER O’TOOLE]: My God, I love being anal! [Puts feet up on desk.]
Fury was a very good movie. It had an interesting story which it told well. And I have no complaints about the characters, dialogue, acting (even Shia LaBeouf did okay), or visuals.
My father was once chatting with a friend of his, with a John Wayne movie playing on TV in the background. Dad’s friend glanced over at the TV and mentioned, “That style of saddle was never used, until after [someone I never heard of before or since] used it to win the national rodeo championship in 1926.”
They had me fooled with the half CGI/half mockup Tiger they used for the scenes where it was maneuvering. It wasn’t until I saw the “Making Of” documentary that I knew it wasn’t an actual tank. (They couldn’t risk running the world’s only operational Tiger in a simulated battle scene.)
***Fury ***was indeed a pretty good movie, though I found it a little hard to believe an SS battalion would walk into such an obvious trap.
How about this? “The ‘crest’ sewn on the Proconsul’s tunic in the Star Trek (TOS) episode ‘Bread and Circuses’ is actually William Shakespeare’s coat-of-arms.”
It’s not perfect. They reused a lot of film from Tora Tora Tora and had to shoehorn in a love interest, but it is a solid tale of both sides that faithfully tries to tell the story of the battle. The John Williams score is great and the cast is one of those epic war movie casts that even includes Tom Selleck and Erik Estrada.