The Best Cinematic Account of Midway

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2019)

Historians classify the battle of Midway in 1942 as the turning point of World War II in the Pacific. Since invading Manchuria in 1931, the Japanese had been on a roll. This runaway success lost momentum on June 7th, just six months after their surprise attack on December 7th devastated Pearl Harbor. The earliest movie about Midway appeared in September 1942. Renowned Hollywood director John Ford lensed battlefield footage of the Midway attack for an 18-minute documentary. Indeed, Ford filmed the bombs as they fell! Later, director Henry Hathaway's "Wing and A Prayer" (1944) was the first Hollywood feature-length film about this landmark battle. Audiences would have to wait until 1976, when Universal Pictures released director Jack Smight's "Midway," starring Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, and Glenn Ford to commemorate this extraordinary victory. Ironically, German director Roland Emmerich's "Midway" qualifies as the best version of the battle. Apart from Ford's documentary, no movie about the Midway victory has bristled with the amount of historical content as Emmerich's film. Mind you, no movie can ever claim to be 100 percent authentic. For example, the U.S. carrier-based planes were the wrong color, and the decks of Japanese flattops weren't painted the color yellow. Nevertheless, Emmerich's epic clearly tops anything done about this Japanese defeat. Every character is based on an actual individual. Virtually every line of dialogue contains material about the battle. Hampered by an inadequate budget, Emmerich and freshman scenarist Wes Tooke have done a commendable job of depicting the clash from both American and Japanese perspectives.
Unfortunately, this ambitious depiction is as comprehensive as most armchair admirals would probably prefer. Of course, money dictates everything in Hollywood. Reportedly, the most expensive independent film in history, "Midway" boasted a budget of a $100 million, but it wasn't adequate to cover the whole fracas. Comparably, "Midway" (1976) relied chiefly on recycled war movie footage and vintage newsreels spliced into star-studded command post scenes to recreate a fight which Universal Pictures could hardly have afforded on its relatively modest budget. Meantime, Emmerich's dramatization created authentic-looking, computer-generated imagery to immortalize this seemingly implausible American triumph. Three U.S. Navy aircraft carriers participated at Midway. Emmerich concentrates on the U.S.S. Hornet and the U.S.S. Enterprise, but he relegates the U.S.S. Yorktown to the periphery. Furthermore, the film omits one of Midway's greatest heroes: Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, who led a squadron of 15 Douglas TBD-1 Devastator torpedo planes from the Hornet. Tragically, the Japanese slaughtered Waldron's squadron. One of Waldron's fliers--Ensign George Gay--survived this catastrophe. Ditching in the ocean, Gay had a ringside seat to watch his compatriots sink a Japanese aircraft carrier.
In "Midway," Emmerich intersperses scenes of the codebreakers at Pearl Harbor with scenes aboard the aircraft carriers Hornet and Enterprise. After the debacle of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt orders Admiral Chester Nimitz (Woody Harrelson of "Zombieland") to destroy the Japanese Imperial Navy and take the U.S. Navy into Tokyo Bay. Nimitz relies on Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton (Patrick Wilson of "The Conjuring") and Navy Intelligence cryptologists. They intercepted enemy radio messages and then predicted where they thought the Japanese might strike. Meantime, the film shifts from war councils to a rivalry between Navy aviators Wade McClusky (Luke Evans of "Dracula Untold") and Richard 'Dick' Best (Ed Skrein of "Deadpool"), who commanded two bomb squadrons. Back at Pearl Harbor, Best's wife Ana (Mandy Moore of "47 Meters Down") worries about her husband.
Otherwise, "Midway" ranks as an old-fashioned World War II epic like "The Longest Day" (1962), the D-Day classic featuring a star-studded cast headlined by John Wayne. The battle of Midway is reminiscent of the desperate attack on the Death Star in George Lucas' classic sci-fi saga "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" (1977). Lucas patterned "Star Wars" in some respects on several World War II era battles. At the time of this Pacific War battle, the U.S. Navy was struggling for survival against a clearly superior enemy that had out-numbered, out-gunned, and out-fought them. If you reviewed the battle on paper, the Japanese enjoyed an overwhelming edge. The Japanese were forged in fire and seasoned by experience, something their American adversaries lacked. Our planes couldn't match the legendary Japanese Zero fighter planes. These Zeroes descended in swarms onto the American pilots and shot them to ribbons. Just as Pearl Harbor had been a military intelligence failure for America, the Japanese underestimated not only the American fighting spirit but also our unwillingness to capitulate. Early in "Midway," Japanese Admiral Yamamoto describes the U.S. as "a sleeping giant" waiting to be awakened. Yamamoto knew Japan couldn't survive a drawn-out war with America and its industrial superiority. Therefore, he planned Midway as a stroke to destroy what remained of the U.S. Navy fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor.
Unlike "Midway" (1976), Emmerich and Took have put the famous battle into the context of World War II. Layton chats with Yamamoto before the Japanese created the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." Later, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor without warning and sink the battleship U.S.S. Arizona. Best loses a beloved Annapolis roommate. Meanwhile, Admiral William F. Halsey (Dennis Quaid of "Wyatt Earp"), suffers from a mysterious skin ailment, and Nimitz packs him off to the hospital. He replaces Halsey with Admiral Raymond Spruance (Jake Webber of "Meet Joe Black") who distinguishes himself, despite his lack of knowledge about aircraft carriers. The combat aerial scenes are breathtaking, especially when we are looking over a tail assembly of an American SBD Dauntless dive bomber before it plunges from several thousand feet to bomb a Japanese carrier. Clocking in at two hours and 18 minutes, "Midway" teems with fascinating details. For example, U.S. torpedoes were unreliable. Often, they bounced harmlessly off the hulls of Japanese ships without exploding. War movie buffs, military veterans, and historians are going to salute "Midway" for its factual approach and its meticulous reenactment.