Midway
Short description
Midway dramatizes the June 1942 naval battle in the Pacific that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. With the American fleet badly weakened, the Japanese plan another strike meant to finish off the remaining carriers. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, in command of the American forces, sees the fight at the remote Midway atoll as the chance to blunt Japanese superiority. Intelligence officer Edwin T. Layton races to break the enemy's codes so that the outnumbered pilots can meet the offensive. Among them is Lieutenant Richard "Dick" Best, a dive bomber who takes part in the air attacks that decide the outcome.
Roland Emmerich directed the film, the fourteenth of the fifteen features he has made in chronological order, arriving between Independence Day: Resurgence and Moonfall. Wes Tooke wrote the screenplay, and Emmerich produced with Harald Kloser and Mark Gordon. Ed Skrein plays Best, with Patrick Wilson as Layton, Woody Harrelson as Nimitz, Luke Evans as Wade McClusky and Mandy Moore as Anne Best. Ninety actors and 255 crew members are credited.
Released in 2019, the film cost about 100 million dollars and earned roughly 127 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.7 from about 105,000 votes, while on TMDB it rates 7.1 from a much smaller base of 2,810. A critics' score of 5.2 from 175 reviews sits below both audience figures.
What's left behind the scenes
- Bruno Gaido's actions are depicted with historical accuracy, with only a few exceptions. In the film, Gaido flatly refuses to cooperate with the Japanese. In reality, however, according to Japanese reports, he and pilot Frank O'Flahery (1918-1942) provided the Japanese with information about the guns of Midway, but said nothing about the aircraft carriers. Neither of them was ever on Midway Atoll, so they simply fabricated all the relevant information.
- Best's breathing problems, as portrayed by Ed Skrein, were caused by a malfunction in the regenerative oxygen system.
- Bruno Gaido (1916-1942) actually shot at a damaged Japanese plane that was already about to crash into the aircraft carrier 'Enterprise' – this episode is by no means a product of the filmmakers' imagination. The entire episode has been historically recreated accurately – from its takeoff and the moment the Japanese bomber nearly clipped Gaido's plane, to the words of Admiral Halsey (1882-1959) during the award ceremony.
- Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) expressed regret over the attack on Pearl Harbor with the words, 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.' These words are often quoted, but there is no confirmation that Yamamoto specifically uttered them. The fact is that the Japanese Foreign Ministry failed to declare war on the United States before the attack on Pearl Harbor, meaning Yamamoto’s actions were not a military clash, but an act of unprovoked aggression. He himself lived in the United States for some time and could not have failed to know that such an attack without a declaration of war would not conform to American notions of 'fair play,' and the response to such an attack would be far more severe than it otherwise would have been.
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