New Battle of Midway Movie.

X3 Skier

X3 Skier

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Geezer


Really cheesy CGI. Even includes Pearl Harbor Attack and the Doolittle raid.

The original Midway movie is one of my favorites.

Cheers
 
I doubt any of you know the difference between good CGI and bad. I doubt even more strongly you even know which scenes have CGI in them. Can surprise you.
 
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steingar said:
I doubt any of you know the difference between good CGI and bad. I doubt even more strongly you even down which scenes have CGI in them. Can surprise you.
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I doubt you are really as insightful and aware as you think you are relative to this group.
 
There are a lot of movies I will not watch because there is too much CGIcartoons in them.

Any CGI is bad CGI, but I do realize that it is impossible to get 200 Mitsubishi ''Zero's'' in the air to make a movie. And even more impossible to get the ''stars'' trained to fly planes and that we can't take a chance that a ''star'' actually do something physical to make a movie in case of injury..

Maybe that is why I mostly enjoy movies made before 1964.
 
steingar said:
I doubt even more strongly you even down which scenes have CGI in them. Can surprise you.
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I doubt that your observation is correct.

Sort of hard to believe real Japanese Aircraft Carriers or USN Battleships are exploding while real Helldivers, TBM’s, Japanese Zero’s and Val’s etc in large numbers fly by and drop bombs, strafe, etc. on said Aircraft Carriers and Battleships. Much less when one on the “stars” looks down on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor as the destruction ensues. Not to mention real B-25’s launching from the real USS Hornet ((unless they recovered it from where it was sunk near the Solomon Islands and restored or perhaps they commissioned a replica Essex Class carrier).

Cheers
 
X3 Skier said:
I doubt that your observation is correct.

Sort of hard to believe real Japanese Aircraft Carriers or USN Battleships are exploding while real Helldivers, TBM’s, Japanese Zero’s and Val’s etc in large numbers fly by and drop bombs, strafe, etc. on said Aircraft Carriers and Battleships. Much less when one on the “stars” looks down on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor as the destruction ensues. Not to mention real B-25’s launching from the real USS Hornet ((unless they recovered it from where it was sunk near the Solomon Islands and restored or perhaps they commissioned a replica Essex Class carrier).

Cheers
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But that's composition, not CGI. You doubt the reality of what you're being shown because of the context, not the rendering.
 
steingar said:
Since you are so much wiser than I perhaps you can educate us on the difference.
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I didn’t imply or intend to imply I was smarter than you. Only that you might not be as smart as you think you are relative to this group of people, meaning the whole of POA, since that’s who you referenced in your post.

I’m not sure you really thought about what you posted. You basically stated that you were pretty confident you could watch movies better than most people on this board.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I didn’t imply or intend to imply I was smarter than you. Only that you might not be as smart as you think you are relative to this group of people, meaning the whole of POA, since that’s who you referenced in your post.

I’m not sure you really thought about what you posted. You basically stated that you were pretty confident you could watch movies better than most people on this board.
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I thought about it carefully and even parsed things out to say exactly what I meant. The difference between "good" and "bad" CGI is in minutiae that I doubt anyone hear even notices. A good example of bad CGI was the erasure of Henry Cavill's mustache in that awful Justice League movie. They didn't have a lot of time, so it came out like it did. What Geezer was talking about was scene composition, i.e. having someone watch as battleships blew up. Whether the CGI was good or not is an entirely different issue. The point of making movies isn't to make them utterly realistic, if you want that there are lots of boring documentaries on the History channel. The point is to make things dramatic, which the CGI allows them to do.

One of my favorites was when the latest Mad Max came out, and lots of folks said it was so much better than all the other movies because it didn't have a lot of CFI. Actually the vehicles weren't CGI, but absolutely everyone else was. Kinda funny. Even more ironic, since in most movies and a lot of TV all the exterior shots of vehicles are CGI.
 
steingar said:
But that's composition, not CGI. You doubt the reality of what you're being shown because of the context, not the rendering.
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So I can’t recognize CGI no matter the context? Did you look at the trailer? If you can’t tell what is CGI there and what is real, you’re powers of observation are certainly different than mine. Films like The Battle of Britain using real aircraft certainly appear different than the film which is subject of this thread.

BTW, I said Cheesy, not bad.

