MIDWAY (1976; 2019)

By taking on the December 7th surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Doolittle’s morale boosting Tokyo Air Raid  and the ‘turning-point’ Battle of Midway in the Pacific (along with abundant Japanese POV coverage of same), Roland Emmerich’s technically up-to-date remake of Jack Smight’s stolid 1976 MIDWAY runs (minus end-credits and tributes) a breathless two hours.  It makes for incipient structural problems that leave you thinking you’ve seen the lead-in to The Battle of Midway and missed the main event.  What keeps it a compelling watch, or does for movie nerds, is a chance to compare and contrast mid-‘70s Corporate Cinema style & standards with today’s Corporate Cinema.  And if the director-generated style of ‘70s cinema is something to mourn, the impersonal side of things favors current product.  (How production standards had dropped from the ‘50s to the ‘70s!)  Old-line studios like Universal loading in sub-par process work & mismatched borrowed footage even worse than today’s overused CGI.  And while we lose the corny father/son personal drama stitched into the earlier film, there’s corny tough-guy dialogue and lame comeback lines in recompense.  All told, the total effect less different than you might expect.  (Though far bigger, if slightly wilted, names in the earlier film.  Here, we get fun up-and-comers.)  The kicker to the comparison?  1976 MIDWAY a big hit.*  2019 MIDWAY?  A caboodle of debt.  Go figure.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For Pearl Harbor and the immediate aftermath, there’s Otto Preminger’s IN HARM’S WAY/’65.  The model ships no longer convince but its cast sure does: John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Henry Fonda, Burgess Meredith, Dana Andrews, Franchot Tone, Carroll O’Connor . . . )  For Doolittle’s Raid, M-G-M’s smoothly corporate THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO/’44.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/thirty-seconds-over-tokyo-1944.html  And for the rest?  John Ford’s shot-on-the-spot documentary (partially recreated here).  Best restored print of THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY found in BECOMING JOHN FORD.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/becoming-john-ford-2007.html 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *To ballyhoo the rollout, Universal installed huge low-bass reproducing woofers in the four corners of many theaters to introduce wall-rumbling ‘Sensurround.'