Product: Midway (Collector's Edition) (1976)
Rating: 4.0
To Some of the Other Reviewers...
The cut sequences, of the Coral Sea campaign and Charlton Heston trying to woo his girlfriend in between helping his son Tom and his participating in the pursuit of the Japanese carriers, were in the TV version, the version that re-enlisted the talents of director Jack Smight and the actors, plus some additions, like Mitchell Ryan as one of the commanders at Coral Sea. This is the version that was released some years after Midway's theatrical release in 1976. Because TV, prior to HDTV, was a 4x3 aspect ratio, so the scenes shot for TV were also shot in 4x3, and the 1976 theatrical release of Midway was shot in 2.35:1 widescreen Panavision, there would have to be some substantial visual re-formatting (top-to-bottom cropping) of the TV scenes to re-format them to 2.35:1 and insert them into the 2.35:1 theatrical version, resulting in serious picture quality degradation and majorly increased grain in the TV scenes. That, to my mind, is the reason a "definitive" long cut, in widescreen, hasn't been released. Maybe, with today's digital film restoration technology, there is some way to restore some clarity to the 4x3 scenes, once cropped, for insertion into the 2.35:1 theatrical version scenes, to restore a "super" long cut of Midway for a future blu-ray release.To the "no surround???" question: Sensurround, the pre-Dolby Stereo process that made you feel, as closely as possible, "you are there" was a MONO process, that merely added a deep bass (.1) track to the monaural signal. The deep bass of Sensurround is in fact here on this DVD, evidenced right away in the opening credits Tokyo bombing.While Universal did create a pseudo-stereo/surround for the DVD release of their earlier produced-in-Sensurround spectacle, Earthquake, apparently, they skimped here. I for one would certainly pay for an expanded STEREO SURROUND Sensurround release of Midway!