Roland Emmerich’s Midway sits on the critics scale of greatness somewhere halfway between “What were they thinking when they made this?” and “God-awful.” It’s a film hoping to capitalize on nostalgia while completely forgetting to include other foundational pillars of great movies like basic storytelling, coherent dialogue, and acting.
Midway is a film that utterly fails in retelling the story of the 1942 Battle of Midway in which American fighters launched an operation that sank several Japanese warships and marked a turning point in the Pacific theater during World War II. Yet, the movie under-delivers.
This is shameful, considering the movie has a star-studded cast. Assembling Dennis Quaid, Woody Harrelson, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, viewers might have expected some imagination of the Battle of Midway with numerous, interesting snippets of the heroes, mini-developments that give viewers unique perspective on men Hollywood hasn’t committed to the big screen yet. Instead, we get nonsensical flashes between a variety of unrelated scenes from Washington to Tokyo to Pearl Harbor to Midway that are meant to be building momentum but actually leave viewers scratching their heads wondering what was the point of that?
The complete misuse of talent is nothing compared to the complete lack of respect for the men of our armed forces. For one, this film treats every line of dialogue, especially momentous ones, as if every U.S. serviceman speaks in clichés and bad tropes as though they called up Vin Diesel’s character in Fast & Furious to describe the scene, and he gave the writers a line of dialogue off the top of his head. Further, the scenes meant to show courage or instill fortitude in the brave airmen ring hollow as the rousing — let’s go fight to protect the homeland — are actually lines to the effect of “yeah I guess everybody dies someday” or “hey man if you’re not brave enough to go up again and attack a Japanese force that is on its heels, I totally get it, but man we could really use the help.”
Midway treats the military as if they’re all uncourageous morons with exclusively New York or South Carolina accents.
If this treatment only bordered on the shameful, the closing scene left no doubt about how the film should be viewed. Before the film goes black, there is a line that flashes across the screen: “This film is dedicated to the Americans and Japanese who fought at Midway. The sea remembers its own.”
What? We just witnessed a longish retelling of Midway in which Americans sought revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the movie splits the dedication between the Americans and the Japanese? This would be beyond tone-deaf for anyone with any cursory knowledge of the Japanese during World War II — a fighting force at the time known for the Nanjing Massacre, torture of American POWs, and Pearl Harbor (and that’s just off the top of my head). Frankly, I am surprised that China-backed Starlight Media and Shanghai Ruyi Entertainment allowed that line to make it in the film. Sure, our relationship has improved dramatically since World War II (thanks for the cherry blossoms by the way), but for a historical film, yikes.
This movie could have been likeable and a consideration of a turning point in a war where the United States fought on multiple fronts against tyranny and fascism with snapshots of historical figures, their friends and spouses, who fought courageously and died heroically. But instead, audiences got a cringe-worthy historical drama filled with awkward moments. As the credits rolled, I couldn’t help but thinking I would have had a more enjoyable time during the movie had I just read the Wikipedia page for the Battle of Midway on my phone.
Tyler Grant (@TyGregoryGrant) is a Young Voices contributor, who completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan. He writes movie reviews for the Washington Examiner.
