MIDWAY, et al

I enjoyed the movie - they did cover a lot.  When I saw Woody Harrelson as Nimitz I said hmmm... but he was actually okay.  I thought I saw a thread around talking about some of the historical references, something about Yamamoto's missing fingers.  Entertaining given the catalog of Hollywood films of late.  I did think (don't know) that some of the CGI aircraft exceeded their flight envelopes...lol

I haven't seen it yet, but gosh it sounds to try to stay on track.

The story is excellent, be sure to read Shattered Sword.

The Japanese went way beyond the limit of four concurrent mistakes that tilt to disaster; ended up with around nine.

One for example was that the Aleutian invasion was not a diversion but a full attack in some force and cost them in ships otherwise deployed.

Bill

Bill

HooYah Deep Sea

I went back quite a way in this forum and did not see anything on this movie, so I probably missed it somehow; anyway, I'll throw in my two cents worth now.

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT - now I know why the DVD is selling for only 9 bucks.

Wow. whoever / whomever / whatever did the historic research on this must have been under the influence of something. I should have turned it off at the Pearl Harbor attack scenes and pitched it into the bushes, or set it aside for target practice.

Lots of CGI, no particular historic background outside the very general time line of events.

Wasn't worth the nine bucks at Walmart; glad I didn't go to a theater for this one. I'd have walked out, really pissed.

End of story

 

 

It was discussed at depth a year ago and brought back up 4th of July weekend. I took my son and we both loved it.

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/general_discussion/f/50/t/182373.aspx

Expectations of anything out of Hollywood being 100 percent accurate are inconceivable. Hollywood produces entertainment (sometimes), not history, that's what books are for. I enjoyed the movie for the entertainment it provided.

Let's face it they don't make many movies to interest anyone over the age of 50 so I enjoy one when I get the chance.

I enjoyed it too, could have been better,but it is what it is,a Hollywood movie,made to entertain the crowds,not to satisfy historians and modelers.Saw it for free on HBO and I was entertained,thats all I was looking for.

Watched it didn't like it. Tora Tora Tora and Battle of Britain did everything better sixty years ago. Too much CGI and wooden acting. You can still make a historical movie and try to make it accurate as you can and entertaining such as A Bridge Too Far. I felt like this movie just gave up at accuracy at some points. 

I saw it when it opened at the cinema (remember those? Lol!) and enjoyed it. Having just re read “The Big E” a few months before, I was familiar with much of the background shown but not explained. Was it perfect or a great film? No. Neither was the 1976 film. But then again no movie yet made on such a sweeping subject has been, American or Japanese. And I wonder if we will have to wait another 45 years for the next movie about the battle?

Ill add it to my library one of these days. $9 at Walmart sounds reasonable.

Well, I'm glad some of you liked it. Being a USS ARIZONA and Pearl Harbor historian, of sorts, the way they depicted the attack on battleship row and the loss of ARIZONA was so far off. I just found it irritating. The no flaps / no power landing thing was just a WW2 version of Top Gun's Maverick stunt. As soon as he did that, you knew it was going to happen again later; way too predictable. There's more but I'll not bore you. I'll just say again, I was very disappointed in the movie as a whole.

I don’t think that I’ve seen a “historic/factual” war movie yet that does not have its flaws in the overall story, script, or technical details. Even the most praised “realistic” movies and miniseries have their errors and deviations from the source material. Names are changed, times/actions are compressed or extended, characters invented or blended into composites, etc. Some movies do it better than others. Just  like with our models, there are changes made for effect, to help “tell the story”.

If you enjoy reading Craig Symonds The Battle Of Midway is an excellent book on this event.

I didn’t have a problem with the film.  I was entertained and that’s enough reason to watch.

As a heads-up, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) will be showing The Battle of Midway (1942) tomorrow at 1:30 EDT.  John Ford even made it into the Midway (2019) movie, though Admiral Fletcher did not.

Gary

Okay, for newer stuff, 12 STRONG was close as accuracy goes, as was 13 HOURS. LONE SURVIVOR was pretty close for the first half but then deviated quite a bit in the second half. The same goes for AMERICAN SNIPER, a 50/50 mix. PEARL HARBOR was an okay love story and absolutely reeked in the accuracy department. THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN and RED TAILS were both 50/50. But all of those I enjoyed. Maybe I'll just have to give MIDWAY another go through and I'll probably mellow out on it. I guess I was hoping that this one would be a better version of the '76 MIDWAY. Both have holes in them but I thought the 76 had better continuity.

Oh yeah, and MEN IN BLACK I was totally spot on, but the others were just made up stuff. Light of Zartha, what a line!

I chose not to see "Midway" in the theaters, too, because it doesn't look like it meets the standard of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" for a movie about a historical event.  Comments from people who have seen it only confirm for me what I presumed.

On the other hand, "Greyhound", which is based on CS Forester's novel, looks pretty good.

"Pearl Harbor" was absolute crap, by the way, absolute crap.

the Baron

 

"Pearl Harbor" was absolute crap, by the way, absolute crap.

 

What ??? You didn't like the Japanese planes attacking the row of modern destroyers ?? I couldn't believe that they left that in.

