Pearl Harbor (film)

Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American romantic war drama film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer and written by Randall Wallace. Starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Colm Feore, and Alec Baldwin, the film features a heavily fictionalized version of the attack on Pearl Harbor, focusing on a love story set amidst the lead up to the attack, its aftermath, and the Doolittle Raid.
The film was a box office success, grossing $59 million in its opening weekend and $449.2 million worldwide, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2001. It received generally negative reviews from critics, although there was praise for the visual effects, action sequences, and music score. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning in the category of Best Sound Editing. It was also nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture.
In 1923, in Tennessee, two best friends, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, play together in the back of an old biplane, pretending to be fighting airmen.
In 1941, as World War II rages, Danny and Rafe are both first lieutenants under the command of Major Jimmy Doolittle. Doolittle informs Rafe that he has been accepted into the Eagle Squadron (an RAF outfit for American pilots during the Battle of Britain). A nurse named Evelyn Johnson passes Rafe's medical exam despite his dyslexia, and the two strike up a relationship. Four weeks later, Rafe and Evelyn, now deeply in love, enjoy an evening of dancing at a nightclub and later a jaunt in the New York harbor in a borrowed police boat. Rafe shocks Evelyn by saying that he has joined the Eagle Squadron and is leaving the next day. During a mission to intercept a Luftwaffe bombing raid, Rafe is shot down over the English Channel and is presumed killed in action. Danny and Evelyn mourn Rafe's death together, which spurs a romance between the two.
Meanwhile, Japan prepares to attack the US Pacific Fleet, deciding the best way to do so would be a decisive strike on the Pearl Harbor naval base.
On the night of December 6, Evelyn is shocked to discover Rafe standing outside her door, having survived his downing and the ensuing months trapped in Nazi-occupied France. Rafe, in turn, discovers Danny's romance with Evelyn and leaves for the Hula bar, where he is welcomed back by his overjoyed fellow pilots. Danny finds a drunken Rafe in the bar with the intention of reconciling, but the two get into a fight. They drive away, avoiding being put in the brig when the military police arrive at the bar. The two fall asleep in Danny's car.
Next morning, on December 7, the Imperial Japanese Navy begins its attack on Pearl Harbor. The US Pacific Fleet is severely damaged in the surprise attack, and most of the defending airfields are obliterated before they are able to launch fighters to defend the harbor. Rafe and Danny take off in P-40 fighter planes, and they shoot down several of the attacking planes. They later assist in the rescue of the crew of the capsized USS Oklahoma, but are too late to save the crew of the obliterated USS Arizona.
The next day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivers his Day of Infamy Speech to the nation and requests that the US Congress declare a state of war with the Empire of Japan. The survivors attend a memorial service to honor the numerous dead. Danny and Rafe are both assigned to travel stateside under Doolittle, though they are not told why. Before they leave, Evelyn reveals to Rafe that she is pregnant with Danny's child. Evelyn reassures Rafe she loved him in the past and will love him her whole life, but says she is ready to give Danny her "whole heart" and have their family together.
Danny and Rafe are both promoted to captain and awarded the Silver Star for their actions at Pearl Harbor, and Doolittle asks them to volunteer for a secret mission. During the next three months, Rafe, Danny and other pilots train for ultra-short takeoffs with specially modified B-25 Mitchell bombers. In April, the raiders are sent toward Japan on board USS Hornet. Their mission is to bomb Tokyo, after which they will land in China. The mission is successful, but Rafe's and Danny's planes run out of fuel and crash in Japanese-occupied territory in China. A gunfight ensues between the raiders and Japanese ground troops, and Danny is mortally wounded shielding Rafe before the group are rescued by Chinese soldiers. Desperately trying to will Danny back to life, Rafe tearfully reveals to Danny, "you're going to be a father." With his last breath, Danny replies, "No, you are."
After the war, Rafe and Evelyn, now married, visit Danny's grave with Evelyn's son, named Danny after his biological father. Rafe then asks his stepson if he would like to go flying, and they fly off into the sunset in the old biplane that Rafe's father once owned.
