ORIGINAL: Commander Cody
Well, the original had the politically correct internment sideplot, when Japanese descendants in Hawaii in real life were never actually interned in WWII (it was strictly a mainland thing). So, the question becomes how could Hollywood top that? Show Nagumo as being a sensitive, caring calligraphy master with a gaijin mistress back home who is interned as well?
The concept of PC hadn't been coined when "Midway" was made. (Also, every cast member under 30 had a non-regulation haircut.) I think the Japanese girlfriend subplot had a lot more to do with post-Vietnam US introspection.
The story-telling problem with historical movies is that the history is iron-bound in macro terms. Midway = huge US win. Pearl Harbor = huge steaming pile of US loss. The general audience knows this, at least about these two events. (Not so much Leyte.) So, if Midway has to follow history, and it's fiction and thus must have conflict, or, said another way, something at stake, how does a poor screenwritter handle that? Same way as Shakespeare did. Introduce family strife. To anyone who has read The Bard, either Heston or his son was toast the moment both walked on stage. Just as either Affleck or the other guy was; we just didn't know which one. That movie could have gone either way, which is why I give it a C- and not an F.
But Midway is "easier" to write because it has a triumphant end. Yes, people will die, and you'll know some of them well when they do. That's drama. But with Midway the creators can send the audience home happy, and they'lll tell their friends. The creators of "Pearl Harbor" felt they had to add that abortion of a Doolittle Raid because if they'd ended with smoke and death and destruction at Pearl Harbor--you know, history---they'd have torqued off their US audience, especially the female portion who got an aborted love arc AND death and destruction with no redemption. Pearl Harbor is prehaps the most difficult modern US wartime subject matter. To volunteer to make a movie of it is . . . odd, from a moviemaker's career standpoint.
Leyte is hard too, for different reasons. It recalls that classic movie "Bambi vs. Godzilla." No matter how you portray Taffy 3, the Japanese were going to get creamed. There's no doubt of that, and that's hard to do from a storytelling POV. What every fiction writer wants is a fair fight between credible opponents. That's one reason the technothriller genre in novels fell on hard times after the USSR fell apart. The might of the USA vs. Colombian drug cartels is Bambi Vs. the lizard.
Leyte could be written in a "The Pacific" manner. focusing on a few, tight character arcs, and showing the battle through their very narrow, local lens, but I doubt that would satisfy many of this forum's denizens. They want a god's-eye POV of maneuvering fleets and grand strategy, and that just isn't what Hollywood is good at. Or what modern audiences will pay for.
Final comments on "Midway". I looked around the Web and learned that there was a TV version made, split into two nights, for whcih about 30 minutes of new footage was shot. The goal? To give HESTON a girlfriend, much younger and very pretty, to explain why he divorced the mother of his difficult son. So, two romantic arcs. Also, I learned that Yamamoto's voice dubbing was done by Mr. Paul Frees. Yes, the voice of Boris Badanov!!!! He's everywhere!!! He's everywhere!!!![:)]
[/center]
