The trailer for the new Midway movie is out. At least thru CGI we will have the right planes flying… looks like they are going all the way back to December 7th to start the tale…
I went to a presentation by “Dusty” Kleiss’ (she pronounced it “Kleese”) daughter where they showed some video interviews with him.
He really hated McClusky. Kleiss was a career dive bomber pilot, I think enlisted in 1936. McClusky came aboard Enterprise in VF-6, only to later be named to lead SB-6.
Kleiss thought that they went too far at too fast an airspeed to ever return to ship, and were only lucky to find her when they were either ditched or flying dry.
Movie looks flashy but fun.
I’ve read McCluskey’s and Best’s interviews on their role in the battle. Each tells in a favorable way for themselves without damning the other, but leaving inference as to the others’ actions open to the reader.
Call those minutes of history, blind luck, good fortune, divine intervention, or synchronicity, they happened.
The movie does look like it has potential. As usual, the CGI folks look to go overboard. But I think between this and the also upcoming ”Dauntless”, as well as some recent Japanese movies, we will have some new takes in cinema on this battle.
If you don’t mind, recap the Japanese movie titles.
Dauntless looks pretty terrific to me. My kind of story like chapter two of the Nordhoff and Hall Trilogy about Bligh and his officers in the open boat.
The Kleiss interview is online. I’ll look for it, it’s pretty entertaining.
As far as why it went the way it did, a very productive discussion. My overview is that the Japanese just took too many risks and inevitably suffered for the resultant glitches.
I don’t think Walter Lord quite has it correct, although his account is pretty valuable.
And of course maybe McClusky had it right. The Devil’s math. Whats a couple of dozen aviators and a dozen aircraft lost when you destroy the enemies fleet? Maybe that last 30 minutes in search of the carriers took a fighter pilots mentality.
Cool! Looking forward to that one. One of my brothers finished basic training and came home on leave and we went to see Midway in sensurround. Opening footage under the wing of a B-25 Doolittle raider ready launch. I remeber the seats shaking. I imagine my 7.1 surround will deliver when it comes out to rent!
I recently read a book, The Midway Inquest. In that, the author certainly took issue with Shattered Sword and the premise of the Japanese being doomed to fail. The author there detailed how the unintended timing made the difference in success or failure to the US side in a most convincing presentation of factual points.
No, neither Lord, nor Prange, has it quite correct. But then again, neither does Shattered Sword. Each well researched book on the battle sheds more light on that morning. One I still need to read is “The First Team”.
The recent Japanese movies that include Midway portions, but are not solely focused upon the battle are “The Eternal Zero”, which is essentially the tale of a Zero pilot thru the war, and “The Admiral” (I think that is the English name for the film), about Admiral Yamamoto.
I would enjoy watching any of these movies as long as it’s not like Pearl Harbor.
Exactly… from what I’m reading, they are going with the real historical people, as opposed to “inspired by actual events” people of that movie…
Was channel surfing past Pearl Harbor,still cant believe they had the Japanese bombing modern US warships,those scenes were awful,what were they thinking.
Plus all the scenes “borrowed” from Tora,Tora,Tora.
The thing that often bothers me about CG aircraft is that while the aircraft itself looks fine, the kinematics are seldom correct. The aircraft bounce around in ways that real aircraft don’t, and often show the planes during combat staying in a closer formation than reality.
Sort of like movie spacecraft flying through an asteroid belt. If you were in an asteroid belt for real, the next nearest ateriod would probably look like a star, not a resolved object.
Kind of makes me miss the days when folks like Paul Mantz and Frank Tallman flew converted Texans in the movies.
CG just doesn’t much do it for me.
Oh definitely! Compare Battle of Britain or Blue Max to Pearl Harbor or Flyboys.
But considering that there are but a handful of airworthy SBDs and zero TBDs above the ocean floor today, sometimes we have to go with the CGI. The carriers look beautiful in the previews.
