Product: Midway (Collector's Edition) (1976)
Rating: 1.0
A Dismal, Cheap Production
I saw this in the theaters when it first came out in ,76. I was so excited (I was in the eighth grade). But as I got older and wiser, the cracks in this movie started to show. Over time, those cracks seemed to me to be gaping maws. I don't fault the actors, most did fine, I still think. It was the filmmakers. They assumed that audiences were either stupid or that they wouldn't notice things. In short, they were lazy and had no respect for the audience.For example, "Midway" uses stock footage from three films. "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," "Away All Boats" and of course most heavily, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" And of course, documentary footage made during the war."Thirty Seconds" supplied the Doolittle raid sequence (which opens "Midway"), "Away All Boats" supplied the scene with the Zero crashing into the "Yorktown," and of course, most 90% of the rest came from "Tora!"During the real battle, the Navy used Wildcats, but in the movie, Hellcats are seen frequently. But to me, the most egregious error is that Charlton Heston's character, "Matt Garth," a fictional creation (I don't like fictional characters playing major roles in actual historical events), flies three different planes for the last mission to attack the final Japanese flattop, "Hiryu." He boards a Dauntless, takes off in a TBM Avenger and crashes in a Helldiver (or a Hellcat, it's been a long time since I've last seen this movie).You don't have to be anal to notice these kinds of things. It was 1970's Hollywood at its laziest and frankly, worst. I can take stock footage, "Midway" was hardly the first film to make use of it, but it was the manner that they did it. Just because the footage was made during the war doesn't always mean accuracy. There's plenty of footage of Dauntlesses and Wildcats taking off from carrier decks. But the editors seemed to just throw anything in with the attitude of "Just put something in, the audience won't be able to tell the difference anyway!" Which is insulting.So, this movie has aged rather badly, which is a great shame. The Battle of Midway deserves a good filmed treatment. Sadly, this isn't it.