Cheers
 
steingar said:
I doubt any of you know the difference between good CGI and bad. I doubt even more strongly you even know which scenes have CGI in them. Can surprise you.
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I don't even know what CGI is, but I do know that the original "Battle of Midway" was one of my favorite movies. It is the only movie I bought the CD and I watch it at least once a year. It was more often the first 10 years. Now I can only watch it when Leslie isn't home.
 
JOhnH said:
I don't even know what CGI is, but I do know that the original "Battle of Midway" was one of my favorite movies. It is the only movie I bought the CD and I watch it at least once a year. It was more often the first 10 years. Now I can only watch it when Leslie isn't home.
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Ok, I looked it up and now I know what CGI is. But as to good or bad CGI, it is sort of like art. I know what I like when I see it.

Or maybe it is like the old science fiction movies. I always liked the B movies better. They were funnier and just as unbelievable.
 
Given everything I read here, I'd still like to see the movie. I guess some folks want real dinosaurs before they go to a Jurassic park movie. Seriously though, it's about the story, characters and action. We read books that we think are good where we have to do BGI (brain generated images).
 
Flybuddy said:
Given everything I read here, I'd still like to see the movie. I guess some folks want real dinosaurs before they go to a Jurassic park movie. Seriously though, it's about the story, characters and action. We read books that we think are good where we have to do BGI (brain generated images).
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Without real dinosaurs it does not meet my standards. Pfft... Hollywood... bunch of phonies.
 
steingar said:
I thought about it carefully and even parsed things out to say exactly what I meant. The difference between "good" and "bad" CGI is in minutiae that I doubt anyone hear even notices. A good example of bad CGI was the erasure of Henry Cavill's mustache in that awful Justice League movie. They didn't have a lot of time, so it came out like it did. What Geezer was talking about was scene composition, i.e. having someone watch as battleships blew up. Whether the CGI was good or not is an entirely different issue.
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Whatever they did in this trailer will probably result in me not watching the movie.
 
The CGI is pretty obvious. We don’t have hundreds of SBDs or A6Ms so that kinda narrows down what’s real and what’s not. Having said that, it’s also kinda hard to make a movie today that portrays the Battle of Midway without CGI. Be nice if they would’ve mixed some real stuff in there though. Can’t stand full on CGI. Probably why I’m not into DCS stuff.

Reminds of when my dad first found out what CGI was. He couldn’t tell what was real or not so he kept asking “How do they film something like that?” I told him it’s CGI. “What’s CGI?” :D
 
JOhnH said:
I don't even know what CGI is, but I do know that the original "Battle of Midway" was one of my favorite movies. It is the only movie I bought the CD and I watch it at least once a year. It was more often the first 10 years. Now I can only watch it when Leslie isn't home.
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IIRC, the original "Midway" filmed no new aircraft scenes, other than close-ups of the actors. All the aviation footage was from previous movies (such as "Tora, Tora, Tora") or footage from WWII (wrong aspect ratio, badly colorized, grainy).

I'm OK with CGI, within certain limits. As has been mentioned, you aren't going to be able to go up and film 200 Zeros flying around four operational WWII aircraft carriers...ours OR theirs. I've seen CGI done well, and I've seen it done badly. The technical side has gotten much, much better in the last ten years or so. CGI can be used to provide historical scenes which absolutely cannot be reproduced in real life, any more.

CGI does better when it emulates what *could* be filmed in the air, with actual aircraft. Unfortunately, I think very few of the people involved in CGI for aviation movies are pilots, or even understand the physics. "Flyboys" is a prime example of that.

A *good* example? The original Star Wars movie. Framing the scenes of the final Death Star attack was heavily based on existing war movie footage... "633 Squadron," for a prime example.

Here's a neat video that takes the final scenes from "633 Squadron" and replaces the sound track with that of the "Star Wars" Death Star attack. You'll see what I mean.....
Ron Wanttaja
 
633, Strategic Air Command, Battle of Britain, The Bridges at Toko Ri, Toward The Unknown, The Final Countdown, Top Gun...classics.
 
My late father in law was in the battle of Midway. He was the damage control officer on the Hornet (CV-8).

They had to abandon the Hornet after it was damaged, adrift and taking on water in the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. Those who survived went home aboard the Enterprise... They tried to scuttle the ship, but the torpedoes failed to work. The Japanese finally sank it later...

That was the same boat from which the Doolittle raid was launched.
 
Zeldman said:
There are a lot of movies I will not watch because there is too much CGIcartoons in them.

Any CGI is bad CGI, but I do realize that it is impossible to get 200 Mitsubishi ''Zero's'' in the air to make a movie. And even more impossible to get the ''stars'' trained to fly planes and that we can't take a chance that a ''star'' actually do something physical to make a movie in case of injury..

Maybe that is why I mostly enjoy movies made before 1964.
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Because Ray Harryhausen rules!
I agree. It's easy to spot bad CGI, but where else are you going to get 16, B-25B bombers?
 
This is good CGI from several years ago. As Ron pointed out, you can do it where the physics look real. The only two faults I have with this short movie are the synchronization of the props and the light on the rudder of the Mosquito landing.

 
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kyleb said:
This is good CGI from several years ago. As Ron pointed out, you can do it where the physics look real. The only two faults I have with this short movie is the synchronization of the props and the light on the rudder of the Mosquito landing.

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Agreed...they even got a little rudder/directional adjustment on that landing.
 
Battle of Midway - spoiler alert - I know how it ends. . .
 
He’s on a roll, let him go.

The Japanese win in this one?

Cheers
 
Good CGI.

upload_2019-9-17_15-16-24.png

I just watched one of the trailers from Midway. Horrible CGI. I have no interest in watching a movie that looks like a cartoon.

upload_2019-9-17_15-16-48.png
 
wanttaja said:
Here's a neat video that takes the final scenes from "633 Squadron" and replaces the sound track with that of the "Star Wars" Death Star attack. You'll see what I mean.....
Ron Wanttaja
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It's funny you guys grousing about the footage from the new Midway movie. In addition to much of that clip looking utterly fake (exploding models, please!) I was under the impression that most of the Mosquito action involved them doing night bombing runs, mostly to light up targets for the heavier Lancaster bombers. I am by no means an expert on WWII history, so if I am incorrect I would be happy to know. If I am correct, the whole thing was as fake as could be.
 
My uncle was a crew member of the Arizona. When that ship was lost, he was assigned as the Comm Officer in Midway. He sent the famous water evaporator message from Midway to confirm the code breaking. Later his destroyer, the Leutze, was hit by a Kamikaze while saving another ship that had been similarly hit. I visited his grave last week in Arlington.
 
Gerhardt said:
Good CGI.

View attachment 77858

I just watched one of the trailers from Midway. Horrible CGI. I have no interest in watching a movie that looks like a cartoon.

View attachment 77859
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The actor in that scene from Saving Private Ryan was actually an amputee, one of thirty used in the Omaha Beach scene. The loss of his arm was a CGI overlay but he was the real deal.

From a trivia page:

This is the film’s opening scene by the numbers: With $12 million of the $70 million total budget, Spielberg used 40 barrels of stage blood, 1,500 extras, 30 amputees, zero storyboarding, and 27 minutes of runtime to recreate the Omaha Beach landing scene.
 
I saw this movie tonight (last night in the theaters around here). I thought it was good, with the exception of some obvious (to a military and airplane junkie like me) flaws. First, the combat scenes were too congested with bombers diving in too-close formation, multiple aircraft passing within feet of the ships, etc. Certain events happened very close together and quickly (seemingly dozens of US aircraft being shot down in just a few seconds). Others (dive bombing scenes), it took a loooong time for a dive bomber in a more or less vertical descent to drop a thousand feet. In reality, it would take about 3 seconds. Then, there were the dozen B-26 Marauders on a level bombing run. In real life, there were 4 and they made torpedo attacks. Oh, and the SBD's landing on the carriers? The CGI guys didn't account for the extension (and damping) of the landing gear struts. Every landing looked like a plastic model with fixed gear bouncing across a tabletop, and the gear legs were forever at their collapsed length.

But again, good movie which captured many of the historical figures who were involved and which did a good job of bringing the moviegoer up to speed, then taking him/her through the events of the battle.
 
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Zeldman said:
Now don't go pickin' on the 1950s sci fi movies.......those were, still are the best..!!! :lol::lol:
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Anyone remember a Japanese series called "Ultra man"? That was a staple for me and my elementary school friends back in the early '70's. It was always on TV after school. Anyway, when I was 7 or 8, it didn't look hokey at all to me. But about 20 years later, I saw a clip from the show and realized exactly how bad it was, with actors in rubber suits and other horrible special effects that didn't scale at all (in relative motion) to the oversized creatures they were trying to depict. It was completely laughable.
 
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