Midway (2019)

(photo source: Wikipedia)

 

I know this is a bit late, since it is now 2021 and the film was released in 2019. Still, I finally managed to get down to watching Midway, which one would supposed is about the Battle of Midway. However, it covered a lot more than that, starting with events before World War Two and spending quite a bit of time on the attack of Pearl Harbor.

Having done a bit of research into the Battle of Midway during my academy days because I had to write a paper on it, I am very familiar with the events and I think the movie broadly was accurate in the key points. Of course, it is Hollywood, so the movie needed to add in some romantic elements, which I personally thought was irrelevant. Instead, that screen time could have been better spent on other events in the battle which were skipped over.

And while it looks dramatic to have many ships fill the screen and lots of flake up in the air with tracers all over the place... the truth is, ships did not sail in such close formation. It is simply not practical to be sailing in tight formation during battle because you end up in each other's way. Yes, this was the age of guns, not missiles, so a carrier's escort screen needed to be close to protect the carrier. But not too close; it is very hard for an escort to fire if missing an enemy aircraft could instead mean hitting a friendly ship.

Also, it could be still the age of guns, and you expect ships to be firing a lot of flake up in the air for air defence. But... it is not easy to load those 40mm shells. You just cannot put up a constant barrage of so many rounds up in the air at all times, because it is not physically possible. Even modern guns with RFMs would be hard pressed to maintain such a constant high rate of fire.

The part where a dive bomber flew all the way till almost the deck to drop its bomb in the red sun (painted more like a bull's eye) on the deck of a Japanese aircraft carrier was just plain drama. A WW2-era plane that tried to pull out from such a dive would probably disintegrate due to the G force.

In short, the aerial battle was more fiction and drama than real. In other types of movies, that may be fine, and maybe even good. But in a movie based on a historical event, a lack of realism and too much fiction/drama may hinder the movie's rewatch value. Yes, it is nice to watch the first time, but few would think of watching it again, since it is just about action and there is nothing else you can gain from it. Might as well go watch an Avengers movie or something else.

The 1976 Midway also had a romantic element to it. I guess I still prefer Tora! Tora! Tora! in terms of how it portrayed the historical event of the attack on Pearl Harbor.