Although not intended to be an entirely accurate depiction of events, the film includes portrayals of several historical figures:
The proposed budget of $208 million that Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer wanted was an area of contention with Walt Disney Studios executives, since a great deal of the budget was to be expended on production aspects. The budget was eventually reduced to $140 million. Even at the reduced budget, Disney managed to get many of the crew and others to defer some of their pay until the film grossed in the region of $140 million. This included the director of photography, the editor, production designer and lighting director and their departments deferring around $5 to $10 million as well as Panavision, Technicolor and Industrial Light & Magic also agreeing to deferrals. Bay also deferred his salary but he and Bruckheimer were the only ones to receive profit participation.
Also controversial was the effort to change the film's rating from R to PG-13. Bay initially wanted to graphically portray the horrors of war and was not interested in primarily marketing the final product to a teen and young adult audience. However, even though he wanted to make an R-rated movie, Bay admitted that the problem was that young children would not be able to see it, and he felt that they should. As such, when he was ordered by Disney to make a PG-13 film, he didn't argue. As a compromise, he was allowed to release an R-rated Director's Cut on DVD later on in 2002. Budget fights continued throughout the planning of the film, with Bay "walking" on several occasions. Dick Cook, chairman of Disney at the time, said "I think Pearl Harbor was one of the most difficult shoots of modern history."
In order to recreate the atmosphere of pre-war Pearl Harbor, the producers staged the film in Hawaii and used current naval facilities. Many active duty military members stationed in Hawaii and members of the local population served as extras during the filming. The set at Rosarito Beach in the Mexican state of Baja California was used for scale model work as required. Formerly the set of Titanic (1997), Rosarito was the ideal location to recreate the death throes of the battleships in the Pearl Harbor attack. A large-scale model of the bow section of USS Oklahoma mounted on the world's largest gimbal produced an authentic rolling and submerging of the doomed battleship. Production Engineer Nigel Phelps stated that the sequence of the ship rolling out of the water and slapping down would involve one of the "biggest set elements" to be staged. Matched with computer generated imagery, the action had to reflect precision and accuracy throughout. Production was due to commence April 8, 2000 for 85 days.
Michael Fassbender read for the part of Rafe, Fassbender said that Disney sent him a "really nice note" telling him that he didn't get the part. Charlize Theron turned down a role in the film so that she could star in Sweet November.
The vessel most seen in the movie was USS Lexington, representing both USS Hornet and a Japanese carrier. All aircraft take-offs during the movie were filmed on board the Lexington, a museum ship in Corpus Christi, Texas. The aircraft on display were removed for filming and were replaced with film aircraft as well as World War II anti-aircraft turrets. Other ships used in filler scenes included USS Hornet, and USS Constellation during filming for the carrier sequences. Filming was also done on board the museum battleship USS Texas located near Houston, Texas. The Naval Historical Center of the United States army was involved in the production of the film, the Center suggested changing the depiction of Doolittle who they considered to be written as "a boorish, oafish guy", this recommendation was accepted.
The teaser trailer premiered in June 2000 in front of The Patriot's theatrical screenings. Disney premiered the film at Pearl Harbor itself, aboard the active nuclear aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, which made a six-day trip from San Diego to serve as "the world's largest and most expensive outdoor theater". More than 2,000 people attended the premiere on the Stennis, which had special grandstand seating and one of the world's largest movie screens assembled on the flight deck. The guests included various Hawaii political leaders, most of the lead actors from the film, and over 500 news media from around the world that Disney flew in to cover the event. The party was estimated to have cost Disney $5 million.
During its opening weekend, Pearl Harbor generated a total of $59 million, then made $75.1 million during its first four days. At the time, it achieved the second-highest Memorial Day weekend gross, behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The film also had the fourth-highest opening weekend, after the latter film, The Mummy Returns and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. For 15 years, it would have the highest opening weekend for a Ben Affleck film until 2016 when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice surpassed it. When the film was released, it topped the box office, knocking out Shrek. It earned $30 million during its second weekend while staying at the number one spot ahead of the latter film, Moulin Rouge! and The Animal. This was the most recent film to top the box office for multiple weeks until that August when American Pie 2 became the next one to do so. The film would then drop into third place behind Swordfish and Shrek, making $14.9 million.
