No, it wasn’t that bad, if all you expect from a movie is to be temporarily distracted by shiny noises and reasonably competent storytelling. Unfortunately, however, if it’s a film about one of the most important–and tragic–episodes in American history, and it’s nothing more than a shiny, noisy distraction, then it will be judged accordingly. If you want to make an emptyheaded, shiny, noisy distraction movie, make it about car races. Or horse whisperers. Or baby geniuses. Some subject matters deserve a higher standard of treatment.
Well, it’s all I expected out of this movie, given all the intense hatred it got.
I am pretty knowledgeable about WWII as it pertains to the European Theater and Hitler, however, the Pacific Theater and the Naval aspect are big blank spots in my research. Needless to say, I didn’t catch a lot of those plot holes. I did get a little :dubious: during Ben Affleck’s little sojourn into the underground. From what I understand, the Underground just didn’t work that way, but since I was expecting so little to start out with, I just dismissed it.
This movie is an abortion milkshake.
Helluva post, OtakuLoki.
Suggestion for a great but VERY LONG viewing about the Pacific Theater: Winds of War and War and Remembrance, together a 30 hour miniseries. The main character is Victor “Pug” Henry (a miscast but capable Robert Mitchum [main problems: he was too old and too fat for the part]) who begins as a naval attache to Berlin (1938 I believe) and ends up a rear admiral. He serves at the battles of Midway and Leyte Gulf among others and they’re beautifully and spare-no-expense recreated. His sons in the miniseries are a naval pilot and a submariner, both present at the bombing of Pearl Harbor (again, recreated wonderfully). I believe it still holds the record for the most expensive miniseries ever produced and also one of the most historically accurate. (Nimitz, Spruance, Halsey and other high ranking naval officers are also characters.)
Another thing that bugged me in the trailer was that we see a Zero, flying over the harbor, release a bomb – which promptly defies Newton’s First Law by dropping straight down. It’s like Roadrunner cartoon physics.
It kind of makes you wonder, if in 40-60 years, some up and coming Stephen Spielberg is going to make a romanticized version of Sept 11, 2001:
*She was a lawyer
He was an investment broker
One day, they met in an elevator in WTC 1
See their forbidden love play out and end in tragedy on a bright sunny day in September.
See Sept 11, A Love Story, in a theater near you.
Starring Bruce Willis and Shiloh Pitt as the couple. (Frankly I’m surprised that we haven’t already had September 11 movies other than the ones about the planes; you know that some producers were thinking about it before the towers collapsed.)
I see more of a ROMEO & JULIET/West Side Story/MISS SAIGON movie (or holograph or sensory upload or whatever’s in vogue by 2050) about the forbidden love between an American GI and an Afghan girl betrothed to a Taliban mullah as the historical fiction movie based on today. Given Hollywood’s attention to accuracy the hero might well be an American who beat up 4 hijackers attempting to take control of a fifth plane and the Afghan girl is in Baghdad.
Seconded, even though Ali McGraw was far too old to play Natalie Jastrow. The books on which the miniseries is based are well worth a read, as they are exhaustively researched and naturally much more detailed.
Jane Seymour took over in the second one, thus officially qualifying it as an 80s miniseries. Lots of cast changes in fact: both Henry sons, Professor Jastrow (John Houseman became John Gielgud, both awesome but both both 20 years older than the character in the book), and some lesser roles as well.
Seconded about the novels- 3,000 pages and hardly a word wasted. Both the miniseries and the novel give really enigmatic depictions of Admiral Spruance, as if Wouk (who was at Midway) still couldn’t make up his mind whether Spruance not pursuing was brilliant or cowardly or just how much blame he took for the loss of so many planes that day (the ones that crashed for lack of fuel due to having to stay in the air too long and the bombers shot down by the Japanese because they arrived without fighter escorts). Either way, one of the most symbolically named battles of all time because even if by accident it ended the Japanese as a major naval power.
No, I wasn’t arguing that. I know Doris Miller was a hero. I didn’t like how Bay’s inclusion of fictitious super-heroes (lugging an AA gun up an exposed control tower) overshadowed what Miller did. What they did was far more remarkable and probably impossible to do in a war zone. And it diminished what Miller did compared to Sizemore, etc. It should not have been included.
I’m upset at the storyteller, in this case the movie. Like blaming Matthew for overshadowing Jesus’s resurrection saying all of Jerusalem’s graves emptied at the same time.
Don’t forget to work Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro into the plot as well. And am I going to hell for thinking Bruce Willis would yell “Yippee-ki-yi-yay motherfuckers” as he subdues the hijackers on Flight 93?
My entire department saw this movie as a group. I’m afraid we might have “ruined” it for some of the other patrons, what with our loud guffaws and general MST3K dealing with this abortion. We collectively agreed that if one of us was ever in the position to ensure that Michael Bay never ever has anything to do with movies ever again, we were to take him out, and the others would all provide an alibi. I should note that the “assassination” suggestions came from the Baptist deacon on our faculty. 
My favorite part of Pearl Harbor?
Damn that’s a toughie. The nominees are:
[ul]
[li]The plane being shot down by a guy in the control tower with a shotgun.[/li][li]The seaman from the Battleship having to come ashore for stitches, becuase you know battleships doesn’t have medical departments[/li][li]The Jap planes carrying torpedoes while attacking an airfield (Little known WWII fact, the Japanese invented the dreaded dry land torpedo)[/li][li]When needing bomber** pilots the only ones they can find are the two fighter pilots that just happen to be the stars of the movie.[/li][li]The fatal bomb hitting the Arizona and the explosion delays just enough for a sailor to look into the hole left by the bomb, then BOOM![/li][/ul]
Any the winner is:
The dreaded dry land torpedo!
Oh, you forgot
[ul]
[li]Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale’s teary goodbye when Ben leaves NYC to go to Britain to fight in the RAF… this teary goodbye that occurs when Ben boards a train to get to Britain. From NYC.[/li][/ul]
:smack: :rolleyes:
And if their quality is not enough to entice you, how about this…
I’m in War and Remembrance. Several of the battle scenes were filmed on the USS Lexington in 1988 when I was stationed on her. I’m visible pushing a bomb carriage around deck during one of the battle scenes. I got paid $55 (before taxes and union dues) for my work that day.
The movie is perfectly fine. What people object to is the Michael Bayfication of such an American historical event.
I mean of course your going to get all your history and military geeks in here nitpicking the minutia (they used A6M3 Type 0 Model 22 Zeros not A6M2 Type 0 Model 21! Outrageous!!!) but who gives a fuck?
If anything, the movie was a bit long and slow in many places and did tend to take itself a little too seriously (or not seriously enough). And of course if you overthink it, it’s not going to make sense. Like Doris Miller winning the Navy Cross for firing the twin .50s, but our heros taking off in their P-40s while their airfield is under attack and shooting down a half dozen Zeros earns them a pat on the back from Alec Baldwin.
I don’t remember this specifically in the movie, but it’s not necessarily a mistake: there were what was called “boat trains,” which were trains that collected people who were going on ocean liners and delivered them to their ports.
I would like a historically accurate version of Pearl Harbor, but that wasn’t my problem with the movie. My problem was that it was sappy and boring. Michael Bay could have had the Japanese enlist Godzilla for the attack for all I care. In fact, that would have been a better movie and only slightly less authentic.
Me, for one.
You’d be surprised how much of history people think they know from movies. When when movies don’t even try and get it right, it makes it harder for historians who constantly have to beat their heads against a wall to explain to people that the Zulu who attacked Rorke’s Drift hadn’t acquired rifles from the dead at Isandhlwana, or that The Red Baron wasn’t shot down by a Canadian, or that it was the British and the Polish who recovered (and broke the codes of) Enigma Encoding Machines, not the US Navy.
A good (and reasonably accurate) movie about Pearl Harbour is the classic Tora! Tora! Tora!, if anyone wants to see a decent film about the attack without a love story or historical inaccuracies you could fly a P-40 Warhawk though…