I have watched Midway 2019,

[appalachiablue]

1. This newer movie, 'Midway' I didn't know of but

I'm glad to be familiar with the heroism of Doris Miller on the battleship West Virginia in 1941 when he manned anti aircraft machine guns during the attack that morning by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. The 2019 film should have included him and other African American service members and people of Japanese and Hawaiian background; white preference and racism in the film industry is inexcusable.
Years ago while working in public programs at the National Archives I learned about Miller from student programs we offered that covered his wartime record and life, and I knew some history from visiting Hawaii and my father's service with automatic weapons in his AAA, anti aircraft artillery unit during WWII in Europe. But based on Roger Ebert's movie review which notes the glaring omission of Doris Miller and other flaws in a classic historic piece, and your perspective I'll pass on seeing the film.



- Chester W. Nimitz pins the Navy Cross on Dorie, at ceremony on board warship in Maui, May 27, 1942.
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-- Roger Ebert, Movie Review of 'Midway' 2019.

..The overabundance of CGI is one of the bigger problems with “Midway” because, far too often, it feels like you’re watching a video game or an F/X highlight reel. By virtue of the PG-13 rating, the carnage is largely bloodless, adding to the uneasy sense of fakery. Outside of an effective sequence involving a charred body, this is a virtually gore-free war movie. This is safe enough for a middle school history class screening.
The film’s toned down violence would be easier to ignore if its characters were compelling. The real-life players are embodied by a group of up-and-coming actors and a few veterans. For the latter team, we have Dennis Quaid, Aaron Eckhart and a startlingly white-haired Woody Harrelson. The gung-ho young pilots and servicemen are embodied by Ed Skrein, Darren Criss, and Nick Jonas. Everyone stalks around like a cliché from a 1940s studio system war movie minus the charisma and presence of the actors who originally held those roles. We never get close enough to any of them to feel genuine emotion. Perhaps “Midway” is going for the kind of enforced distance Christopher Nolan brought to the far better “Dunkirk,” but Nolan is a master of cinematic coldness. Emmerich is too sentimental to reach for that goal.

However, Emmerich definitely goes gunning for his contemporary, Michael Bay, by recreating the attack on Pearl Harbor. The staging is full of extremely large explosions, planes disintegrating in large chunks and last-minute escapes and demises. As an effects-laden spectacle, it’s a rather effective set piece.
> But Bay was smart enough to include a scene showing the heroics of African-American messman Dorie Miller and, before Disney scrubbed the film, was unafraid to bloody up the proceedings. As with the violence, Emmerich sidesteps the discomfort of representing the segregation of Black soldiers who fought at Midway by eliminating them altogether. The director does to WWII what he did to Stonewall..

..I admire screenwriter Wes Tooke’s attempt to stick to scenes of military strategy and process, as well as Emmerich’s glee in wanting to show us what his F/X team can do. But the combined effect of a dull script and repetitive battle sequences lulled me into a state of boredom, so much so that at times I had my eyes open yet my consciousness had drifted elsewhere. I wasn’t asleep; I was just missing. You know what would have guaranteed my undying attention? A better movie. Or Sensurround...More, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/midway-movie-review-2019