In Japan, the film opened on 424 screens and grossed $7.2 million in its opening weekend (including $1.6 million in previews), a record for Buena Vista International in Japan, and the sixth highest opening of all-time. Meanwhile, Pearl Harbor generated a three-day gross of $4.5 million in the United Kingdom, becoming the country's fourth-highest June opening weekend, behind Batman & Robin, The Matrix and The Mummy. It had a record opening in China, grossing $3.9 million in 6 days. The film also made $2.5 million in Mexico, making it the fifth-highest opening for a live-action film in the country, trailing The Phantom Menace, The Mummy Returns, Mission: Impossible 2 and Godzilla. Making $870,000, it was Argentina's second-highest opening of 2001, after Hannibal.
Pearl Harbor grossed $198,542,554 at the US and Canadian box office and $250,678,391 overseas for a worldwide total of $449,220,945, making this the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2001. It is also the third-highest-grossing romantic drama film of all time, as of January 2013, behind Titanic and Ghost.
Pearl Harbor was released on VHS and DVD on December 4, 2001 by Buena Vista Home Entertainment (under the Touchstone Home Video label). Both home video versions are THX certified, featuring a historical documentary and a music video, while also having the film split into two parts. The VHS release has two separate cassettes and comes with widescreen and fullscreen versions. As for the DVD release, it includes two separate discs that feature the first and second halves of the film, along with Dolby Headphone and DTS audio tracks. In its first week, the film sold more than 7 million units and made more than $130 million in retail sales.
On July 2, 2002, Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the film on an R-rated four-disc Director's Cut DVD, which included about a minute of additional footage. This release also features three audio commentaries. The first one has Michael Bay and Jeanine Basinger, which was recorded 250 hours after the September 11 attacks.
At the 5th Annual DVD awards, Pearl Harbor won the Best Audio Presentation category, tying with Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Pearl Harbor holds an approval rating of 24% based on 194 reviews, with an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Pearl Harbor tries to be the Titanic of war movies, but it's just a tedious romance filled with laughably bad dialogue. The 40-minute action sequence is spectacular though." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100 based on 35 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film one and a half stars, writing: "Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialogue, it will not be because you admire them." Ebert also criticized the liberties the film took with historical facts: "There is no sense of history, strategy or context; according to this movie, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because America cut off its oil supply, and they were down to an 18-month reserve. Would going to war restore the fuel sources? Did they perhaps also have imperialist designs? Movie doesn't say." In his later "Great Movies" essay on Lawrence of Arabia, Ebert likewise wrote, "What you realize watching Lawrence of Arabia is that the word 'epic' refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God didn't cost as much as the catering in Pearl Harbor, but it is an epic, and Pearl Harbor is not." Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine gave the film one out of four stars and wrote, "Middlingly racist, humorless, and downright inept, Pearl Harbor is solely for fans of fireworks factories."
A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "Nearly every line of the script drops from the actors' mouths with the leaden clank of exposition, timed with bad sitcom beats." Mike Clark of USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "Ships, planes and water combust and collide in Pearl Harbor, but nothing else does in one of the wimpiest wartime romances ever filmed."
In his review for The Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, "although this Walt Disney movie is based, inspired and even partially informed by a real event referred to as Pearl Harbor, the movie is actually based on the movies Top Gun, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan. Don't get confused." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine wrote, "Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale – a British actress without a single worthy line to wrap her credible American accent around – are attractive actors, but they can't animate this moldy romantic triangle." Time magazine's Richard Schickel criticized the love triangle: "It requires a lot of patience for an audience to sit through the dithering. They're nice kids and all that, but they don't exactly claw madly at one another. It's as if they know that someday they're going to be part of "the Greatest Generation" and don't want to offend Tom Brokaw. Besides, megahistory and personal history never integrate here." Robert W. Butler of The Kansas City Star wrote, "The dialogue is so unrelentingly banal as to make one reconsider whether James Cameron's writing on Titanic was really all that bad."
Entertainment Weekly was more positive, giving the film a "B−" rating, and Owen Gleiberman praised the Pearl Harbor attack sequence: "Bay's staging is spectacular but also honorable in its scary, hurtling exactitude. ... There are startling point-of-view shots of torpedoes dropping into the water and speeding toward their targets, and though Bay visualizes it all with a minimum of graphic carnage, he invites us to register the terror of the men standing helplessly on deck, the horrifying split-second deliverance as bodies go flying and explosions reduce entire battleships to liquid walls of collapsing metal."
