As I watch it, I feel such sadness for all the lost lives. When I was younger i was more “Hurrah for America!” but now as I see the planes go down and the ships blow up I just think of the humans in them and on them. It’s not that I’m sad we won the war; my father and all my uncles served, as did all the fathers and husbands in my neighborhoodvgrowing up, and I’m certainly aware of the atrocities, but it just is hard to see. Am I just getting old or am I too soft?
When I see that movie I feel sadness for the quality of it- it was horrible.
However, yes, war is terrible nd I find I tend to dwell on the uselessness of the killing as I age.
To be honest I think you’re getting more mature.
The same thing’s happening to me. Years ago when I watched war movies I thought “this is awesome.” I cheered for one side over the other. Perhaps some war movies taught us of The Violence and Horror of War, but it was still, in a way, appearling to a young man.
Now war movies just make me terribly sad. The awful, awful waste. What sadness. I felt similar things about the war museum:
Movies like “Midway” just make me think of the poor men sent to die by forces beyond their control, and the loss of whle human lives and the anguish their families felt. It makes me sick. I used to think war was cool. I was really into it as a kid, watched all the documentaries and stuff, read the books, knew the technical specs. Now it just looks all the same to me.
Since this is about the movie, I’ll move it to Cafe Society.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
I remember seeing it with my dad when it first came out, in a little rundown theater in the Ohio River town where I grew up. The theater’s not even there any more. I remember that we liked the movie at the time; I haven’t seen it since then, but doubt it would hold up well.
War is hell, but sometimes it’s necessary. The sacrifices at Midway led directly to the defeat of Imperial Japan and the liberation of the Western Pacific and China from its extraordinarily brutal rule. Have things been peachy keen since then? Of course not. But the battle had to be fought, and the world is a better place for the U.S. having won.
Is this thread really about the movie? I thought it was more to do with the feelings evoked by that movie (Midway being a medium).
I thought about that, but decided it was about how we react to movies and their connection to bigger issues.
I think the emotions evoked are more poignant from movies of that era since they frequently spliced in real footage. Even though the scenes don’t always quite mesh up to the plot 100%, it definitely takes you out of movie-action mode a bit and puts you in “holy crap this stuff actually happened and people really died before their time” mode.
I kinda wish modern war movies still did this rather than going for flashy effects.
I used to get goosbumps watching war movies.
I still get a thrill, but the last time I watched, say, Sgt. York, I had tears in my eyes at the end.
Well, war is happening right now in Afghanistan and Libya and Americans are dying. The war in Iraq was particularly tragic, as it was all about assuaging the egos of a few power-mad Republicans (Bush, Cheney, Rumsford and the Neocons) and was totally unnecessary to America’s safety and security. A totally pointless waste of human life. Damn.
I feel the same way, but I’m not sure it’s just mellowing with age - I think it may be increased distance from an existential war.
When I was a kid, I knew a lot of WWII veterans. The Legion Hall was still a major attraction for a lot of men. WWII still loomed in memory, and special events would he commemorated by remembering friends and family lost in the war. I think we saw war in more black-and-white terms then, and therefore war movies were easier to cheer for.
But the decades have gone by, the WWII generation is gone or relatively silent. My adult life has seen a lot of conflicts come and go, and most of them are fought in shades of gray, making it hard to feel good about any of it, win or lose.
Also, the media has brought war to our homes. We see it in all its bloody detail as its happening. It’s hard to keep an emotional distance when you see bodies lying in the street who were living people just hours before.
All of this makes war movies a little harder to take.
Well thanks for bringing partisan politics into it, Captain Predictable.
Every time I watch Midway (or more accurately speaking, the good parts) I keep expecting the American torpedo bombers to finally get through and sink a carrier or two.
The most notable thing about the movie for me are those stone-faced ship captains who have to keep getting prodded by their subordinates into taking decisive action. Poor Robert Ito worked overtime at this.
“Admiral Nagumo, we should re-arm the planes right now!”
<pause>“See to it at once.”
“Admiral Nagumo, we have to re-arm them all over again!”
<long pause>“See to it at once.”
“Admiral, it’s time for your daily bathroom break!”
<longer pause>“I will apologize to his Majesty the Emperor.”
I always feel bad for Kevin Dobson (Ensign Gay), who spent most of the movie floating in the Pacific.
I dont think it’s really all that partisan any more, for most Americans.
It was kinda whiney.
Kind of fun to spot the cameos-there’s Larry Czonka, the HoF fullback of the Dolphins, and Tom Selleck too. As a historical drama it’s ok-as a movie it’s pretty mediocre at best.
The Charlton Heston/Edward Albert father/son relationship storyline is just a painfully bad interruption to an otherwise riveting war movie. They probably cut out a lot of great stuff to get the time down to put that meaningless and ahistoical subplot in. I don’t about the fictional Garth family.
I agree that it doesn’t seem as well made these days as it did when I first saw it. I remember that they made a big deal about it being shown in “Sensaround” so you could feel the bombs right in your chair.
I also agree that some of the joy of watching war movies has become a bit bittersweet for me as the years have gone by. These days I find myself reading more and more first-person accounts of war, intrigued by their own experiences.
I am currently reading a book by a B-24 pilot that goes into some interesting detail about the mission planning process from the operations officer perspective.
The author described one mission over Berlin where several hundred bombers were going to hammer a ball bearing factory. He was group commander, so his entire group (~50 planes) was following his lead. His navigator noticed that the other groups in the wing had made a navigational error, and he decided to fly the correct route. As things turned out, the other groups reached the target before his group did, and he saw from afar that it had been so utterly destroyed that he felt his own bombs were not needed there.
They followed the alternate plan: fly directly over Berlin and drop the bombs anywhere within the city.
In the end, he said it was a successful raid since the other groups did destroy 100% of the target, so his fifty planeloads over Berlin were a plus.
I just couldn’t get over the thought of fifty planes unloading their bombs over ordinary people who were cowering in fear in their homes. It doesn’t matter whose side they were on, it is still tragic.
That said, far worse things happened (Dresden, for example), and my rational side understands that if I were alive in 1944, my opinion of the matter would have been drastically different.
I’ve seen this movie dozens of times and always wondered why the sharks didn’t get Gay after
spending that much time in the ocean.
WAG: The sharks may have been repelled by the concussion of all those bombs and torpedoes. In any case, Gay wasn’t wounded, so there was no blood trail leading to where he was bobbing along with the best seat in the house to the destruction of the core of the IJN.