Well, like I said, PEARL HARBOR, though touted to be more, was a fictitious love story with all of the characters being composites. There was lots of action but the vast majority either made up or historically wrong. And, one does not go from Active duty Army Air Corps to the UK as a RCAC officer then back to AAC and still maintain one's rank and position. And as much as I respect the man, Dorie Miller did not shoot down any Japanese aircraft. And There was no documented tapping from trapped men on ARIZONA. And THe bomb that destroyed ARIZONA did not detonate in a shell room. And. And. And. And. 

And the closing view of the sunk ARIZONA was completely WRONG

But maybe I'm just being picky .  .  .

Of course the first part of Miller's Commendation was assisting to move the mortally wounded captain of the WV to a more sheltered part of the bridge.

I don't think we'll see the likes of T-T-T again in our lifetimes.

Wasn't there a movie coming out named Dauntless?

I never heard more about it.

Bill

GMorrison

Of course the first part of Miller's Commendation was assisting to move the mortally wounded captain of the WV to a more sheltered part of the bridge.

I don't think we'll see the likes of T-T-T again in our lifetimes.

Wasn't there a movie coming out named Dauntless?

I never heard more about it.

 

Bill

 

I think that Dauntless went straight to Video. Reading the viewer reviews on IMDB it sounds pretty bad. 

Twelve Strong was ok, but it drifted from the source material, The Horse Soldiers. IIRC from the book, the ODA incurred no casualties until a friendly fire incident during the prison battle at Mazr al Sharif (or however you spell that place’s name) after the Taliban had fled the battlefield. Not to mention how the JDAM strikes are depicted....

Tojo72

  

the Baron

 "Pearl Harbor" was absolute crap, by the way, absolute crap. 

What ??? You didn't like the Japanese planes attacking the row of modern destroyers ?? I couldn't believe that they left that in. 

I have it on DVD; my mother gave it to me, because it's a war movie and she thought I'd enjoy it.  I watched about the first 30 minutes and then that was it.  The only reason I didn't sell it or throw it out, was because my mother gave it to me.  Even though it's an awful movie, her thoughtfulness counts.

Forget the modern ships in the shots-Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Doolittle?!  Come on!

I have a similar problem with "The Red Baron".  I got that out of the discount barrel at Walmart, for three bucks.  That's a piece of crap movie, too.  I'll stick with "The Blue Max."

For more than a decade now, my friend and I have gone into every Hollywood movie with very low expectations, no expectations would actually be more accurate, and I have have yet to be dissapointed.  This is especially the case with war movies.  And do not check reviews ahead of time under any circumstance. 

This way, the duds are not as much as a dud, as I found with Midway, and the gems shine even more brightly, as with Fury and Hacksaw Ridge. 

Bottom line is that movies are meant to entertain and make money, and they generally have two or two and a half hours to do so.  They can't fit in every detail about a battle, so have to condense, skip, and/or gloss over facts.  Frankly, the demographic who want to see fact based war movies, men over the age of 50, are by and large not the movie-going audience anymore, so they make it flashy enough with CGI to get butts in the seats.  

Let's see.   My dad was in nearly all of war in the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to the end and beyond.  I was born in 1951.  He was in the Navy in a light cruiser 13 battle stars.  He did not talk about, except funny stories   about Flying Fish hitting them when they were drinking on the deck one time.  Hey he was just a kid.  He was born in late 1923.   So I lived hearing about Midway, Peal Harbor, Okinawa,  Guadacanal, Tarawa, the Pacific war, also how nice Japan is.  He kept nasty parts of all war out of it. Except the sinking the USS Wasp .  ( We had the horror of Viet Nam to scare us.)

I enjoyed the movie.  I've seen plenty of documentaries and read much about Midway, played many war games about it, discussed it in many college history classes.  My wife ,who no slouch,  knows the back story of the Pacific war liked as well.   I dont get hung up on little details in movies.  Otherwise, all movies would leave me apoplitic.  Patton, tanks all wrong, battles over simplfied ,wrong engines on planes in Battle of Britain, incorrect helmet covers in Zulu,  wow, every thing Hollywood ever made.  I could whine aboulf how the B-25's were not the B models, at least the Ships looked okay.  (Stand by, there plenty of hard core ship dudes here).  

My family, and every one here has a direct relation ship to the history told in this story.  Did they try to do the story?  Was is acted all right?  You can  disguess this forever.

For my wife and I, we liked it.

I just saw this, part of my project to get to the end of Netflix.

I liked it mostly. I have no quibble with the historic content- if details were wrong that's way beyond me.

My very favorite part was how well the Yorktown class was represented. Those carriers just looked...REAL. And all of the deck shots usually had an escort sailing in the background, very convincing.

The movie makers did pretty well with the SBDs too.

I have the usual complaints about the CGI attack scenes. Made the overall effect sort of just ok.

Thumbs up for Nimitz, Harrelson gets better with age.

Bill

I saw Midway on opening night last November. I had read several books that cover the battle, most prominently among them Shattered Sword. This movie took a lot from that book as far as I could tell. Details such as the oven-like conditions aboard those Japanese carriers after the bombs hit, and their lack of sound fire control systems.

I will say that the movie feels like a high-level look at the Battle of Midway, as it does not spend a lot of time digging into details. Another complaint I have is the depiction of the dive bombing. The tactic was misrepresented, and then there was the AA that gave me visions of X-Wings diving toward the Death Star trench.

What I loved was seeing mostly correct representations of the aircraft that participated in the battle, sans Wildcats. The Devastators and Marauders, yes! And we don't get archival footage of Hellcats, Helldivers, and even a Panther! Overall, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit.