Looks promising. Hasn't been a good movie on the pacific theater in a while. Hopefully it can help everyone forget Pearl Harbor.
Midway (2019) trailer
- Thread starter NorthCyd
- Start date
Yeah, I'll be seeing this one in the theaters on the big screen. Thanks for sharing.
The special effects look disappointing bad IMHO. They look more stylied than realistic, like they are going for an alien fighter battle in Independence Day look.
Said it's by the same director as Independence Day so yeah, likely the same sort of deal.
Looks more like a blockbuster hit than a focus on the story.
CGI is great for fantasy and sci-fi but definitely doesn't feel right in historical films, especially when overdone. The older war films with actual period aircraft and equipment are pretty hard to beat.
My sons & I have a favorite line from the "edited for TV" version - "Tell me what you want, gosh darm it!" Not a typo.
Anyhoo, Midway is one I can watch over & over again. I hope the new one lives up to it.
I was home alone from school with chicken pox as a little kid and my dad rented a VCR along with Midway and Tora! Tora! Tora! for me to watch. I always thought that was such a great day. Not really a big deal by today's kids standards though.
I think the special effects look great. And I'm sure all the aircraft, ships, uniforms, etc are all historically accurate. I think the style choice makes it look a little fake. The colors are very bright which gives everything a very clean, Hollywood feel vs films like Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk which have muted and darker colors which gives things a grittier and more realistic feel.
The Battle of Midway is the greatest tactical, operational, and strategic victory in American military history. I really hope nobody ever has any "bright" ideas such as renaming Chicago-Midway Airport or anything like that. American industrial might and numbers would have swamped the Japanese eventually one way or another, but the victory at Midway definitely made the Pacific War much shorter and easier (and crucially allowed more resources to go to Europe and to the Soviets through Lend-Lease aid, when they needed it more to stay in the war).
I like the Heston original -- though I always thought Hal Holbrook and Henry Fonda stole the show from Ben-Hur himself. The effects in that one were dated even by the standards of its era, however, even if it told a good story with good acting (and managed to be subtle for its time in spelling out the Japanese perspective on many events, especially for Yamamoto and Nagumo, the former played incredibly by Toshiro Mifune) so I always thought it was something that could use updating by a director who could handle a historical action epic. The budget needed would call for a loud action film, yes, but those do not have to be automatically stupid films.
The ******* behind Independence Day and Godzilla was not who I would have in mind. The level of stupid and jingoism in this is likely to be rather disappointing.
I like the Heston original -- though I always thought Hal Holbrook and Henry Fonda stole the show from Ben-Hur himself. The effects in that one were dated even by the standards of its era, however, even if it told a good story with good acting (and managed to be subtle for its time in spelling out the Japanese perspective on many events, especially for Yamamoto and Nagumo, the former played incredibly by Toshiro Mifune) so I always thought it was something that could use updating by a director who could handle a historical action epic. The budget needed would call for a loud action film, yes, but those do not have to be automatically stupid films.
The ******* behind Independence Day and Godzilla was not who I would have in mind. The level of stupid and jingoism in this is likely to be rather disappointing.
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Good post. The story telling is great in the original....the Japanese side is well done and respectful in original.
Was Eric Estrada in it? For some reason I remember him stealing the show for me as a kid.
I often (almost daily) think of the American Industrial might as you put it that was applied then....not just the industrial might, but the greatest generation and the American Citizen Soldier that won that war. Could we do it today? Could our nation commit to an ideal as much with unity?
Well stated. I've been into the story since I read this book on the U.S.S Enterprise as a 12-year old in 1964. Liked it enough to hang onto the book for all of these years.
Check out that price, 75 cents!
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Large-scale industrial wars of attrition are kind of an obsolete concept nowadays. Everybody has nuclear weapons nowadays. WWIII would be over in a few minutes.
Did you see where we no longer have the skills or ability to form high-grade steel into certain submarine hulls? The bomb does not worry me....what is the point? You are right, war is over, governments are folded and the remainders will be Mad Max. What is more interesting is question of what has happened to America.,,,could we mobilize a homefront anymore? How is this trending?
More and more robots will be doing our fighting. Maybe if we take that idea to the extreme we'll just have giant robots face off as a proxy war like that movie Robot Jox.
My favorite WW2 navy movie was In Harm's Way. Black and White also which (to me) made it even better.
Looks like it's going to have that cheesy action picture factor that ruins most war flicks for me...and having the director of Independence Day isn't going to help.
Would love to have seen Spielberg tackle this one.
Actually, I'd love for Spielberg or Nolan to do a WWI movie. There hasn't been a good modern WWI movie. With today's CGI effects and their ability to tell a story, they could really capture the brutality and horror of WWI.
Man, I really got kind of film snobby there...think I'd better go watch Fletch to cleanse the palate.
Would love to have seen Spielberg tackle this one.
Actually, I'd love for Spielberg or Nolan to do a WWI movie. There hasn't been a good modern WWI movie. With today's CGI effects and their ability to tell a story, they could really capture the brutality and horror of WWI.
Man, I really got kind of film snobby there...think I'd better go watch Fletch to cleanse the palate.
Midway was the perfect example illustrating how victory can be the product of not just heroism, but pure, dumb luck. The decisions or indecision’s of the Japanese commanders to rearm their planes was critical. The screwup in coordinating torpedo and bombing attacks brought the Japanese fighters down to sea level. The list goes on. I’m hoping they don’t do what Pearl Harbor did and manufacture a romance needlessly and alter historical facts to create the story. The original Midway and Tora, Tora, Tora both told the stories quite well. Pearl Harbor was an unmitigated disaster.
Ha ha that looks like a video game. I kept expecting Megalodon and Gatoroid to attack the aircraft carriers.
A movie like this could be a masterpiece, like Lord of the Rings. But it will probably be terrible piece of drek, like The Hobbit.
The 1976 Midway was one of my faves as a kid. Now, it's kind of hard to watch, hasn't aged well. Agree with Sig that Hal Holbrook and Henry Fonda were great, what an all-star cast.
The 1976 Midway was one of my faves as a kid. Now, it's kind of hard to watch, hasn't aged well. Agree with Sig that Hal Holbrook and Henry Fonda were great, what an all-star cast.