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I saw it with my wife. It was very good but not great.

The good parts were the history telling, though individually, “Tora, Tora, Tora” and the mid-70’s “Midway” were better at keeping track of the time lines of the critical events that led to the lucky victory. This movie tried to present this timeline but maybe not as successfully for someone not read on the battles. If you are historically knowledgeable then you would not miss anything, but for someone not familar with the battles, there was probably too much crammed into too short a movie in the actual Midway battle scenes. The sinking of Yorktown was basically about a 5 second comment in this movie.

The bad was the (seemingly) constant whining of naval aviators who lost their ‘mojo’ or academy grads who ‘weren’t sure they were ready for leadership’. I think the movie would have benefited from having its heroic aviator characters be down to earth, not so drama filled, but that’s par for Hollywood I guess.

Oh, and landing on a carrier with damaged aircraft is difficult enough without cowboy swooping down below deck level to pop up and basically stall on the ‘one’ wire.

The CGI was good, sometime real good, but like Transformer movies, at other times, overwhelming. They often crammed so much on screen that you couldn’t keep up with all that was happening in a given scene, and that wasn’t necessary since in real life, as an example, aircraft formations in bombing dives would not be as tight as they are just in formation flight. But that’s how they were pictured in the CGI. In real life there is just more open space between these things.

I really liked the end with the telling of what became of the actual participants, though I was disappointed that while the Ensign George Gay character was shown famously witnessing the Jap fleet defeat following being shot down, his name was not even mentioned.

I went to see this movie tonight, and the theater was full. Negatives first.

The biggest negative issue with the movie IMO was the disjointed way they strung together things. It had the appearance of a movie that was close to running out of time and budget, and they had to wrap it up. It looked like some things were left on the cutting room floor. I wouldn’t have minded at all if they had made the movie three hours and fleshed it out correctly.

Some of the history while generally correct, seemed a bit squishy...but I was too distracted by the visuals to retain those things, except for one thing: That practice carrier landing by Dick Best. I wasn’t aboard a carrier at that time, but...it completely smelled like Hollywood BS to me. I think landing on a carrier was tough to the point anyone who did that as “practice” would have been grounded, probably permanently. I could be wrong on that, but I don’t think so.

And the combat scenes seemed to have the air too full of planes in any given view, but again...I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what it really looked like. I guess it could have been that crowded, since there were around 120 American planes to get launched over the course of an hour or so IIRC. I know that they weren’t all over the target at the same time, but at any given point there could have been 30 or 40 planes engaged at once within the confines of the Japanese task force.

I didn’t like the Hollywoodized version of the intelligence identification of “AF”. They should have just said it the way it happened, but instead they seemed to get cute and make up dialogue. I know they have to do that, but...that didn’t seem the place for it and it seemed too cute.

This negative is a minor one, because I so love the concept of it being true: Admiral King is supposed to have said: When they get in trouble, they send for the Sons of Bitches.” He admitted he never said it, which deflated me when I found that out, because I thought it was such a great quote, and he was a Son of a Bitch. An officer once asked him about it: “Admiral”, asked McCrea, “is this story true that I hear about?” “Well, John, I don’t know,” replied King, deadpan. “Which story is it?” “They tell me,” McCrea went on, “you were heard to say recently, ‘Yes, damn it, when they get in trouble they send for the sons of bitches.’” King couldn’t help but smile. “No, John, I didn’t say it. But I will say this: If I had thought of it, I would have said it.”

I also love that Admiral King, known to be somewhat of a blowtorch on people who didn’t smile a lot in his work, was said to have smiled at this comment, which seems to fit. He wanted to be seen as a son of a bitch, and he liked the quote too...

The positives:

Loved the CGI. Just loved it. The ships, the planes...the battles. I have been an aviation buff my entire life, and that is as close as I will ever get to seeing those planes and those battles with my own eyes. Loved the portrayal of Doolittle raiders, even with the portion they showed over Tokyo seeming to show a boatload of B-25 Mitchells dropping bombs all at the same time. I don’t believe there were more than two over Tokyo at any time since they could’t loiter around as all the planes took off due to fuel considerations, but I could. be wrong. IIRC, they generally went in alone along somewhat different routes, and only appeared together by chance. Perhaps someone on this forum knows...

The attack on Pearl Harbor was done well, I thought, except I didn’t think there were going to be that number of planes flying right up between Battleship Row at that altitude. I could be wrong as well.

McQuaid’s portrayal of Admiral Halsey just didn’t resonate with me at all. Granted, I have always been stuck on James Cagney’s portrayal of Admiral Halsey in “The Gallant Hours”. I didn’t see how that could be topped, and I don’t think McQuaid came close. Just didn’t do it for me.

Lastly, I was not a big fan of having Woody Harrelson play Admiral Nimitz. I have watched a good amount of video footage of Nimitz available on the Internet, and I Harrelson’s portrayal really seemed to connect. He got that Texas drawl, and the more I looked at him, he WAS able to pull off some of the physical similarity. I thought he did well with that role, and I admit to having extremely low expectations.

That said...I will go see this again on the big screen. To see carrier operations portrayed with those planes and ships in that fashion was something I have been waiting for. They have shown it can be done, and done well.

Thank you to all of you who went early and allayed my concerns that it would be so Hollywoodized that it would be repugnant for me. It wasn’t, and I am glad I went.