Screaming at the Movies? No. Cheering and Applause at the Movies? YES (Midway)

A report:

Elsewhere on some other threads, I've been discussing how "way back when" movies like Psycho and Wait Until Dark could get audiences screaming -- continually, for minutes at a time -- during sequences of suspense and terror. It wasn't just a matter of "jump scenes"(though both Psycho and Wait Until Dark each has ONE big one), but a kind of expression of "unresolved terror" based on things like Lila Crane's long descent down to the fruit cellar to "meet Mother," and a dying psycho's crawling-across-the-floor attempt to stab a trapped Audrey Hepburn to death in his last moments of life. LOONG screams. I lived them. I loved them. I'll never forget them.

But that just doesn't seem to happen too much anymore in my experience. (Of course, I don't get to all the horror movies I should -- does "IT" generate a lot of screaming, I'm wondering?)

Cut to: this very weekend. I went to see a movie with a surprisingly good crowd; near full house.

It was/is called "Midway." About the WWII battle of same.

The same story was made back in 1976 as a somewhat cheapjack Universal film with a cast of "male names"(Charlton Heston as the lead, Mitchum and Ford and Fonda and Coburn in cameos.)

The 2019 version is made by Roland Emmerich, the guy who gave us Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow and 2012(back in 2011?)...all of which were light on serious writing and characterization and heavy on destructive CGI spectacle(the aliens blew up the White House! A tidal wave swamped the Statue of Liberty! Los Angeles is falling into the sea!)

Emmerich is up to it again with "Midway." The Pearl Harbor attack, the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, and the titular Midway battle are CGI-ed within an inch of our lives so that we are right there in the cockpit as an American plane makes a vertical dive at the deck of a Japanese carrier -- dropping a bomb, not a Kamikaze mission.

The new "Midway" isn't a serious work of art like "Dunkirk" was. Its really a 2019 version of what Universal made in 1976 -- less the fakey-conflict of Heston's son wanting to marry a "Japanese girl" in the original. Gone in this version is such ersatz drama, they stick to the famous naval officers, replaced by new actors playing the roles Mitchum and Ford and Fonda played.

Not the biggest names in those roles this time: Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Aaron Eckhardt. But at least we recognize THEM. The younger men in the cast were pretty unknown to me -- one wore a moustache and that helped. No, wait -- TWO wore a moustache, but they were different in type.

I can't praise "Midway" as an award-winning film. But I give Emmerich points for FOUR things:

ONE: After so many movies like Tora, Tora, Tora and In Harm's Way where there is a slow and steady build-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor(flying school pilots spotting the planes in the air; illicit lovers spotting them on the beach) in THIS movie, its all quiet on a Sunday morning and then BOOM...the Japanese attack is underway at full bore and the screen is filled with CGI carnage and booming explosions (they used "Sensurround" in 1976, remember that? Sounded like your head was underwater near a Jacuzzi jet.) Its the first time I've seen the Pearl Harbor attack(which opens Midway) just sort of happen all of a sudden, outta nowhere. "Shocking."

TWO: Those CGI attacks are pretty realistic -- big planes missing their landings on aircraft carriers and falling into the sea; roller coaster bombing runs; submarine battles (depth charges vs. torpedos, ala "Run Silent Run Deep") -- but done like Star Wars. Quite the Emmerich spectacle...again.

THREE: Maybe not the greatest screenwriting in the world, but these guys(and ONE of their wives) are brought to sympathetic life as heroes willing to take on largely suicidal missions, survive them -- and then go on ANOTHER one. One of the men, captured and brought on a ship by the "Japanese," refuses to give up information, and is thrown overboard...with an anchor tied to his leg. Very emotional scene. Did it really happen? Oh , somewhere, I'm sure.

And FOUR: With the film concluding with many dead, some alive, some reunions and some data on the REAL military men and what happened to them(though I'm sure much of the movie was fictionalized) a final title:

"This film is dedicated to the American and Japanese military men who died in the Battle of Midway."

And...my audience went nuts. Sustained applause. A few standing in ovation. Cheers and whistles. I was very surprised. Until I realized that it was largely an audience of older men and women...come out of their homes to re-live this historical story.

The salute to the Japanese was ...the right thing to do. Though this "Midway" had partial Chinese funding and made sure to show a bit of what the Japanese did to the Chinese during WWII.

Still...its the applause and cheering that surprised me, and moved me a bit.

I type this on Veteran's Day....