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John E. Johnson, Jr.
Rated R
Sound Mix: Dolby Surround 7.1 | Dolby Atmos
Color
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Camera: Panavision Millennium DXL2, Panavision H-Series Lenses
Laboratory: EFilm (Digital Intermediate)
Negative Format: DXL RAW
Cinematographic Process: DXL RAW (8K) (Source Format)
Digital Intermediate: 2K (Master Format)
Dolby Vision
Printed Film Format: D-Cinema
Released (USA): November 8, 2019
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring Dennis Quaid, Woody Harrelson, Aaron Eckhart, Etsushi Toyokawa, Hiromoto Ida
Rating
Violence: Much
Sex: No
Language: Occasionally really nasty
MSRP: $42.99 / Amazon – $24.99
In 1942 (June 4-7), the U.S. and Japan battled it out for control of the Pacific theater via the small atoll called Midway where the U.S. had a base. It was bloody, violent, and costly, but decisive.
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Midway is shown in the map below at the red indicator (Copyright Google Maps). You can see how strategic a location this is. That is why Japan wanted to take it from the U.S. because it would make a great refueling spot between Japan and the west coast of the United States.
The film opens with the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. The story then moves to the Marshall Islands, near Australia, where Japan was trying to interfere with the U.S. lifeline to that country. The U.S. decided to interfere with Japan’s interference.
In the spring of 1942, the U.S. broke the code that Japan was using in its messaging between military forces. Admiral Chester Nimitz learned that the Japanese were sending their very powerful Kido Butai, the Imperial Navy’s mobile strike force, to attack the Midway Atoll, where the U.S. had a base, 1,100 miles northwest of Hawaii. The U.S. prepared for this by sending its own Naval forces to set a trap. Although history logs June 4-7, 1942 as The Battle of Midway, most of it was just on one day.
The movie is just a movie. It is not a documentary on the History Channel. It has a lot of CGI, and that part of the film is spectacular. It has been criticized for not having much in the way of elegant dialog. This is a war film about a major battle. The core story is the battle, not the conversations that the Admirals (Chester Nimitz, played by Woody Harrelson, and William Halsey, played by Dennis Quaid) were having about the planning and execution of the battle. However, I did not find the dialog lacking.
Although the CGI nature of the battle is obvious, it is extremely entertaining. It looks a bit like a video game, but so what? In the Extras, you can see how they did it, and I can understand now why it cost $100,000,000 to make the movie. They built a replica of the launch deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise as well as some replicas of Navy F4F Wildcat fighter planes.
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The battle scenes are the most intense that I have ever watched in a war film. The producers tried to maintain accuracy as to the events and real war heroes who participated. If you are a war movie fan, this is a must-see. It is a true sound and vision sensory experience, with extremely sharp images (shot in 8K). Although it had a 2K Digital Intermediate, which suggests upsampling to 4K for the disc release, it looks like true 4K. I don’t know how they did this, but I like it. By the way, the movie disc comes with a pair of “Midway” style dark glasses.