I have watched Midway 2019,
this Trump Era 3 times in the last 24hrs and for the life of me, I saw not one brown face, whether African-American cooks and/or service personnel cleaners, cleaners of captain's quarter, helping in the Mess, mopping up the puke from drunken sailors etc. Not even an honourable mention of Doris 'Dory' Miller who while untrained manned an anti-aircraft gun and fought back, he had watched and figured it out, eh? Not one Japanese-Hawaiian face either. Nor the intense racism they faced during the Pearl Harbor attack and afterwards. Yeah, yeah this was about the great American victory of the white race over those pesky Japanese at Midway. Which turned the tide of the 2nd WW and that saved America to continue it's the racist march to the present day where the POTUS is openly a racist and a mass murderer. But NOTHING ELES MATTERS except the victory in this entertainment paean to white supremacy, right? Breath. It's just entertainment, with yeah maybe a few small oversights, but just entertainment, right?
Folks after Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and a list longer than your arm of unarmed and usually innocent of any felony African-Americans murdered by modern-day lynch parties led by the badge and gun authority holder, no more will I ignore or minimize just how deeply ingrained racism is in the American culture/psyche. Folks enough of American racism and hatred now led by this POTUS that openly disrespects black and brown Americans, kidnaps brown children and cages them to be forever separated from their parents. Nothing much in the MSM these days though about that human rights violation. Whether intentional or unintentional. Unintentional mentioned, did I forget to say, because of deeply ingrained race hatred in American culture? And MSM's need to minimize the race hatred in America.
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Doris_Miller
I will leave it alone, observation(s) over. Stay safe and have a good day now ya hear?
= new reply since forum marked as read
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