The main thing is for the CGI nerds to dial back on the stuff they are trying to show in a single viewpoint.
It looks interesting for sure, but I hope it’s not like Pearl Harbor.
‘From the director of Independence Day’
‘Directed by Roland Emmerich’
You pretty much lost me right there…
He has done some good movies- but his track record recently hasn’t been anything to brag about. Looks like ‘Pearl Harbor’ with more CGI.
There is hope… far more than if Michael Bay was at the helm… or Jar Jar Abrams. Now if it was Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson, the odds would be more favorable for a great film.
I think the movie looks really entertaining.
On another forum (non-modeling site), I am a part of a thread discussing this movie. The consensus seems to be that (a) Emmerich has never made anything worth seeing and (b) the CGI is garbage. I disagree with the first of those. Independence Day was a really good one, and I think The Patriot is underrated despite its loose connection to actual history. This version of Midway looks, at least, like the producers have studied some of the history of the battle by including correct aircraft like the TBD Devastator.
So that gets me to the CGI. It seems the producers have a few options for depicting such a battle. Option A would be prohibitively expensive - find a few Devastators (and other aircraft, like a Val or Kate, not the fake ones we see flying at US airshows every year), restore them to flying condition and use them in the movie. And with that expense, they would never be able to accurately depict the fate of Torpedo Squadron 6.
Option B - build a bunch of models like in Star Wars
Option C - use CGI to depict the aircraft involved in the battle.
B could be a good option, certainly, but I think Hollywood just goes with CGI because it doesn’t involve the expense of a model shop. Not really sure why CGI is so favored as I’m not involved in the business of making movies.
So does the CGI in the preview look real, or not? I’m really not able to definitely state that the producers have overdone a Dauntless dive bombing on a Jap ship, as I’ve never done it. To my eyes it all looks quite good. The only thing I’d perhaps have some mis-givings over is the shot of Zeros strafing guys on the ground by flying between buildings and beneath power lines and palm trees. Yeah, I doubt that. But I’m willing to overlook that if they make a movie that actually presents the battle as it unfolded with more-or-less accurate aircraft. No F6F Hellcats ditching in the sea as in the original Midway movie (or the even more hilarious F9F Panther nosecone rolling out of the conflagration of Charleton Heston’s crash against the carrier deck in a Dauntless).
Count me as seeing this opening weekend (and it’s good timing in that the Aggies have a bye week the weekend that this one comes out, so no college football conflicts for me).
You make good points gentlemen.
To be honest I guess I’m a bit unfairly biased againt Emmerich. He’s the guy that directed and wrote the screenplay for Hollywood’s 1998 ‘Godzilla’ aka the one with Matthew Broderick. As a kaiju fan I hate this movie. And Emmerich’s attitude that Godzilla was stupid and that he was going to reinvent the whole thing rankled me…
And to clarify I love CGI. The whole idea of using the correct aircraft instead of an abomination of stock footage like the original ‘Midway’ fills me with glee. The problem is as it was pointed out above with ‘Flyboys’ is since the aircraft aren’t real there is a habit of having them pull off manuvers that no real plane could ever do.
And typical movie excess. King Kong fought a T.rex in the original movie. In Peter Jackson’s version he fought three. Why have five Zeros when we can just as easy stick fifty or even five hundred in a scene? ‘Star Wars’ at most had a dozen spacecraft on the screen at one time and most people would agree that it was better than the prequels and Disney movies with a zillion things zipping around at one time. More stuff on the screen does not make a better movie.
Anyway, thanks Stikpusher for posting this. I’d not heard about the movie. And Aggieman, I’m going to cross my fingers and hope it’s a good film.
I’m on the minority I’m sure, but I loved Pearl Harbor. It’s one of the movies that got me into modeling again. I look forward to this movie and I’m glad they are doing WW2 stuff again on the big screen. Now we need a remake of the Battle of Britain!
It should be intertaining.