"Midway" : The Battle of Midway Atoll

Director Roland Emmerich, who made a name for himself in science fiction disaster films, turned back to the historical genre. Emmerich's new painting Midway tells the story of the most important of the Second World War battles in the Pacific - the Battle of Midway Atoll.

What does the average Ukrainian know about World War II in the Pacific theater of operations? Pearl Harbor, Torah! Torah! Torah! ”, The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that's all. The Battle of Midway will be called only by people interested in military history. But this battle, which can be conditionally called American Stalingrad, had a decisive influence not only on the course of the war in the Pacific, but also on the battles on the fields of Europe. If the Americans had lost at Midway, they would have had to think about the defense of the US west coast, and not about lend-lease supplies or landings in Italy and France. History would have taken a completely different path.

Thank God that the United States won a decisive victory, exchanging one of its aircraft carriers for four Japanese ones and showing the enemy that the defeats at Pearl Harbor and in the Coral Sea did not break the spirit of the American fleet. It was the first major US victory in World War II to turn the tide of the Pacific War. Moreover, this naval battle, the second in history in which the enemy fleets did not come into direct visual contact and did not fire a single direct shot at each other, determined the US naval strategy in the second half of the 20th century. Aircraft carrier strike groups based on 11 operating aircraft carriers remain the backbone of the American fleet to this day. But back to the Midway movie.

All of Roland Emmerich's films made after 2009, that is, after the 2012 disaster film , have become real financial disasters. Not a bad overall Anonymous grossed a paltry $ 15 million with a budget of $ 30 million. The White House Down action movie about the assassination attempt on the US president was unlucky with the release date - it came out three months after Olympus Has Fallen with a similar storyline. The drama Stonewall grossed only $ 292,203 worldwide. Independence Day: Resurgence can be called conditionally successful , and even then, fees of $ 390 million with a budget of $ 165 million cannot be called fantastic. By today's standards, a movie needs to earn two of its budgets to achieve ROI.

Understandably, with such financial indicators, large companies were in no hurry to entrust Emmerich with another $ 125 million, so the director turned to independent investors and, having slightly cut his appetites, raised about $ 100 million for the film. So, among other things, Midway became one of the the most expensive independent films in the history of cinema. Moreover, a quarter of the amount came from Chinese investors, it is for this reason that a scene in China appeared in the film, however, it is historically accurate and related to the events near the Midway Atoll.

It can be conditionally considered that Midway is a direct continuation of Michaelbay's Pearl Harbor . The same scope, an abundance of pyrotechnics and visual effects, a little less emphasis on military families. Actually, the film begins with the attack of the Japanese fleet on Pearl Harbor.

Roland Emmerich and screenwriter Wes Took are very careful with historical material. In Midway, both the events preceding the battle (the attack on Pearl Harbor, the appointment of Admiral Nimitz to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, the battle in the Coral Sea) and the chronology of the Midway battle itself are shown quite reliably.

There is everything here: Joseph Rochforth's work on deciphering the Japanese code JN-25b, and fake reports of problems with drinking water, and the persistence of intelligence chief Edward Leighton, and the minute-by-minute flight schedule of American aircraft, and two suicidal attacks by Lieutenant Dick Best, and a miss the Nautilus boats, and the fatal rearmament order that cost the Japanese navy dear, and even director John Ford, filming the film,Five Came Back ). In short, if desired, Midway can be used as an additional teaching aid in history lessons. Yes, some moments here are overly dramatized, but the events are presented very accurately as for a feature film.

Actually, the problem with Midway is that the picture looks like a visualization of the Wikipedia article on the battle for Midway. Dry, precise and straightforward. But this is still a feature film, and not one of the episodes of the series "The Greatest Battles of the Second World War." I would like to see living people behind the stereotyped figures of officers on the screen, their emotions, feelings, hopes. Unfortunately, there is none of this in Emmerich's Midway, just insipid presentation of facts and extremely flat characters who speak platitudes. What Christopher Nolan did in Dunkirk - to show the war through the eyes of living people, was not possible for Emmerich, who spent time and funding on visuals instead of a script. And if you really empathize with every character of Nolan, then the heroes of Emmerich almost do not evoke emotions.

This is doubly offensive, because a really good company has gathered on the set of Midway. There are well-deserved "old men" like Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid and Aaron Eckhart; and talented young actors Ed Skrein, Luke Kleintank and Alexander Ludwig. Unfortunately, there is nothing to play with either one or the other in Midway.

Although Emmerich had to cut the film's budget by $ 25 million, sacrificing a number of battle scenes, most of the director's money, as usual, went to visual effects. And they give rise to an ambiguous impression. The same scenes of air battles and maneuvering of fighters between cars look too pretentious and unnatural. At the same time, the image of the attack of bombers and torpedo bombers on the Japanese fleet impresses with the richness of the picture and tragedy and is somewhat reminiscent of the battle scenes from ... Star Wars and the same Independence Day. Yes, it seems that Emmerich again filmed Independence Day, only now in the surroundings of World War II and with the Japanese instead of aliens.

It is surprising that for all the importance of the Battle of Midway to the history of the United States, Emmerich's film is only the second feature film dedicated to these events. Jack Smythe's previous film was released in 1976, in which the great Henry Fonda played the role of Admiral Nimitz, he himself served in the Pacific Fleet during World War II and voiced the same documentary by John Ford, filmed during the actual Battle of Midway. Midway (1976) grossed $ 43.2 million at the box office, which, taking into account inflation, clearly exceeds the receipts of Midway (2019) - $ 75 million. The film will clearly not pay off, and Emmerich will finally fall out of favor with large studios.

And yet ... Midway (2019) is not bad enough to refuse to watch it. This is a correct historical drama and, in general, not the worst war film, very appropriate for distribution in a country that has been at war with a strong and insidious adversary for five years now.

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