I get that. I am not watching Wackiest Ship in the Army, or Kelly’s Heroes, or In Harm’s Way expecting them to get the history correct. But they don’t purport to be history, they are movies where the war is just the background and the movies tell about the lives caught up in them.
But this trailer landed a full 16" broadside right into my suspension of disbelief. Heck, I shouldn’t have to be suspending my disbelief for what is supposed to be a true story.
OttoDaFe: I should have shown the Nautilis some love as it actually played a pretty important role in the battle. The torpedo misfire would be a great scene to have in the movie. You’ve got the terror of war, anyone in the water who could see the torpedo knew they were about to die, then the relief of survival and the absurdity of using the instrument of your death for rescue.
I hadn’t noticed it and I don’t know how it happened. (I have noticed that the quote function has been acting wonky for me since I “upgraded” to Windows 10 last week.) I assure you it was not intentional. My apologies to both posters and any readers for any confusion it caused.
I can see no reason other than driving up the CGI budget why the movie has B-25’s from Doolittle’s raid in it. Just how scattershot is the script that they make an appearance at all.
Zero’s did strafe Hickam. There’s still bullet holes in the HQ building, according to the 2005 photo on Wikipedia.
What’s a Charlie Foxtrot formation? (Is that a slang/replacement for “cluster fuck”?)
As a USN fanboi, I am just thankful that my Yorktown class actually look like a Yorktown class. In the Heston film, all of the carriers have angled decks. The “Japanese” carriers are Essex’s too, but with the stock footage shown in reverse to put the island superstructure on the port side.
But if you need a nitpick of this trailer from me: the ships are steaming way too close to each other in the trailer.
The Doolittle raid was a catalyst for the Midway attack (up till that point there was considerable resistance in Japanese military circles to Yamamoto’s Midway plan, but afterwards its harshest critics suddenly realized that they had been 110% behind it all along). So the Doolittle raid is at least as relevant to the background of the battle as the foot(?)age of Pearl Harbor.
I got to see a sneak peak of the new Midway film this weekend, in San Diego.
TLDR: I would like to give it a thumb’s up.
TSNMD (Too short, need more detail):
Movie has two main protagonists, Dick Best (SBD pilot), and Edwin Layton (Signals Intelligence). No focus at all on any of the fighter jocks. Rochefort, Doolittle get honorable mentions.
No love story to clutter up what is a fairly straight forward war flick.
I think it did a fair job portraying the inherently dangerous job of flying (with no electronic aids) from a carrier. (Several operational accidents are shown.)
The CGI was good, for the most part. My nitpicks: Flak as depicted was way too thick, with crowded aerial action scenes. Ship formations waaaay too tight as shown. Pearl Harbor attack sequence is not too long, but the attacking aircraft are shown dropping their torps from a narrow angle, when they actually dropped from the broadside. (My guess was so that the audience gets to see more of Battleship Row that way.)
I would like to mention an appreciation for the (apparent to me) effort the CGI team made to make the aircraft and ships appear like their historical counterparts.
To Be Fair (TBF, hehe), Dick Best did have an outsize effect on the attack, and if we get a bomber perspective instead of the fighters, that’s fine with me.
No love stories? Great!
But the CGI already seen on trailers is typical crap CGI with flat structures exploding into smaller flat structures. It doesn’t look right at all.
Ehh. I’ll watch it when it reaches my house, I guess, based on your review.
(2nd plug for Shattered Sword, the new-ish book drawn from translated Japanese records and reports by PArshall and Tully.)
:mad: