A while back I heard that Disney was planning to make a movie about Pearl Harbor involving a love story. I scoffed at such a ridiculous notion.
Well, last night prior to the screening of “Unbreakable,” Mrs. Rickjay and I saw the trailer for the new Bruckheimer/Bay film, “Peal Harbor,” which stars Ben Affleck, Cuba Gooding, and Kate Beckinsale.
I dunno how the movie will be because this is a bunch bound to make a lot of corny crap, but it was the most spectacular trailer I have ever seen, hands down. The scenes of the Pearl Harbor attack were simply unbelievable, the most stunningly beautiful photographed scenes I have ever seen on film. Compared to this movie, “The Thin Red Line” was a home video. (They did seem to have borrowed Hans Zimmer’s score from “The Thin Red Line,” though.)
In one scene, kids playing baseball watch in amazement as Japanese fighters and torpedo bombers fly by them down a Hawaiian valley. The planes looked as real as could be and yet those planes don’t exist anymore. I doubt there’s a functioning D3A bomber left anywhere in the world. Did they rebuild some? Did they do it with computers? If they did it with computers, they’ve finally succeeded in making computer imaging look like the real thing, because those planes looked as real as could be.
(Note: If I am spoiling the film for anyone by mentioning that the Japanese end up bombing Pearl Harbor, let me just say: ha ha ha.)
Man, I have GOT to see this movie. Anyone know how they filmed those scenes? Anyone have the buzz on “Pearl Harbor”?
Well, they went to Hawaii with a whole bunch of stuff and recreated the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was quite the news story over there at the time.
Baglady can probably tell you more because she moderates soc.culture.hawaii and there was lots of chatter there about it. AudreyK probably heard a lot about it as well.
If you’d like to see the trailer itself and don’t want to go to the movie theater, Z.com has it on the web. And if you’re looking for other information regarding Pearl Harbor, try Coming Attractions.
The video on the site was too small to make out any detail, but at least one shot looked as if it could only have been created by CGI. Having said that, I know that several real aircraft were used, and one was lost during the filming when it hit a tree during a low-altitude pass. Tora! Tora! Tora! used North American T-6 “Texans” modified extensively – and quite convincingly – to look like A6M Type 0 fighters. Other aircraft were modified to look like other types. (IIRC, BT-13s sound familiar as the basis for some Japanese planes.) There is at least one “Zero” in flying condition in the U.S. Since it’s usually called “the most original Zero”, I’d assume there are others flying with American engines.
I’d guess that there are some U.S. aircraft disguized as Japanese, original Japanese aircraft, computer generated aircraft, and non-flying mockups. (In Memphis Belle, a movie not worth the loss of the B-17 that burned up during filming, some of the aircraft in the background were actually plywood “flats”.)
To be honest, I haven’t kept up with the production buzz. I do, however, have a good view of Pearl Harbor and the whole area the movie was filmed at from my front door. I can confirm that they did fly real planes (their engines are pretty loud and have a distinct sound). There were about four of them, and for a couple of weeks this summer, they flew around and around, in pairs, in wide, sweeping circles. I guess that was it for their scenes, because after those two weeks, I never saw nor heard them again.
I couldn’t see them very clearly, since looking in that direction meant looking almost right at the sun (ouch), but from what I could tell, they looked a lot like the planes in this picture.
Damn, that’s some good work. Some of the planes have that CGI a-little-too-smooth look, but #8–the Kate fairly close up–looks GREAT! The skin is still a little too smooth–aircraft that have been used some get surprisingly rumpled–but it’s early in the war and it can be excused for being in good condition.
I liked how, in Titanic, Cameron got around the differences inherent between real and CG by making the real stuff look slightly fakier. It became seamless, and I look for that stuff being in computer graphics (okay, CAD) as I am.
Could some of them be models? The RC scale modelling crowd has gotten positively INSANELY accurate.
You what? I bet there are at least a couple people who will go to Pearl Harbor without knowing about the attack. A girl my aunt worked with didn’t know what Titanic was about; when told it was a ship, she asked, “What? Did it sink?” I’m not kidding, and apparently neither was she.
Yes, it’s very sad.
I do agree that the trailer was very sharp, especially the shot of the bomb falling. I would be very surprised if most of the shots were not CGI. (And incidentally I thought Unbreakable was a decent movie.)
Sorry to submarine this thread, but I came across it doing some unrelated research, and felt I had something to offer.
For anyone who’s interested in the Pearl Harbor movie, you may want to read an interview with Randall Wallace, the screenwriter. He talks about the genesis of the project, his approach to the story, his disagreements with director Michael (Armageddon) Bay, the kinds of things you’re likely to see in the movie, and so on.
Note: There are 2 links for Pearl Harbor (Under ‘P’), the 1st one isn’t working. Not as impressive as on the big screen, but you’ll get the picture (pun intended).
Coming in low, the Japanese approached Pearl Harbor from the northwest through a break in the mountains called the Kolekole pass. Because it connects Schofield Barracks and a big munitions storage area on either side of the range, few civilians ever go through there and few military personnel have reason to, as opposed to the overcrowded Pali. When my wife was in the Army we’d take the pass to go to the less crowded beaches on the west side of Oahu. With all the people on the Pali, it was hard to seriously picture the ferocious battle that Kamehameha had fought there, but on the deserted Koloekole pass, it was much more easier to visualize the Japanese come roaring through, and look back downhill and imagine all the poor guys who were in for it.
I guess if you ever visit the scene of a battle, it must be uncrowded and unspoiled by tourism - I was thus able to absorb the impact at Fallen Timbers near Toledo, and also as I steamed through Leyte Gulf. That theme park that was proposed at Gettyburg would have been a bad joke on the dead indeed.
I agree, the trailer looks GREAT, but in my opion the fakeness of most of the aircraft scenes come from the fact that they try to fit 5 or 6 Kates and Zeros into every square foot of empty air.
Now I know close formations were the norm in WWII… but no real war footage I’ve ever seen had them swarming like THAT! Simply waaay too close together during the bombing runs.
As exciting as the action sequences might be, things like this are exactly why I probably won’t see the movie, at least not in the theater and not for more than a $1.50 rental. Kids playing baseball? Watching Japanese aircraft fly over? At 7:45 on a Sunday morning in December? Um, OK. Yeah, that’s what happened.
One of my friends is in this movie! He plays the role of a sailor on one of the ships. No, not that one. The one with a crew cut. Just to the left. There that white little running sploch!
Okay, so we haven’t spotted him in the trailer. The life of an extra has its downfalls.
(pun intended).