Saw the new "Midway" movie yesterday

[Mike999]

I liked it. I'm glad they didn't take the "Pearl Harbor" approach, with a lousy rom-com grafted onto a war movie.  Which is also sort of what the 1976 "Midway" movie did.

This "Midway" mostly sticks to real people and events. If you've seen the previews, you already know it covers the Pearl Harbor attack, the Doolittle raid on Tokyo and finally the battles of Coral Sea (very briefly) and Midway.

The movie throws in a lot of historical/technical detail about weapons, aircraft etc.  All the Midway events are covered: the code-breakers, the desperate search for the fleets on both sides, etc.  The famous movie director John Ford was filming on Midway during the attacks, and even that's depicted in a couple of short scenes.  

Probably the worst thing about it is everybody's gripe, the CGI. Way too many sparkly tracers shooting around, and WWII aircraft didn't zip thru canyons like Star Wars X-Fighters.  But I can live with that.

On-topic for scale models, sort of:  since there are no Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers left in existence, the movie company built a 1:1 scale replica. After filming, Lionsgate donated the replica to the USS Midway museum.  

 

[OldTrucker]

I won't even go see movies that are using cgi anymore.

I have the original movie and that is good enough for me.

[Snake45]

I thought it looked interesting, but it's getting bad reviews on the Warbird Information Exchange forum. One guy said it makes Pearl Harbor look like a documentary, Ouch. 

I think I'll wait for it to come on cable, or show up in the $10 DVD bin at Walmart. 

[High octane]

Our newspaper gave Midway only one star in their review. Waiting to see the new Ford VS Ferrari movie due out next week.

[cobraman]

My wife and I saw it today. We both liked it.

[Dave Van]

May go Sunday

[StevenGuthmiller]

It's the first movie to be released in the past year that even vaguely interests me.

I love war movies, and even if it's just mediocre, it will undoubtedly be worlds better than another of a thousand horrendous super hero movies!

It's nice to see that SOMEONE will still make an occasional movie that is not a 15th sequel, a remake, or another bad comic book hero flick.

 

 

 

Steve 

[OldTrucker]

9 hours ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

It's the first movie to be released in the past year that even vaguely interests me.

I love war movies, and even if it's just mediocre, it will undoubtedly be worlds better than another of a thousand horrendous super hero movies!

It's nice to see that SOMEONE will still make an occasional movie that is not a 15th sequel, a remake, or another bad comic book hero flick.

 

 

 

Steve 

This is true! LOL

 

[chasracer]

Hmmm, I haven't seen it yet but I am rather sure that people who are for the most part interested in the history of that time period are probably going to be the larger part of its audience. I am sure there are historical issues with the movie, there always are but your younger crowd for the most part isn't going to spend the cash to see it. As far as movie reviews go, most of the time if the review is awful - I really end up liking it and just the opposite usually happens too.  

I was very fortunate to have a good friend at work that was a Marine aviator during WWII in the Pacific Theater. He was the gunner on a TDB but got chewed out regularly for not strafing on the way out of a dive. The reason he didn't was that he was constantly passing out from the g-force but his pilot took pity on him and would drop back to the rear of formation to let him do a "gun check" - that kind of saved his ass.

My friend's name was Charles Lewis, of Buckingham County, Virginia. May he rest in peace and know that a lot of us say "Thank You".

Edited November 12, 2019 by chasracer

[vamach1]

On 11/9/2019 at 9:10 AM, High octane said:

Our newspaper gave Midway only one star in their review. Waiting to see the new Ford VS Ferrari movie due out next week.

Based upon the screenings Ford v. Ferrari should be good and is getting a lot of press and promotion on social media.  Of course Hollywood will embellish here and there but real cars (Superformance replicas) were used in the filming - no CGI.

[Richard Bartrop]

I'm not sure the "good old days" of gussied up Texan standing in for Zeros was all that great either.  The problem isn't so much CGI as bad CGI, and  it's been one of my beefs that so few bother to make their detailed CG models move like they're real, but if you want to show squadrons of period correct planes, it's pretty much the only game in town.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Richard Bartrop

[ToyLvr]

On 11/9/2019 at 11:41 PM, StevenGuthmiller said:

It's the first movie to be released in the past year that even vaguely interests me.

I love war movies, and even if it's just mediocre, it will undoubtedly be worlds better than another of a thousand horrendous super hero movies!

It's nice to see that SOMEONE will still make an occasional movie that is not a 15th sequel, a remake, or another bad comic book hero flick.

 

 

 

Steve 

I liked it.

OK, so it’s not perfect on all of the details, but I agree with Steve that it beats the other stuff.

I was fortunate to see it in a big theatre with the “Surround-Sound” (or whatever you call the sound system these days). Explosions shook the theatre? So, I recommend you see this one on the big screen!

[StevenGuthmiller]

3 minutes ago, ToyLvr said:

I liked it.

OK, so it’s not perfect on all of the details, but I agree with Steve that it beats the other stuff.

I was fortunate to see it in a big theatre with the “Surround-Sound” (or whatever you call the sound system these days). Explosions shook the theatre? So, I recommend you see this one on the big screen!

Strangely enough, there seems to be 3 movies just being released that might actually be worth the price of a theater ticket.

"Midway", "Ford vs Ferrari", and the most recent, "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood".

Not that I'm a huge Mr Rogers fan, but I figure that pretty much everything that Tom Hanks touches is gold!

Likewise, I'm not particularly interested in the whole Ford versus Ferrari racing war thing, but with Matt Damon and Christian Bale..........well, how can you go wrong?

 

 

 

Steve