In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "here is the ironic twist in my acceptance of Pearl Harbor – the parts I liked most are the parts before and after the digital destruction of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese carrier planes" and felt that "Pearl Harbor is not so much about World War II as it is about movies about World War II. And what's wrong with that?"
Critics in Japan received the film more positively than in most countries with one likening it to Gone with the Wind set during World War II and another describing it as more realistic than Tora! Tora! Tora!
In 2023, Rolling Stone cited Bay's direction of Pearl Harbor as one of the fifty worst decisions in film history. Andy Greene described it as a less successful attempt to replicate the success of Titanic and Bay's previous film, Armageddon.
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning in the category of Best Sound Editing. It was also nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture. This marked the first occurrence of a Worst Picture-nominated film winning an Academy Award; it is also the only film directed by Bay to win an Academy Award.
Like many historical dramas, Pearl Harbor provoked debate about the artistic license taken by its producers and director. National Geographic Channel produced a documentary called Beyond the Movie: Pearl Harbor detailing some of the ways that "the film's final cut didn't reflect all the attacks' facts, or represent them all accurately". The film was ranked number three on Careeraftermilitary.com's "10 Most Inaccurate Military Movies Ever Made," which also included The Patriot, The Hurt Locker, U-571, The Green Berets, Windtalkers, Battle of the Bulge, Red Tails, Enemy at the Gates and Flyboys on its list of falsified war movie productions.
Many Pearl Harbor survivors dismissed the film as grossly inaccurate and pure Hollywood. In an interview done by Frank Wetta, producer Jerry Bruckheimer was quoted saying: "We tried to be accurate, but it's certainly not meant to be a history lesson." Historian Lawrence Suid's review is particularly detailed as to the major factual misrepresentations of the film and the negative impact they have even on an entertainment film, as he notes that "the very name of the film implies that audiences will be witnessing a historic event, accurately rendered."
The Battle of Britain had already ended in October 1940 whereas the film has it still happening in early 1941 with dogfights over the English Channel.
Critics decried the use of fictional replacements for real people, declaring that Pearl Harbor was an "abuse of artistic license." The roles the two male leads have in the attack sequence are analogous to the real historical deeds of United States Army Air Forces Second Lieutenants George Welch and Kenneth M. Taylor, who took to the skies in P-40 Warhawk aircraft during the Japanese attack and, together, claimed six Japanese aircraft and a few probables. Taylor called the film "a piece of trash... over-sensationalized and distorted."
The scene following the attack on Pearl Harbor, where President Roosevelt demands an immediate retaliatory strike on the soil of Japan, did not happen as portrayed in the film. Admiral Chester Nimitz and General George Marshall are seen denying the possibility of an aerial attack on Japan, but in real life they actually advocated such a strike. Another inconsistency in this scene is when President Roosevelt (who was at this time in his life, stricken and confined to a wheelchair due to his disease, Guillain–Barré syndrome or Polio) is able to stand up to challenge his staff's distrust in a strike on Japan, which never really happened.
The portrayal of the planning of the Doolittle Raid, the air raid itself, and the raid's aftermath, is considered one of the most historically inaccurate portions of the film. In the film, Jimmy Doolittle and the rest of the Doolittle raiders had to launch from USS Hornet 624 miles off the Japanese coast and after being spotted by a few Japanese patrol boats. In actuality, the Doolittle raiders had to launch 650 miles off the Japanese coast and after being spotted by only one Japanese patrol boat. The film shows all the bombers arriving in formation over Japan, despite the real concerns over fuel when the planes have to take off prematurely. It actually took one hour to launch the 16 planes, each setting out on its own course, and at no time did the planes flew together before, during, or after the attack. In the film, the only raiders shown in the raid are depicted as dropping their bombs on Tokyo, with some of the bomb blasts obliterating entire buildings. In actuality, the Doolittle raiders did bomb Tokyo but also targeted three other industrial cities, and the damage inflicted was minimal. Prior to the raid a chalkboard containing plans for the raid does accurately reflect other destination cities, but this is mostly obscured from view and never discussed in the dialogue. The firefight with Japanese soldiers after the raiders crash-land in China is entirely fictionalized, whereas the actual smuggling of the pilots back to the United States was omitted.
The soundtrack to Pearl Harbor on Hollywood Records was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (Moulin Rouge! won). The original score was composed by Hans Zimmer. The song "There You'll Be" was nominated for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.