[CaptainCrunch]

I watched Midway tonight, I'm a sucker for movies, especially the ones based around historical battles, and Midway has always been fascinating to me. It was the battle that turned WW2 around for the Americans, and realistically the American's should have pounded badly in this battle but a lot of fortunate bounces went their way. However the narrative that the Japanese Imperial Navy was crippled by Midway is a bit of a misnomer they still had a powerful navy and edge, however Midway shocked the IJN and made them hesitate which gave the American's a chance to catch up to the Japanese in terms of ships and quality of planes.


This wasn't a bad movie by any stretch. It did fall into the same trap that Pearl fell into where they tried to cover too many things in a shortened movie. Frankly they didn't need to redo Pearl Harbor though it was exceptionally well shot, they didn't need to cover the Doolittle raid either, there's enough stuff that happens in Midway to make it its own movie.



I did like a lot of elements, against the film is well shot, and for the most part carried by strong performances by most of the actors with Randy Quaid feeling like he was Bull Halsey.



They got a lot of things right in this movie historical wise. They touched on the fatal flaw in Japanese Aircraft Carrier design, specifically around damage control and the design of the hanger deck which really didn't have good ventilation. They also touched on a nice piece of analysis from years later that the Japanese had placed a bomb storage locker under the great big rising sun on the deck.


Where I got frustrated is what they lacked. They could have touched more on Ray Spruance who had a great battle, but the rest of his war was underwhelming. They also could have touched on the Japanese counter strike and the death of Yorkton, which left the American's with one active fleet character in the pacific and was a story onto itself.


Overall it isn't a bad movie, and its a nice watch. But if you want a great movie on Midway you have to go back to the 1976 movie which was outstanding, focused a lot more on the history of the battle and really gave great coverage to all of the personal that took place in that battle.