Midway remake out in cinemas NOV 8

Started by Destraex, June 09, 2019, 04:31:35 AM

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Gusington

'Watchable but nothing special' is already head and shoulders above 2001's Pearl Harbor.


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ArizonaTank

I liked it...the wife loved it...and she usually doesn't like war movies.
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JasonPratt

Bro and I took Dad to see it today for Veteran's Day weekend. His dad crewed a PT Boat at Midway to retrieve airmen shot down near the island. (Dad himself is a Vietnam Navy vet, and noted with some amusement that in his day there were nets around the edge of aircraft carrier decks to catch people dumb enough to walk so close to the edge as the guy in the first long shot of Enterprise. ;) )

We liked the film overall. In regard to the description about Best's temper, that review is wrong -- he isn't shown having a temper at all, only an eagerness to dive-bomb the enemy in his dive-bomber (as might be expected from a dive bomber pilot), and to do crazy things while practicing in case he has to do them in battle someday.

Maybe the portrayal of being a hot-dog Stuka ace (so to speak) eager to mix up with the enemy from the beginning is wrong, although if so the writers picked it up from his medal citation which reads in part that he earned it for having utter disregard for his personal safety -- i.e. during his attacks on the carriers -- and so decided to read that back into his portrayal for drama's sake? His recklessness is portrayed in the film as the reason why he wasn't promoted to XO of his air group earlier.

There is very much less goofy 1940s film drama than in Bay's Harbor.

There's a lot of action: all the money is up there on screen. The Pearl Harbor attack is shown, plus the raids on the Marshall Islands and Doolittle's Tokyo raid (which is given its own extended subplot focusing on Aaron Eckhardt as Doolittle).


I had totally forgotten that the Yamato served as Yamamoto's flagship at Midway -- or was even in service by then (apparently because it received a total refit and relaunch which gave Americans the impression it was a new ship in 1944). So when I saw it in the film my brain kept saying, "Wait, is that the Yamato?" and "No, duh, that can't be." Then in the credits I happened to see officer-characters credited as "deck officer(Yamato)" like "deck officer(Enterprise)". So I checked when I got home.
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Gusington



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We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

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JasonPratt

Nope! I'm only a post-Navy brat.  >:D

Dad married Mom when his tour was up; I came along a few years later. The admiral of his carrier group wanted to sponsor him to be a mustang: go to Annapolis and train to be an officer, so he could come back to the carrier and get a Commander rank on copter maintenance. But Dad mustered out instead to marry Mom.

Much later we learned he had picked up heart disease from Agent Orange exposure, while flying door crew for special op resupply missions to the Green Berets out training the Montagnards. The US wasn't supposed to be in-country yet, so the missions were super-secret. So super-secret that the Navy has no idea whether the records were destroyed later in a flood or in a fire!  :crazy2: (We suspect those records were destroyed in a furnace, so technically a 'fire'. ;) )

Bro took the granddaughters to tour Dad's carrier in San Diego earlier this year; we have an adorable shot of them sitting at the 'ouija board' for the deck boss!  :smitten: Dad wasn't on the carrier a lot; his chopper crew got transferred around a lot, ultimately to the USS Mars experimental supply ship.
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SirAndrewD

Read an interesting article about how the film was 45% financed by Starlight Productions, a company backed by the Zhongcai Capital Fund.    The Chinese essentially wanted a big budget, old school explosion flick that required also showing events like Pearl Harbor and The Doolittle Raid, so they could showcase Japanese underhandedness and point out the help the Chinese Communists gave to the Doolittle Bombers (apparently there's an extensive post credit exposition that concentrates on Doolittle for China). 

Having the Japanese suffer their worst military defeat on screen at the hands of their now ally Americans was a bonus for Chinese audiences. 

Apparently the only changes to the Chinese release will be the removal of scenes of Americans being insubordinate, as China does not want anyone to show displays of disagreement with the government on screen. 

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JudgeDredd

Quote from: ArizonaTank on November 09, 2019, 06:01:42 PM
I liked it...the wife loved it...and she usually doesn't like war movies.
Is it a war movie or a romance? And are there any ridiculous flying manoeuvres like there was in Red Tails?
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Grim.Reaper

No romance, totally a war movie from start to finish.  Some of the flying and graphics seem a bit over the top to me (not a flight expert so can't fully comment), but didn't take away from the experience.  Movie was a little over 2 hours long and the time went by fast which is always a good sign for me.  As said before, no regrets in seeing it but certainly is not a "classic" to me and maybe I would watch it one more time when it comes out on my satellite provider.

airboy

Quote from: SirAndrewD on November 09, 2019, 11:55:12 PM
Read an interesting article about how the film was 45% financed by Starlight Productions, a company backed by the Zhongcai Capital Fund.    The Chinese essentially wanted a big budget, old school explosion flick that required also showing events like Pearl Harbor and The Doolittle Raid, so they could showcase Japanese underhandedness and point out the help the Chinese Communists gave to the Doolittle Bombers (apparently there's an extensive post credit exposition that concentrates on Doolittle for China). 

Having the Japanese suffer their worst military defeat on screen at the hands of their now ally Americans was a bonus for Chinese audiences. 

Apparently the only changes to the Chinese release will be the removal of scenes of Americans being insubordinate, as China does not want anyone to show displays of disagreement with the government on screen.

China is either the biggest or second largest box office in the world.  The Chinese go to movies that show Japanese defeats.  Chinese money was also behind Hacksaw Ridge - another WW2 movie focusing on the US vs. Japan.

China has had swarms of TV movies about WW2 fights versus Japan.

US movie firms would not back Midway for all sorts of reasons including the inability to do a sequel.  Hard to do "Midway 3 - revenge of Thanos." 

solops

#69
Wait, wait, wait! This is all wrong. The GERMANS bombed Pearl Harbor in a false-flag operation (Stukas, ya know), causing the Americans to unleash the fruits of Alamagordo (Godzilla) on Tokyo. The vengeful Japanese then invaded Normandy but were driven back by the French under von Manstein. This is all documented in the splendid academic documentary movie 'Animal House' and confirmed by the House Intelligence Committee.
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You forgot to mention the well-documented incident of time traveling Afrikaners distributing 40-watt plasma rifles to the Waffen-SS.
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JasonPratt

The Doolittle subplot doesn't mention that the Chinese are communists in any way, though maybe that's in the Chinese release. The pre-credit epilogue talking about what happened to everyone, has a special entry for the Chinese schoolteacher who was captured, beaten, and then presumably executed when Doolittle's lighter is found in his house; with a note that the Japanese slew two hundred thousand Chinese as punishment for them helping the Doolittle Raiders. (It also notes that the final Raider died earlier this year, 2019.)

Quote from: JudgeDredd on November 10, 2019, 07:41:52 AM
Quote from: ArizonaTank on November 09, 2019, 06:01:42 PM
I liked it...the wife loved it...and she usually doesn't like war movies.
Is it a war movie or a romance? And are there any ridiculous flying manoeuvres like there was in Red Tails?

To be a little more specific, no one courts anyone on screen, and there's no love triangle. Several characters are happily married, although the war naturally causes some stress with this in various ways; and in that sense there's some romance.

I haven't seen Red Tails yet, but the movie does open with Best making a very steep diving crash-land onto the Enterprise, cutting out his engine and simulating various other problems, for practice. This might count, and as you would expect by 'dramatic logic' it does get brought back up at the finale although the film doesn't dwell on it. Otherwise, it's a film about dive bombers. They shoot down a few enemies but mostly with the tail gun, and the few front-gun kills are in a head-to-head split-second defense. The dive-bombers don't dogfight Japanese Zeroes. And American casualty rates are super-high.

There's nothing on par with two Mustangs playing chicken with each other to cause Zeroes to crash. ;) (Come to think of it, I realize American fighters must have been in the film but they sure don't get much attention!)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

SirAndrewD

#72
Quote from: JasonPratt on November 10, 2019, 02:26:06 PM
The Doolittle subplot doesn't mention that the Chinese are communists in any way, though maybe that's in the Chinese release.


I don't think the movie has to spell it out for it to be read that way by a Chinese audience.   There's been a lot of public revisionism in China to increase the role of the Communists over the KMT in the war.  From a media perspective in China there is no China but the People's Republic.

The civilians that rescued the Doolittle raiders were in KMT territory as far as I remember so it's good there's no overt mention either way. 

I'm getting more interested in seeing this after the positive public response.
"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback

Tripoli

#73
Quote from: JasonPratt on November 10, 2019, 02:26:06 PM
,,,
There's nothing on par with two Mustangs playing chicken with each other to cause Zeroes to crash. ;) (Come to think of it, I realize American fighters must have been in the film but they sure don't get much attention!)

While ramming generally isn't an accepted air defense tactic, it could be effective in a Dauntless against the lightly-built Japanese Zero.  In one encounter with Zeros in May 1942, Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was attacked by three A6M2 Zero fighters.  He shot down two of them and cut off the wing of the third with his wingtip in a head-on pass .  See https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qhcjy at the 1:44 mark.
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Gusington

Your Dad had some career Pratt! Really interesting.

Because of this thread I will watch Midway now. Not at the theater though, because I hate people.

In the comfort of on-demand.


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We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd