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"Midway (1976)" guest starring ZJ · The Spy-Fi Guys

• 0:00
  Speaker A: In every war, there is a battle to end all battles. We are the spy fi guys, and this is Midway. Welcome to Spy Fi guys, where we cover spy facts, spy fiction, and everything in between. I'm Christian.
• 0:24
  Speaker B: And I'm Zach.
• 0:25
  Speaker A: We are covering this week 1970 six's midway.
• 0:31
  Speaker B: Christian, is that a spy movie?
• 0:33
  Speaker A: Okay, you know what? You know how we love to stretch it, but there is actual real world intelligence that happens in this movie.
• 0:41
  Speaker B: Yes, that's correct. So for those of you who are first tuning into the spy fi guys, we expand our horizons frequently on this podcast, I would say, to movies that include military intelligence, movies those you don't traditionally think of as spy movies. And we've covered quite a few old world War two movies, old and new. So this week, we are bringing on our world War two expert, ZJ.
• 1:04
  Speaker C: It's a pleasure to be here again.
• 1:05
  Speaker A: This will be part of a duology, although it will be separated by a month to keep with our usual format. But we're going to be doing this midway from 1976, and ZJ is returning in about two months. Time to talk about Midway. 2019. That's the year I think it came out.
• 1:28
  Speaker B: And, you know, I gotta say, when I was watching this movie, it did occur to me this one could benefit from a remake.
• 1:35
  Speaker A: Yes, there's not a lot of movies that.
• 1:38
  Speaker B: That fills the criteria, but this one.
• 1:40
  Speaker A: We have that discussion for another time, Zach, of many movies that either do or do not need a remake, because I'm sure we could talk hours and hours about that. But I've actually seen the 2019 midway before on a plane, so I was only half really paying attention. So I had the bare bones idea of what happened in this, you know, other than, you know, shockingly, I feel like I'd even living in Hawaii, and Midway being not that far, we don't really learn the history, that much of the history of Midway in, like, school.
• 2:17
  Speaker B: So I guess I'll ask, have you guys seen this movie before?
• 2:20
  Speaker C: I don't believe I had.
• 2:23
  Speaker B: I believe I've seen parts of it. The only part that I remembered was Charlton Heston crashing at the end.
• 2:30
  Speaker A: Spoilers going into full spoilers here.
• 2:33
  Speaker B: That's right here on the Spotify guys. It's just full spoilers all the time.
• 2:37
  Speaker A: Also, it took me a while to clock that that was Charlton Heston. I don't know why. Yeah, I should have realized that was him from his look, but also his manner of speaking. But it just didn't clock to me.
• 2:49
  Speaker B: Oh, my God, she's just such a generic white guy, amongst many others. But, yeah, it took me a while to realize, because there's other famous actors, too, like Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda.
• 3:01
  Speaker A: Setting aside the movie, how much did both of you know about the history of Midway itself?
• 3:06
  Speaker C: I guess I'd say a fair amount. The actually, Us Navy maintains a great website on the battle of Midway with a lot of first person accounts and kind of detailed analysis. So that was something I'd read before. And additionally, I'd seen the hit documentary the Battle of Midway, which is actually fantastic, and I would strongly recommend it if you wanted to watch a world War two era propaganda film about the Battle of Midway.
• 3:39
  Speaker A: That actually does sound interesting. How long is it?
• 3:43
  Speaker C: I believe just 20 minutes.
• 3:45
  Speaker A: Oh, then perfect. I was like, if you were going to say, like, an hour and a half, like, I could almost do an hour, 20 minutes. Yeah. No, I think I would. I'd be interested in that. That'd be very curious.
• 3:55
  Speaker C: Yeah. It goes over some of the same things. It has. Perhaps no one in the US had as good an idea of what had happened at that point. So it's a very rosy interpretation of the. The events of the. The battle.
• 4:10
  Speaker A: So interesting.
• 4:12
  Speaker B: They currently knew what they were doing the whole time.
• 4:14
  Speaker C: It is actual documentary footage, and for the most part, that footage is from the battle of Midway. So that's kind of cool. Cool resource if anyone wants to check out, you know, some footage from the actual battle.
• 4:27
  Speaker A: Zach, what about you? What did you know about Midway?
• 4:31
  Speaker B: The only thing I knew was that a bunch of bombers were flying around, and then they spotted the carriers basically on lock, and then bombed it, and then that's how the US won the war.
• 4:40
  Speaker A: So now, I know I said I didn't learn about it in school, but actually, thinking back now, I have actually learned a bit about the battle of midway, especially from an intelligence perspective. Is that the national cryptologic museum, which they. I'm gonna say about a year ago, they did a nice refurb of it. They have a really good exhibit about Midway and about the intelligence aspects of Midway. So I think maybe. Well, depending on what our schedules are, but maybe after this, you know, we finish up this duology, we should go over there and take a look at it and see, you know, what's what, actual, real beyond what our research says. What is, you know, the NSA's museum say about it. All right, so shall we get into this? Zach, do you have our synopsis?
• 5:32
  Speaker B: Yes, I do. So, as always, we have our poetry synopsis. I will be. And I know we've already done one spoiler. The big one. But spoilers continue. So here we go. So here's the haiku. Yamamoto's plan. What the hell is happening? Tom crashes and burns.
• 5:54
  Speaker A: Uh, I believe it's Matt. They both crash and burn. Well. Oh, yeah, they do. Yeah. But I'd say Tom Burns and crashes. Matt crashes and burns.
• 6:09
  Speaker C: I think that's a great distinction.
• 6:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. I was going back and forth on.
• 6:14
  Speaker A: Which one to pick, but bravo. Bravo. I like that.
• 6:18
  Speaker B: Thank you. And then here is the Limerick. This is the story of Strawberry five, who, away from the j's, they did dive, broke through the cloud barrier, and spotted a carrier so their friends back at home would survive.
• 6:31
  Speaker A: Pretty good. Pretty good.
• 6:33
  Speaker C: Oh, I like it.
• 6:34
  Speaker A: Interesting use of j's as opposed to any other phrase.
• 6:40
  Speaker B: I was writing syllables. And then here is the real IMDb plot summary, a dramatization of the battle that was widely heralded as a turning point of the Pacific theater of World War Two.
• 6:52
  Speaker A: Cool. Cool. So let's get into our plot. So we start with a giant block of text that I read and subsequently, like, forgot. It really literally went in my eyeballs and then out. I was like, ah, this is too much. Too much reading.
• 7:10
  Speaker B: Do you guys watch the movie today like, you usually do?
• 7:13
  Speaker C: Want to? What?
• 7:14
  Speaker B: Do you guys watch the movie, like, right before we started?
• 7:16
  Speaker A: I started it maybe last week, and then I finished it. Yes, last night. So it's fairly fresh in my mind.
• 7:23
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 7:25
  Speaker C: I didn't finish it right before this. I finished it about 2019.
• 7:28
  Speaker A: There you go. Okay.
• 7:29
  Speaker B: There you go. But, yeah, it reminds me of the Flash Gordon rolling text that was George Lucas's inspiration for Star wars. But it says there's actual footage.
• 7:39
  Speaker A: That's the one thing I got of it. It says it's footage of, you know, planes in combat. Doesn't mean that it's from the Battle of Midway.
• 7:48
  Speaker C: So it's actually, I could speak to that a bit because I recognized a lot of the footage. As far as I can tell, it has essentially no footage from the Battle of Midway. Interestingly enough, if you look very carefully, you can spot footage from, I believe, from Tora. Toratora.
• 8:08
  Speaker A: Really?
• 8:09
  Speaker C: Yes. Yes. I've picked out a couple of points when there's very clearly footage from. Well, there's footage from that film. There's footage from a couple of other films it looked like as well, including. And this actually was some of the best footage that we saw in there. A japanese war movie from, I believe, the fifties or sixties, I don't recall, but they did a great job with their sets, unlike Tora.
• 8:34
  Speaker A: Tora Torah. All right.
• 8:37
  Speaker C: But yes, there wasn't. There was a lot of footage from World War Two that was spliced in. It wasn't from the battle of midway. Most of the pranes were either anachronistic or not from the correct side.
• 8:49
  Speaker B: That's bad.
• 8:51
  Speaker C: Yes. Ditto the ships. But there was actual war footage sliced in amongst this. Also footage from other films. Interestingly, the opening shot that we see with the B 25s taking off for the Doolittle raid, that was from a world War two era film in the US called 30 seconds over Tokyo.
• 9:12
  Speaker A: I heard of that film, which.
• 9:14
  Speaker C: Which also starred Robert.
• 9:16
  Speaker A: Interesting.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: All right, speaking of Robert Mitchum, a few other famous names from the cast besides those we've discussed already. Tom Selleck.
• 9:26
  Speaker A: I did not spot him.
• 9:27
  Speaker C: Where was he?
• 9:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, he didn't have his mustache. I think on IMDb, he's like some.
• 9:34
  Speaker A: General I did recognize. Glenn Ford, aka both, you know, Jonathan Kent from Superman, the movie, and also Perry White from Lois and Clark.
• 9:46
  Speaker B: There you go. And then what about John Williams for the music?
• 9:51
  Speaker A: I'm looking through Wikipedia, though, so apparently James Coburn's here somewhere. Actually, I think I spotted him. Robert Wagner's in here somewhere. Number two himself. Eric Estrada's in here somewhere. What?
• 10:07
  Speaker B: And war movies, they got everybody.
• 10:10
  Speaker C: Another big name, of course, was Toshiro Mifune as Admiral Yamamoto, which made me.
• 10:15
  Speaker A: Realize, I don't think I've actually ever seen him in a film before because I've not seen a lot of Kurosawa, Kurosawa films. I don't think I've seen. I may have seen clips of some, but nothing. Entirety. Also, other, other famous on that japanese side, Pat Morita, Mister Miyagi himself is in there.
• 10:35
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 10:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. So a lot of famous names here, but yeah. So we start off with the Doolittle raid, and they're like, don't explain what's going on. So I'm like, oh, I mean, I guess I have the advantage of having watched, you know, Pearl harbor and knowing, you know, learning about the Doolittle. Hey, that's how I learned about the Doolittle raid. That movie did something.
• 10:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, CJ, that's how Pearl harbor starts act three.
• 10:59
  Speaker A: Have you never seen Pearl harbor?
• 11:02
  Speaker C: The. Was that Ben Affleck?
• 11:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:04
  Speaker C: No.
• 11:07
  Speaker A: It'S not as bad as, you know. Next time you're in town, I kind of want to see you rewatch.
• 11:15
  Speaker C: Sounds like fun. I enjoyed red tails, so it's not like movies are totally outside my wheelhouse.
• 11:23
  Speaker A: Okay. All right, all right. I'm. Well, we'll talk more about campy war movies in a. In, you know, two months for the.
• 11:30
  Speaker C: Next couple hours, I think, also.
• 11:32
  Speaker A: Yes. But, yeah, so that's how I learned about the Doolittle raid. But I was like. I was. It was interesting that they know and explain it. I was like, okay, 1976, that you are, what, 30 years removed from the, you know, the actual events of that time. Do people still just know what the Doolittle rate is? But I was just like. It was like, it's a bold move to start off your movie and not explain what's going on. Just, oh, it's, you know, the fact that it's army planes taken off from Navy ships, and that's a cool thing.
• 12:07
  Speaker B: Well, not explaining what's going on.
• 12:09
  Speaker A: Hmm.
• 12:09
  Speaker B: It's almost like that's.
• 12:12
  Speaker C: Well, that's interesting, because it might be. So, let's see, 30, let's say, 35 years before the film came out. What was 35 years previous to today? 1989. If you showed shots of, like, the Berlin Wall falling, you wouldn't necessarily need to say, oh, the Berlin Wall's falling.
• 12:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, you would, CJ.
• 12:31
  Speaker C: Kids, you're not necessarily making the film for kids.
• 12:34
  Speaker A: That's true.
• 12:38
  Speaker C: Every movie these days, parents that bring their kids to the movie can say, hey, kids, let me explain this to you. This was the Doolittle raid.
• 12:46
  Speaker A: Whether, you know well, but is the Doolittle raid on the same scale as the Berlin Wall fall? I don't know that it is.
• 12:54
  Speaker C: I'd say it might be. It was a very major moment for us. Propaganda.
• 12:59
  Speaker A: Fair enough. Fair enough, I guess. Yeah. Because obviously, I didn't grow up in that era, so I don't know what the actual impact of that was. If people. How many people knew about it?
• 13:10
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's a very good question, and I don't actually know the answer, of course, but, yeah.
• 13:15
  Speaker A: We next go to Hiroshima, where we meet Admiral Yamamoto, who is told about the bombs that hit over Tokyo and that these bombs proved him correct.
• 13:29
  Speaker B: So I like, right away, the movie establishes itself that it was made in 1976, because it has this aid in a spiffy uniform, and he's like, I have a message for Yamamoto. And he slowly walks through this, slowly walks up to the door.
• 13:44
  Speaker A: Hey, those old movies took their time. They had the time to, you know, tell a story.
• 13:52
  Speaker B: Fortunately, the whole movie is not like that.
• 13:54
  Speaker C: But this one wasn't 3 hours long.
• 13:57
  Speaker A: That's what I was a little worried. These older movies, especially war movies were. And I'll talk more about it. When it started to remind me of Tora Toro Tora. And the longest day, I was worried it was gonna be a three hour thing, but, yeah. What was it, like two, what, 215 or something like that? Yeah, it was perfectly good, actually. 131. So, like, 210. Yeah, 211. We go over to Pearl harbor, where they finally do explain the raid, the Doolittle raid, and what happened with it. I think you hear it over, like a radio broadcast.
• 14:33
  Speaker C: Yes. And actually, I wanted to comment briefly on the radio broadcast.
• 14:35
  Speaker A: Sure, go ahead.
• 14:36
  Speaker C: You might have noticed a very distinctive voice, kind of like strange accents pronouncing certain words. Oddly, that is meant to be the voice of HV Keltenborn, who was a military news analyst for NBC during World War Two. And the voice probably would have been recognizable to people who'd lived through the era.
• 14:57
  Speaker A: Interesting. So was it actually him or was it someone mimicking his voice and accent?
• 15:02
  Speaker C: I think that it was someone mimicking his voice and accent and saying exactly what they wanted to be said.
• 15:07
  Speaker A: Okay. But also part of here, I was like, this seems like. So, Zach, I don't think you've ever been to Hawaii before, have you? DJ, have you been?
• 15:17
  Speaker C: Yes, actually, my brother currently lives on Maui. I've been to Maui and the big island.
• 15:21
  Speaker A: Oh, but you haven't been to Oahu.
• 15:23
  Speaker C: No, I only flown through.
• 15:25
  Speaker A: Okay, so on Oahu, there's a place called Kuala Ranch, which is this beautiful, beautiful place. It's where the big scene of the. Whatever that dinosaur is that's running in Jurassic park. Park where they jump over a lot, that log.
• 15:40
  Speaker C: Okay, I see kind of in the beginning when they first spot them but aren't in danger.
• 15:44
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. And then they have to, like, they run and they, like, jump over a log to, like, get out of the way of them. So that's also filmed in Kuala Ranch, but also it was a big site during the war. And they have, like, well, one, they filmed a lot of other movies, including war movies. Actually, the whole of wind talkers, almost all was filmed there. But they also have, like, these bunkers that look very much like where they go into when they're, like, talking about the raid and when they're going to visit the intel guy, Joe what's his face. Rochefort.
• 16:18
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:20
  Speaker A: So I was like. I was like, as I'm watching this with my wife, we're like, that looks. I don't think it is there because it's on the wrong side of the island, but it's something very similar to the one they have over at cool or.
• 16:31
  Speaker C: Yeah, I believe that the movie was filmed in San Diego. San Diego Navy Yard. So it kind of looks Hawaii ish because it's got palm trees, but it's not, like, also not Hawaii. Right. It doesn't have the mountains. It doesn't have. And I believe a lot of the filming of the ships was done in the Gulf of Mexico, which.
• 16:48
  Speaker A: That is correct. From.
• 16:50
  Speaker C: I can't identify water just as water, so I didn't notice you slip it up.
• 16:56
  Speaker A: Cjdev.
• 16:58
  Speaker C: Technically, the scenes which were filmed furthest from where they occurred.
• 17:01
  Speaker A: Huh. Interesting.
• 17:03
  Speaker C: Maybe not actually. Maybe Florida.
• 17:06
  Speaker A: We're following Captain Matt Garth, who's got two first names.
• 17:12
  Speaker B: He's played by charles.
• 17:13
  Speaker A: He's not based on a real character. A real person is. He's not.
• 17:20
  Speaker C: His role kind of takes on some of the parts that a different intelligence officer would have had. But, no, he's okay. He's an intelligence officer who's also a fighter pilot, who's also.
• 17:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's Mark Wahlberg's guy from, uh, patriots, basically. You know, somehow. Is it everything? Yeah, he goes into a bunker, talks with, you know, a naval intelligence guy, Joe Rochefort. Rochfort.
• 17:46
  Speaker C: Roach for. Yeah, I think.
• 17:49
  Speaker A: And Joe thinks that Coral C will be the next place that they hit. Apparently, they've got about 10% of one of the codes. I don't remember which one deciphered, and there's been an increase in radio traffic. They see mentions of this plan called AF, but they're not sure what it is yet.
• 18:09
  Speaker C: I think it's a location called AF.
• 18:12
  Speaker A: That's what it was.
• 18:12
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're. They're not certain, but they know where the next attack is going to be, and it's going to be coral sea.
• 18:20
  Speaker B: So I quite like how they establish the stakes. Like, the US is on the back foot, the Japanese are on the move. If they mess up here, it's, like, totally over. And I thought that was very interesting and scary. This beginning is quite good, even though it did remind me of Tora.
• 18:38
  Speaker A: Tora.
• 18:38
  Speaker B: Tora.
• 18:39
  Speaker C: Yeah. They did a better job of establishing the stakes. It does seem like that.
• 18:43
  Speaker A: So at this point, when Captain Garth son Tom arrives, I actually did think that it, like, at least when watching it, I thought it was filmed on Ford island and, like, where Pearl harbor is. I was like, because it looks quite similar to that, but. But apparently not. So I was like, oh, wow, they did a good job fooling me, at least at that part.
• 19:04
  Speaker C: I don't think the Navy is very creative with their base design.
• 19:07
  Speaker A: That's the other thing I was like, oh, it's probably, like, especially of that era. They probably all look the same.
• 19:12
  Speaker C: Wow. They got a real quonset hut.
• 19:16
  Speaker B: I also liked how when the dad and son be each other, they shake hands.
• 19:19
  Speaker A: Very, very formal family. And we.
• 19:23
  Speaker B: Well, very, like, old school masculine.
• 19:24
  Speaker C: Well, I think it's also to establish that they haven't. Jesus. They're practically strangers at this point. He says, hi, dad. It's been a great, you know. Wow, you've grown up a lot in the last three years, is what his dad says.
• 19:36
  Speaker A: Three years. Geez. Well, there's also been a war going. Well, actually. So what's our timeline? How long? This is what, 642?
• 19:45
  Speaker C: So, um, it would have been. Yeah. Six ish months.
• 19:48
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. All right. So, no, the war has not been going on for three years. So he's just a terrible father.
• 19:55
  Speaker C: Yeah. Well, it sounds like he got divorced, and that's went on to his navy career, and. Yeah.
• 20:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. Military man.
• 20:04
  Speaker A: So Tom has been assigned to Kaneohe, which is a different part of the island. And then we go to a tiki bar to, you know, you've got to make it seem like, ho, I somehow.
• 20:17
  Speaker B: Do what you can. This was very interesting, this reveal that he loves a japanese american woman. I was not expecting this in the movie, considering all the other war movies we've seen. All the characters are like, yes, I will go and fight, and I have no personality.
• 20:38
  Speaker A: Can I argue that? Not really.
• 20:42
  Speaker B: You can push back on it. We have a friend who shall remain nameless, who hates war movies, war tv shows, because all they do in every scene is just talk about the war. It's all war all the time, which is a bit of an exaggeration, but it's not totally wrong. It's like 90% of conversations or something war related. So whenever you see one, that's nothing.
• 21:04
  Speaker C: Well, so I think I'd say that. I was gonna say that it's more of a modern war film in that way, because the modern war films always seem to have, you know, a love interest or something going on. I'm thinking of Pearl harbor.
• 21:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. And.
• 21:16
  Speaker C: But I realized that actually, old school movies were always like that.
• 21:21
  Speaker A: I was gonna say, like, from here to eternity is a classic war movie that.
• 21:26
  Speaker C: Yeah. Or dive bomber or, you know, any. Any of those old films, which they.
• 21:33
  Speaker B: Have to get something to get women to come and see the movie.
• 21:35
  Speaker C: I think that probably was some of the motivation back then. They're probably like women. Women want to see these other things, so we'll put them in the movie and, you know, that'll be interesting.
• 21:46
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 21:46
  Speaker A: Just, you know, the cross culture romance, and especially with that climate and the fact that apparently she's been. The girl has been arrested and that the FBI has intel on her folks.
• 22:01
  Speaker B: It's great.
• 22:03
  Speaker A: Of course, Captain McGarth is suspicious about this. We find out that her name is Haruko Sakura and that she's going to be sent back to the mainland because of all this going on. So Captain Garth says he's going to try to get her file to at least look into this.
• 22:20
  Speaker C: And they met at, what is it? Uc San Diego or something.
• 22:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Because I was like, yeah, how did you. You know, you just got here and you're already in trouble with the girl. Girl you're in love with who's been arrested. How'd that work?
• 22:34
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 22:36
  Speaker B: And probably they travel in different circles, too.
• 22:38
  Speaker A: So we go to Hiroshima B, where it's the battleship Yamato.
• 22:44
  Speaker C: It's not.
• 22:46
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 22:47
  Speaker C: I think that this might actually, because it looks like the Nagato, and Nagato is the flagship for the attack on Pearl harbor. And I think that this might have been a relic from the film from Toro. Torotor.
• 22:59
  Speaker A: Ah, there you go.
• 23:02
  Speaker B: At least they have the country, right?
• 23:04
  Speaker C: Yeah, we'll have more of that later.
• 23:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, but we do see that. Yeah. This is supposed to be Yamamoto's flagship. There's discussion about what their plan is for Midway. They can't land on Midway unless the forces on the shore are taken out. But unlike Pearl harbor, this is not a surprise attack with a couple of ships. This is a much larger and more complex operation.
• 23:28
  Speaker B: It's something that we see in these war movies a lot, where everything has to go perfectly for it to go correctly, which is kind of like a bridge too far. The last time we had.
• 23:39
  Speaker C: I think that with this one, too, there's a lot of moving parts, but actually, some of the other moving parts aren't like the attack on the Aleutians. It's meant to draw away Nimitz. It's not actually essential to the plan, in a way.
• 23:53
  Speaker B: You don't think so? I feel like it was because they said if the carriers were there, they could just pick us off from, like, a distance, and we never even get close. Right. Or might think of a different party, I think.
• 24:05
  Speaker C: I don't recall exactly, but I think that that might have been later in the film when they no longer have any aircraft carriers. I could be wrong, though. You might be right, Zach. And, yeah, I also don't know if this is clear, but one of the main part of the fleet that's, I think, meant to engage the american fleet, the assumption is the Americans will send also their battleships, I think, and then the japanese battleships could engage the us battleships as well. Yamamoto himself is in charge of all the battleship forces, which end up being totally irrelevant to the entire battle. An interesting fact I read is that this operation from the japanese side used as much fuel as the entire first six months of the war.
• 24:49
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 24:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think somebody says, like, this is their only chance to lure out the Americans. If they don't do it, the Americans will just build up a huge fleet and totally take them out. So it's like high stakes for Americans, but also high stakes for the other guys, too. So that's really nice.
• 25:08
  Speaker A: So we also hear that their next operation that's underway is the Coral sea operation, which is starting soon. So that proves Rochefort. Right. And so the japanese command agrees to meet again after that campaign is over.
• 25:26
  Speaker B: There's a part where they show american, like, naval bases getting ready for attack. And again, they have the world war one helmets. Long time was maybe were tura toratora. They had the world war one era helmets, too, and I pointed that out.
• 25:41
  Speaker C: And DJ said in early world War two, they were still using the Brody helmet they hadn't switched over.
• 25:48
  Speaker A: We hear that the battle of coral sea was, you know, inconclusive. The Yorktown got, you know, the crap beat out of it, which. I'm gonna go back to Pearl harbor, because this line always stuck with me from the end of Pearl harbor, from what's her face. Evelyn. Yeah. The Doolittle raid was the pivotal moment of America's war with Japan. Before it, America knew nothing but defeat. After it, nothing but victory. Except coral sea was inconclusive. So that's wrong, Evelyn. You're wrong.
• 26:21
  Speaker C: And it ignores all the naval combats off Guadalcanal. The US did not exactly cover itself in glory.
• 26:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I was like, I know you're trying to make a point at the end of Pearl harbor, and actually, you know, again, kudos to them for featuring the Doolittle raid, but that's just wrong. That is wrong. Michael Bay. After battle of coral Sea, we go back to Rochford, who is trying to figure he was pretty sure that Af is Midway, and he uses a pretty simple ruse to confirm that it's midway. I like this, though.
• 26:56
  Speaker B: I mean, it's my stuff, right? That's what we're here for.
• 26:58
  Speaker A: Tells Midway to, you know, transmit in the clear, uncoated. That. What is it? One of their compressors?
• 27:05
  Speaker C: Was it their water purifier?
• 27:07
  Speaker A: Purifier, thank you. Is down. And then, you know, they send it. The Japanese intercept that, and they transmit that back to Tokyo encoded, which Rochford can read. That Af's water purifier is down. So that. That's conclusive. That Af is Midway.
• 27:29
  Speaker B: There you go. Got him.
• 27:30
  Speaker A: Now that they know the location of the tack, Admiral Nimitz and his staff work to get the carriers of the Enterprise, the Hornet, and the Yorktown, which has been really, really hastily, you know, repaired. Yeah. All the way to a point which they select which. Which is north of Midway, waiting for the japanese fleet. And I know it covered a lot of stuff right there, but it was like, there's a lot. I'm just gonna condense that. Do we need to talk about what's his face's skin disease? Do we need to talk?
• 28:02
  Speaker C: So I would say I don't know about the skin disease, except it is Robert Mitchum's only part. Apparently, he only agreed to be in the movie if he could be in bed the entire time.
• 28:12
  Speaker A: I feel like we talked about Halsey when we did Tora Toro Toronto.
• 28:16
  Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. I think that that's what it was, is that they made sure to shoehorn Halsey into Tora Toro. Tora.
• 28:21
  Speaker A: That's what it was as a main.
• 28:23
  Speaker C: Character, because he featured prominently in a lot of the US, you know, us's later victories.
• 28:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. I do remember. I know this name. Why do I remember this name?
• 28:38
  Speaker B: It's a like a celebrity cameo. By the way, something I recently learned is that Halsey said, by the time we're through with them, the only place they speak Japanese will be in hell.
• 28:50
  Speaker A: Oh, man. Wow.
• 28:52
  Speaker B: I was waiting to see you in the movie, and he did not.
• 28:56
  Speaker C: I did want to highlight, though, maybe less the skin disease and more so the various decoding efforts, but also because I think that this is the part that's really spy like, but also. And I think that this is also a key feature of spy and military intelligence, is convincing the higher ups that that's what's actually going to happen.
• 29:15
  Speaker A: That. Yes, that is. Yeah. I don't want to talk too much about Pearl harbor, but there is one line in Pearl harbor that is. That makes the movie, and it is about intelligence, but I will save it for whenever we get together next, and we'll watch that movie.
• 29:27
  Speaker C: Okay. Well, in this. In this context, I think basically every military. So the Nimitz has his code breakers who are telling him stuff, and his intelligence team, and Admiral King, back in Washington, has his intelligence team that's telling him stuff. And those two intelligence teams did not agree on what was going to happen. And that's what's depicted in the movie, is that competition, kind of, between basically the different intelligence teams trying to convince their bosses what's going to happen, and why do we know that?
• 30:04
  Speaker A: So interesting.
• 30:06
  Speaker C: And the intelligence team of newts was spot on here.
• 30:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. But good thing they got listened to again. It's like, look how close it is.
• 30:17
  Speaker C: An interesting thing, too, that goes even beyond that is that Admiral MacArthur, who is currently in Australia, had his own intelligence team, and the British, over in, I guess, the western side of the Indian Ocean, had their own intelligence teams, and the British were convinced that the Japanese were going to attack, uh, Madagascar, um, which at current, at the time, the British were occupying Vichy, French Madagascar, and it wasn't going great. So it wasn't without reason that the Japanese could have gone over there. So the British saw the threat next to them. MacArthur thought that they were going to attack Australia, where he was. What's his name, um, King and his people thought that they were going to attack possibly the US west coast, and, um, Nimitz, of course, thought that they were going to attack Midway. So there was a lot of competing ideas about what the enemy's doing, and when you can't see what they're doing, they're, you know, 10ft tall and doing everything at the same time.
• 31:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I did like, which commander or Admiral was it, who was like, I'll put us north of Midway, where basically, you know, we can defend Midway, but also, if they do actually make a break for the west coast, we can.
• 31:28
  Speaker C: Cut them off, I guess, two, two notes on that. This is actually one of my fact versus fictions, is kind of the, the line in the movie versus what was reportedly told to Nimitz in real life about the intelligence. And then the other is just noting the fact that the US still had all, I think it was seven of their slow battleships covering the west coast. So the US west coast is not undefended.
• 31:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like, the way they make it sound is like, all right, it is these three battleships. That is all that's defending the west coast.
• 32:00
  Speaker C: Yeah. There's slightly more. And the.
• 32:03
  Speaker A: These three carriers.
• 32:05
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Battleships only go roughly two thirds the speed of the aircraft carriers, so they would be way too slow to keep up with any of these movements that the aircraft carriers are doing battles.
• 32:14
  Speaker A: No plans either.
• 32:16
  Speaker C: Yeah. So they just left them because they would have been a hindrance, not a help. But then the fact versus fiction, and I don't know if you want me to save this for later.
• 32:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, go for it. We're here. Let's talk about it.
• 32:27
  Speaker C: Sure. So I think that the line in the movie is we're assuming they'll attack from the northwest, but there's no intelligence to support that. And the spy fact is that Leighton, who's kind of the. Maybe the closest analog to him in the movie, would be Charlton Heston's character. He's written out of it despite being a major player. Anyway, Leighton tells Nimitz they'll come in from the northwest on a Bering 325 degrees, and they will be sighted about 175 miles from Midway, and the time will be about 06:00 a.m. midway time. So not a ton of ambiguity in the prediction.
• 33:04
  Speaker A: Quite on the nose there. Yeah.
• 33:06
  Speaker C: And that actually leads into kind of, I think, the. The very next scene, or maybe where they finally spot strawberry five spots, this force. And Nimitz says in the movie, for seemingly no reason, says, this is not the main body, but in actual fact, he was referring to the fact that they knew where the Japanese would be coming in from, and he was just reminding spruance, don't go after this force because there's going to be another one. So it wasn't just a hunch that he was ordering them not to attack a japanese force because of a hunch. It was due to the specific intelligence that they had about the japanese actions and disposition. They knew that this other force would be coming in for the invasion.
• 33:51
  Speaker A: All right, well, before we get to strawberry five, we got a little bit other stuff to cover. We've got on the Yorktown, there is a. There's a really cool trends, like transition, where, like, they actually, like, they're walking around and they get on one of the lifts. That is for the planes, and, like, you know, so it looks like the entire ship is moving around them, but they're just going down the elevator.
• 34:13
  Speaker B: That's a great part.
• 34:15
  Speaker A: That was a cool shot there. Like, all right, you are using your environment for. For that.
• 34:22
  Speaker B: The. Do you guys like the part where one of the admirals looks at a pin up?
• 34:27
  Speaker A: I missed that.
• 34:28
  Speaker C: Did he? Was he in a file? Like, that was. Because that was the girl. That was the girl his son was dating. It was in her file.
• 34:39
  Speaker B: Oh, I don't think he was just looking at him.
• 34:43
  Speaker C: No, Charlton has. Looking at his son's girlfriend.
• 34:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:47
  Speaker C: Yes. Haruko's file.
• 34:49
  Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
• 34:50
  Speaker C: But I had the same thought for a second, Zack, and I was like, what is going on there? But, no, it was. I realized, because then he focuses on it in the next scene after.
• 34:59
  Speaker A: Or Captain Garth goes to see Haruko and meets her parents and talks with her. And we find out that Haruko has refused to see Tom, but he convinces her. So when Haruko does finally get to see Tom, she tries to brush him off and tell him that, you know, I don't love you, but, like, no, look at me in the eyes and tell me that.
• 35:21
  Speaker B: So much good drama. First scene with Harunka where Charles and Essen goes to see her in that, like, prison is my favorite part of the movie. Cause it's a really good example of showing and not telling, though they do do a little bit of telling as well. They slowly walk, and you see people, like, doing laundry and, like, ironing and cooking, just, like, carrying on as if one of the things that stuck out.
• 35:43
  Speaker C: To me there, Zach, was just the giant pile of luggage. And you can kind of imagine people coming in, having to throw all their luggage in one big pile. They don't know when they're going next. And it's just. Yeah, it's almost, like, dehumanizing to have to mix all your luggage together in one giant pile.
• 36:00
  Speaker A: Yep. Yep.
• 36:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, I was about to get to that. Thank you, ZJ. And I won't be too dark. Did also remind me of the big pile of shoes at the Holocaust museum.
• 36:09
  Speaker A: Jeez. Yeah, you did. I mean, I don't regret you that comparison. It's just. I mean, yeah, that's. Wow.
• 36:19
  Speaker B: It's a really good scene. It's really interesting because it's based on true story. The movie doesn't, like, arc back to it like you would in a fictional movie. You know, like the subtle little things in Tora, Tora, Tora and Pearl Harbor. I like the reminder that although World War Two is as close to a black and white war as you can get in history, it isn't completely.
• 36:41
  Speaker A: We also have Captain Garth running into Tom's flight leader in. I think it's probably the same tiki bar. Cause they only have so many sets.
• 36:50
  Speaker C: Strangely, for a movie starring Charlton Heston, this seems like it was really shot on a budget.
• 36:56
  Speaker A: Maybe it's because of his salary. That is why it was shot. Yeah.
• 37:00
  Speaker C: Or renting the aircraft carrier for those shots.
• 37:02
  Speaker A: Probably. It actually but, yeah, so his. Tom's flight leader makes some comments about failure in enemy identification, and Captain Garth, you know, pisses off as flight leader and ends up getting Tom shipped out early on the Yorktown.
• 37:20
  Speaker C: Hmm.
• 37:22
  Speaker B: By the way, I just gotta say, do you think the Enterprise is a much cooler name than the other carriers? I feel like there's a better.
• 37:28
  Speaker A: Sounds pretty good. I think.
• 37:29
  Speaker C: I think Hornet is pretty cool.
• 37:32
  Speaker A: Fun fact, before it was gonna be called the Enterprise, Gene Roddenberry, what was his name for the ship?
• 37:40
  Speaker B: I mean, I think he had a list of names that were not the Farragut.
• 37:45
  Speaker A: No, Farragut was Captain Kirk's previous command.
• 37:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, he had a bunch of carrier names for the ship on Star Trek was Yorktown.
• 37:56
  Speaker A: That. That was like one of the. His. I gave his second choice. Yeah.
• 38:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:01
  Speaker C: I would not have liked aircraft carry names. I can't remember if I brought this up during the, uh, Tora. Tortura. I probably did. They mentioned that, uh, when asked where the aircraft carrier, like, where the planes were launched from, um, Roosevelt says, oh, I can finally reveal to you that they were launched from our, um, base in Shangri la, which was a reference to the 1938 movie, I think, lost Horizon, um, where there's a mythical land somewhere in the east. But that joke stuck with people so much that they actually named an aircraft carrier the Shangri La. Later in the war, we built so many aircraft carriers, we named one of them after a joke.
• 38:40
  Speaker A: That's pretty good.
• 38:43
  Speaker C: USS Shangri la.
• 38:45
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 38:46
  Speaker C: Served all the way through Vietnam, I believe.
• 38:48
  Speaker A: Oh, wow, that's. That's pretty good. Make me curious, because. So, yeah, obviously there's this. What was. Oh, I feel like I looked up what this, what the identification code for this enterprise was cd six. I was like, I feel like it's six. And then I know that the next generation was CVN 65. There is no current USS Enterprise carrier, but there will be no, they're building it now, and it'll be, I think, supposed to be active duty in 2029.
• 39:24
  Speaker C: Oh, interesting. They're moving quickly on that one.
• 39:28
  Speaker A: I think it's CVN 80. It'll be a. What is it, a Gerald Ford class?
• 39:34
  Speaker C: Yep. Interesting to note that in the four years of world War two, I believe we built 27 aircraft carriers. And that's about the time period between now and when the. When the enterprise will come online. So it takes as long to build one of them.
• 39:53
  Speaker A: Now, the construction began in 2017.
• 39:56
  Speaker C: Okay. So it takes much longer. Makes it even worse.
• 40:01
  Speaker A: Does it? Does.
• 40:03
  Speaker C: It's much more complicated these days we.
• 40:05
  Speaker A: Don'T have war rationing to, you know, for all of our steel.
• 40:09
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 40:11
  Speaker A: We go and see Captain Garth going to go see Admiral Pearson in naval intelligence, and he tries to, you know, get Haruko and her parents cleared. Apparently, they knew each other back in Annapolis, and, you know, he owes him a favor. But now, like, he's, like, well, yeah, one, you know, that's a hell of a favor, too. He is asking a superior officer to circumvent, you know, the rules and the.
• 40:41
  Speaker B: Law, all for his son.
• 40:43
  Speaker A: I like how at the end of this scene, he says, all right, I'll look into it. And, like, Garth goes in for the handshake and just, like, looks at him, goes back to his papers.
• 40:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. After this word, we're done.
• 40:56
  Speaker A: We're even very interested on the Yorktown, Captain Garth and Tom finally talked. They clear the air, and, you know, Captain Garth explains that. Our idea. No, yeah, I I did go to, you know, see Haruko and try to get, you know, something done. I've tried as much as I can, more than I should have. I was like, okay, thanks for that. I didn't tell your flight leader to, you know, do this to ship you off, but he thought he was doing us both a favor. And that's where it gets. He's like, it's going so well, and then it just goes downhill for fatherhood. Like you're supposed to. You're supposed to be flying, not crying to you, crying in your room, in your bunk about your girl.
• 41:41
  Speaker B: Like, I tried being nice.
• 41:43
  Speaker A: Oh, you were doing so well, Captain Garth, and then you blew it. You could have had this all go off so smoothly and nicely, but, and, you know, you were trying, but then you just blew it. But, yeah. So going back to the Japanese, their carriers received word that the recon flight, well, one of their carriers receives word that the recon flight to Pearl harbor didn't go through. They're all under radio silence, so they can't break radio silence to ask, you know, or tell anyone else.
• 42:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like, do we call it off? What do we do?
• 42:16
  Speaker A: So we're just gonna assume that the care that the american carriers are still at Pearl harbor.
• 42:21
  Speaker C: And I don't have a spy fiction here, but I have a spy fact, which is I believe that the ship that was sent to french frigate Shoals was sent there because they were expecting the Japanese to try and refuel their ship, their planes there. So it was another bit of, I'm fairly sure I didn't double check this, but I think I remember that the japanese code was decrypted, and this was one of the things that they did to make sure that they couldn't carry that out.
• 42:49
  Speaker A: So the Americans send out scout planes. They don't find anything. We also get to see Midway prepping for the invasion.
• 42:59
  Speaker B: That's right. This is our first meeting of strawberry five. And that's a wild job, is just fly around without any guns.
• 43:07
  Speaker C: And also, another guy who, I don't know, this stuck with me, maybe a bit more than you, but major red parks, and they're like, where planes are super outdated. And he's like, but we'll at least let him know we were there.
• 43:22
  Speaker A: Yeah. So we have. Now the japanese carriers are stuck in a storm, so they can't see what's going on. But we get the Japanese, I assume. So this is not there. You know, the fleet that's going on, that's going towards Midway, it's a different fleet that's attached attacking or bombing dutch harbor or otherwise known as the Aleutian Islands. They have found the japanese carriers. The radio midway, where Rochford is told that he was right, but they're not sure if the ships spotted were the main force or just the precursor. So this is where. Yeah. That spy fact versus fiction that you were talking about ZJ earlier.
• 44:02
  Speaker C: Yep. Yep. Where there. It wasn't just nimitz guessing.
• 44:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:06
  Speaker C: He had definite intelligence indicating that this was not the main body.
• 44:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. And this is where the movie kind of starts to lose me in terms of I have trouble following where everybody is needed, some computer graphics.
• 44:18
  Speaker C: I'm glad it wasn't just me. I was wondering if knowing, like, recognizing these planes threw me off more than a layperson to whom a plane would be a plane, because I totally plane size.
• 44:31
  Speaker A: I had mister. At least on the Japanese, you know, carriers. I. All right, I know that. Okay, Mister Miyagi is on that one. So that. That helps me identify that. All right. I know that Charlton Heston is on New York town. That makes. Helps me identify that. Everything else, like, oh, I can't tell which group is which or of, you know, which of. If the fighter. If the planes are fighters or bombers or torpedo planes.
• 44:57
  Speaker C: Oh, boy, that's fine, because they weren't. They were morphing from one to the next and one side to the next. And there was virtually no two scenes in a row that were the same type of aircraft.
• 45:12
  Speaker A: All right, well, let's. I've got, like, little bullet points here. So Japanese send out recon fights to find the carriers. Americans are sending scouts of their own. The Japanese ready their second wave in case the Americans arrive. So I like that, you know, so the. The first wave of the. Of planes that they sent out to Midway are we find. We hear that they're like the rookie pilots and that they have their, you know, more experienced pilots in reserve.
• 45:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's very interesting. And chest, the pawns go first. Don't tell them that.
• 45:43
  Speaker C: Yeah, I think it was interesting that they were emphasizing just how careful the Japanese were trying to be with this. Nagumo is saying, all right, like, I think, like we're supposed to have known that there are no airplanes. We should have heard if there were aircraft carriers around. But just in case we missed them, we're saving half of our strike force, specifically armed to launch immediately if we spot them. And that seems like a pretty intense safety measure, given you have no indication that this might happen. So.
• 46:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:15
  Speaker B: There's maybe said we're playing a two safe, as it turns out. Interesting, right?
• 46:20
  Speaker A: So we have strawberry twelve. Another one of the groups of planes sees the japanese planes heading towards Midway, but they are not clear in the communication. So there's no one really knows what exactly what's going on. We get the battle commencing. The japanese bombers take out fighters defending Midway. They bomb midway. There's a great one wheel landing here. That was nice.
• 46:42
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 46:43
  Speaker C: The B 17, which we hadn't seen prior to this. But interestingly, I don't think that this was necessarily intended as this, but there were actually B 17s flying out of Midway. B 17, of course, is a large, four engine level bomber. They fly very high up, and they bomb the Japanese from a very high altitude. And to the degree where the Japanese could see them drop their bombs and then turn and avoid where the bombs would land.
• 47:10
  Speaker A: So, wow, that is quite high.
• 47:11
  Speaker C: Then the american bombers reported two aircraft carriers sunk and, in fact, hit nothing.
• 47:18
  Speaker A: Oh, no.
• 47:20
  Speaker C: Which is a very consistent theme among early american battle reports. I think it's interesting because, in a way, showing kind of how chaotic and impossible to interpret all of these different signals that be. Would maybe make for an interesting film. But that's not what this film was.
• 47:41
  Speaker A: No, no.
• 47:42
  Speaker B: Remake. A remake of this movie, you might say.
• 47:45
  Speaker A: So, one of the japanese man, Genda, reads a report about Midway. I know he's not playing Mister Miyagi here, but I just have here him in my notes as Miyagi. Miyagi wants to bomb the airstrip, so he has them switch out the torpedoes for bombs.
• 48:03
  Speaker C: Remembering that Genda was a main character in Tora. Toratora. Was he the guy who was, like, in his, like, in his room surrounded by papers and stuff, crazily planning the attack?
• 48:15
  Speaker A: I think that sounds familiar. Let's find. Let's look up Genda as the actual person and see if they have a thing on what he was at Pearl harbor. Yeah. Yes. Minoru Genda is chosen to mastermind the operation.
• 48:32
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 48:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 48:33
  Speaker C: It's like seeing a returning character in a tv show, but they've been recast and act totally differently.
• 48:41
  Speaker A: The Americans are debating when to launch. Spruance wants to launch now. Japanese scout ship four spots the american fleet and radios back and they stop the swap of torpedoes.
• 48:53
  Speaker B: It's like, oh, God, guys.
• 48:55
  Speaker A: And then one of the other flights, which I don't remember which one it was. Waldron, as the flight leader, takes his plane on his own heading, which is not the heading that he was given to, he was told to do during.
• 49:06
  Speaker C: The actual battle of Midway. It was more that some of the flights were vectored on the wrong heading. And the pilots or the flight leaders who knew that some of them essentially disobeyed the directed heading to fly the correct heading that they knew was.
• 49:23
  Speaker A: Which is kind of. We're kind of told that about. About Waldron. He's like, you know. Yeah. He knows what he's doing.
• 49:30
  Speaker B: So it's like something out of a movie.
• 49:34
  Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot of that.
• 49:35
  Speaker B: By the way, do you guys notice how much better dressed the Japanese are than the Americans? The Americans have, like, the open collar and they always look, like, sweaty. And the Japanese look really put together. Even after the character gets bombed, they still look like they have it together. I thought that was funny.
• 49:53
  Speaker A: We didn't really talk about him, but, like, they sort of seemingly like the star pilot of the Japanese, tomonaga.
• 49:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 50:00
  Speaker A: Arrives to refuel. Also, we didn't talk about, like, the reason that Mister Miyagi wanted. And I'm just gonna call him that. Just. It's Pat Marina wanted to switch his switch from bombs, torpedoes, is that they didn't bomb the airfield at midway because these were the rookie pilots who didn't think about doing that. Yeah.
• 50:20
  Speaker B: And that's where you get when you send rookie pilots, as it turns out. There's a cool where I thought, I mean, my notes, it's a zero, but CJ, maybe it's not. Flies really low over Midway island. I thought they did a good job with that.
• 50:33
  Speaker C: Interesting.
• 50:34
  Speaker B: Do you remember that?
• 50:35
  Speaker C: I do. I don't remember specifically what type of plane it was. Though. But they did have a lot of exciting footage during this part. I think that this was a part that they actually filmed for this movie, like, all the explosions and stuff, because you can kind of see that they have that one set with the tower in the background, and the moment I saw that tower, I knew they were going to have someone fall off it.
• 50:55
  Speaker A: Were there supposed to be these? The fighters for the Japanese were supposed to be zeros, right?
• 51:00
  Speaker B: I thought so.
• 51:00
  Speaker A: And that's why DJ.
• 51:02
  Speaker C: Yes. The japanese fighters would have been zeros. A lot of the footage from, I believe it would have been. The japanese film that was made is fantastic. They did a great job with the. Every type of japanese plane seems very accurate. I think all the markings are very accurate, and then that'll be interspersed with just random other footage that they got from somewhere.
• 51:22
  Speaker A: What's the name of the japanese bombers? I can't remember that.
• 51:25
  Speaker C: So the. The us nicknames for them were the Kate, which is the kind of more level bombing torpedo bomber, and then the val, which is a dive bomber.
• 51:35
  Speaker B: I would not remember those either.
• 51:37
  Speaker A: So I think also around this part is where I definitely got reminded of Tora, Tora, Tora. And the longest day because, especially Tora, Tora, Tora. Because, like, when you. They're switching, and I understand why they did, but when they're switching between all the different, you know, squadrons of planes, they like, oh, the big white letters. Who is it? Who is this pilot? And all that, it's like, gosh, yep.
• 52:01
  Speaker C: They got to do it. Well, that was actually something that I wish there had been more of because there are, you know, they highlighted some of the major characters and players and, you know, there are a lot of people who played very important roles during the Battle of Midway. And I thought that I kind of would rather have seen them write more around those stories rather than, you know, add Charlton Heston bombing them at the end. Yeah. And. But it is interesting because I think that this is when the first torpedo bombing squadrons arrive. Right?
• 52:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. So. Well, we have a lot of things going on sort of simultaneously. But we have the american scouts returned. We get the general quarters. Tom. We see Tom again, and he'll finally. He launches. We get Waldron's flight, finds the Japanese. They go in. Here's. This is some good footage here. The Japanese don't. At least this ship doesn't have fighter coverage, so. But a lot of the planes are taken out. Waldron's hit a plane, releases a torpedo, but it doesn't hit. What is this note? Pull out. Oh, pull out. I think it's Waldron or someone. He's shot, and he pulls the bullet out of his arm.
• 53:17
  Speaker C: What's his name?
• 53:18
  Speaker A: Son does that was that. Was that. I don't think that was him. But someone does.
• 53:24
  Speaker C: Could have been. Yeah, it might have been.
• 53:25
  Speaker A: Um, no, actually, I think it says Edson gay. That's right. Because I have my next notice. His goes down. But the pilot survived, so.
• 53:31
  Speaker C: Yes, that's right. I forgot about that.
• 53:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. And then we get bombing squadron three, headed by Max Leslie. They arm their bombs, but they have to use manual control because the electric electronic arming isn't working. And this is where we switch between fighting squadron three and torpedo Squadron three and bombing squadron three. It's like, oh, yeah.
• 53:52
  Speaker C: All sorts of stuff happening.
• 53:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 53:54
  Speaker C: And no one knows where anywhere. Anyone else in.
• 53:57
  Speaker A: So maybe that's why they're doing this, is so we feel as confused as the pilots.
• 54:02
  Speaker C: Yeah. So it feels sort of random.
• 54:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 54:05
  Speaker B: I'm glad I'm not the only one.
• 54:07
  Speaker A: Who'S killed, but it was my next. Oh, yeah. So one of. One of those squadron three spots some ships, and then Tom gets shot up and he's on fire.
• 54:19
  Speaker B: That part. This part was crazy, too. I thought he was going to die for sure.
• 54:22
  Speaker A: I definitely thought he was. Like, he looked. It looked like third degree birds. It looked bad. And then we have a japanese scout who sees all of the carriers, but of course, his transmitter isn't working.
• 54:34
  Speaker C: Yep. Again, it feels like some kind of Hollywood thing, but that is what happened.
• 54:40
  Speaker B: My phone's out of batteries. That's why I can't call the police to deal with serial killer.
• 54:46
  Speaker A: Have another squadron leader McCluskey, who likes seize some ships. But, you know, we can. I like this. They show is yours. You show, not tell, Zach. Well, they show antelope, but they show first that. All right, you see, his fuel gauge is going wonky, and then his, like, his back seater is like, well, we got his gun. I assume it's a gunner. Got to turn back, see? I know. And then the Japanese realize that there must be more than one carrier because there's so many ships.
• 55:19
  Speaker C: Important detail here is that McCluskey spots a japanese destroyer, which in the shop there are two ships. So I was like, um. But the. So the japanese destroyer had attempted to torpedo the USS Nautilus earlier in the day, which had spotted the Japanese but not had time to radio a report. It did not successfully depth charge them, but it was racing back to the fleet to get back in formation. And McCluskey correctly judged that the japanese destroyer would be racing back toward their fleet, and so turned to head along the direction the destroyer had been heading. And that was why he found the japanese fleet interesting.
• 55:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. We have McCluskey finding the carriers. They go for bombing runs, and this is where we get three of the carriers on fire.
• 56:04
  Speaker B: Okay, so this really confused me, and CJ didn't help me out. I don't want to say it ruined the movie, but it kind of did. So there's a part where the Americans attack and totally destroy it. And one of the Japanese said, Japanese says, these Americans are sacrificing themselves like samurai. Do you guys remember the part?
• 56:23
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 56:24
  Speaker B: And then later they attack again and they win. And what's the difference? Like, why one work and one didn't?
• 56:31
  Speaker C: That's an excellent question. I wish that they'd done a better job of this in the film. So the difference is the torpedo squadrons versus the bombing squadrons?
• 56:38
  Speaker A: Ah, yes.
• 56:39
  Speaker C: The torpedo squadrons were flying old, outdated by this point, planes that were very slow. And the idea with a torpedo attack is you can't actually go too fast because your torpedo will, like, skip off the water. So you have to go low, you have to go slow, you have to stay on target, and you got to line it up and do a group attack so that, you know, all the torpedoes go forward and they can't dodge all of them, but that requires coming in low. They. They're supposed to have fighter cover, but they lost their fighters at some point, or the fighters never found them. And so the torpedo bombers actually attack, and this isn't shown in the movie, but bomber planes from midway as well attack and are just totally cut up because they're flying low, they're flying slow. The Japanese Zeros are above them because, you know, they're covering the carriers, and all the zeros just dive down and just make mincemeat out of the torpedo bombers. It's a total disaster, and none of them score any hits.
• 57:39
  Speaker B: Okay, well, so thank you. But why does the second one work?
• 57:44
  Speaker A: Because they're not torpedoes. They're bombers.
• 57:46
  Speaker C: They're dive bombers. The way they attack is they fly high up, spot the aircraft carriers, and then dive straight down onto them. And historically, what happened for at least one of the dive bomber attacks is the Japanese didn't even notice the dive bombers were there until they were already making their attack runs. That, you know, that's kind of because all the fighters had flown down. I think at one point, they say in the film, we no longer have any fighter cover, and draw attention to that. The dive bombers then are very high up and no zeros can fly up that far fast to get to them. So the dive bombers attack and drop their bombs and are essentially attack, are not attacked at all during their attacks. So that's why they're so effective is because they're able to, because of the sacrifice of the torpedo bombers, attack totally undefended targets, essentially.
• 58:36
  Speaker B: Christian, did you get any of that from the movie?
• 58:38
  Speaker A: I got that they were different. Like one was torpedoes and the other was a dive bomber. And I was. And I understood that.
• 58:46
  Speaker B: I guess there is.
• 58:47
  Speaker A: I didn't understand the nuance of why it was more successful. I just saw that it was more successful as a dive bomber versus a torpedo.
• 58:53
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 58:54
  Speaker A: And retrospect, I can see, I can get it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that would make sense because, yeah, for torpedoes you really got to be low and then release as opposed to dive bomber. We could come in from up high and, you know, you have a, you have less of a, you know, less of yourself exposed. You know, you've got a smaller target for them to hit when you're coming up that high. And I realize I'm using hand motions like this is a audio medium.
• 59:19
  Speaker C: I missed that too. I had the film pulled up so I didn't hear.
• 59:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Some japanese fighters find the, find the Americans. I think they. And they follow it. Is it. I think it's McCluskey or one of the other squadrons follow them back. We see Tom makes it back to the his. I think he's. Yeah, back to the Yorktown. But he crashes into the deck. Medics take him out of it. He's still alive though.
• 59:45
  Speaker C: Yeah. And the footage of a plane landing and crashing is actually historical footage.
• 59:51
  Speaker A: Oh, that's cool.
• 59:52
  Speaker C: It's not the type of plane he was in, but, and I have noted down here, you can really tell the music is by John Williams.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. Japanese trying to mount attack. They hit the deck of one of the carriers, of course, the Yorktown, which has been, you know, hastily put back together after coral sea. The radio is down. They have to transfer the flag. Which led to the question of, for me, like, wait, how are they getting the admiral off that ship? Then they answered very quickly. The admiral's barge was like, oh, okay. That. I was like, they're not going to send them out on a dinghy to the other ship. So how do they get him out?
• 1:00:27
  Speaker C: They have him swing over like Tarzan.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker A: I wish we had seen the admiral's barge because I was curious. It's like, you know, it's like the captain's yacht. And, you know, for the enterprise, like, you've never. We never actually seen. We just heard it referred to.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker C: An interesting thing is, at least during peacetime, us aircraft carriers will often carry cars, because when. Whenever the admiral arrives in a port somewhere, he's expected to meet foreign dignitaries, and he can't, well, rent an Ubere. So they bring their cars, and the US Navy drives their cars, you know, wherever they've landed.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker A: That's fun.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker B: There's a lot of room. Might as well.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker A: We have the japanese scout plane, whose radio went down, finally returns to the fleet and gives his intel, just as historically happened.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker C: I do have a note from the japanese attack, because it's. I think they essentially only used footage of american carriers the entire time that the Americans were attacking.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker A: That's funny.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker C: So the Americans bombed american aircraft carriers, but somehow I think that they got footage of a japanese aircraft carrier being bombed during the japanese attack sequence on the Americans. So the one piece of footage of a japanese carrier being bombed, they actually had. They showed during the attack on the american air hackers. So that was when I decided that the person who picked out this stock footage really was not taking any of this seriously. I also have noted that I feel like the way that they cut the battle scenes was just incomprehensible.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, it was. Especially, you know. Yeah, they're all these sources. I know that they wanted to, okay, put real footage in there. They had to find, you know, whatever they could. But still, it was. There were some real cool shots, but a lot of times, it was just not very, you know, visual. As a visual medium. It was not visually told.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker C: Well, no, you were supposed to infer that certain objects carried over momentum between some scenes and not between others.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I find out that Tom is going to be okay, and his hands are heavily bandaged, and he, you know, his dad goes to see him, and his dad, he asks his dad to bring a picture of him and Haruko ashore. And this is where Captain Garth is told, all right, we have more planes than pilots. He used to be a pilot. Do you mind going? Okay, I guess so. You know, even though he. How. When was the last time he logged any flight hours? Who knows? In what kind of plane was he rated in? Who knows? But I'm gonna fly this plane.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker C: Yeah, it seemed a bit far fetched.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker B: Do something. Action.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker A: So we go back to naval intelligence, I assume, at Pearl. I, uh, where they've confirmed that the three carriers. Actually, no, it is at Pearl, because Rochfort's there, uh, three carriers out of the four damage, they could bring the fleet home, but, uh, who is this? Who says I want that fourth carrier?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker C: Uh, Nimitz.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker A: There's a line here that the Japanese have six fighters and ten torpedo planes left. Is that out of all of their planes or just from that ship?
• 1:03:35
  Speaker C: Uh, out of all their planes. Because they only have one ship left at that point.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker A: Right? Of course, because they've only got three. They had three carriers. I had four. Wow. Captain Garth is in a plane. They find the last carrier. There's a torpedo attack incoming. And here's where I get, I get a flash forward to about, let's see, this is 1976, said seven years in the future. Intensify forward firepower too late. Where a plane hits the bridge of one. Actually, I don't even remember which side. It's. That's how incomprehensible. This part.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker C: Yeah, it was, um. It was hit the bridge of the Yorktown.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker A: Okay. It was the Yorktown. All right. Yeah. So one japanese plane hits the bridge of the Yorktown, which, of course, reminded me of return of the Jedi, where that a wing flies into the star Destroyer executor.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker C: It also, um, hits, like, below the bridge. So the bridge crew aren't actually all.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker A: Killed, um, in the movie, actually happen in real life?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker C: No, I know. I believe something like it happened in one of the other naval battles where prior to any kind of official, you know, kamikaze force from the Japanese, a japanese pilot did steer his plane into a us ship. But I don't remember the exact context and I don't believe is here. And I think this is also the point where they give the order to abandon ship because it's listing heavily, just been hit by two torpedoes. The bottom was already had holes in it before they even started this battle, and it just, you know, busted up the plate that they had. But the interesting fact here is that the USS Yorktown, the next morning was still afloat. Wow. And they put a party of, you know, 175 people on to start damage control efforts, which were largely successful, and were riding the ship when the japanese submarine. No, a japanese submarine spotted the aircraft carrier and fired a spread of torpedoes, which hit the destroyer that was alongside, breaking it in half and sinking it in like a minute, and then additionally hit with two additional two torpedoes on the Yorktown, which finally did sink it. Wow.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker A: That just kept going for a long time there.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker C: Yes, yes. And there were actually two wounded sailors on the Yorktown who had been left for dead, who started firing a machine gun off in the morning to attract people's attention because they'd been left on the ship when everyone left.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker A: Oh, I will say I was a little concerned for Tom because Tom was on the Yorktown.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker C: They had some line about transferring him.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker A: And about did make a lot of drop lines. All right. I assume he got off of it, then.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker A: You know that last japanese crew or carrier, there's someone in a dive bomber, and, of course, it's Captain Garth.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker A: And he makes the crucial, you know, dive bomb hit and takes out that last carrier. We get Yamamoto being told by his aides we need to withdraw, and he decides, okay, sure. I need to personally apologize to the emperor.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker B: Oh, boy. How's this new giant worked out? I will say it's very cathartic seeing them hit the carriers, because you know how expensive they are.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker C: Well, some of those carriers were actually american ones.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker A: So, of course, have Captain Garth returning to. It's not the Yorktown, but one of the other carriers.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker C: Enterprise, I believe.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker A: Is it enterprise? Okay, he's coming in. But we saw earlier in the scene that his alien, one of his ailerons, got all shot up, and it is not responding to controls, and he does not make it.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker C: He augers.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker B: In the one part that I remember.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker A: From the movie, see the carrier back in Hawaii. We see Tom being carried off the enterprise. Has anyone told him that his dad's dead?
• 1:07:37
  Speaker B: I mean, that's unclear. Yeah, it happened also in my memory. Him dying was like, the end of the movie.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker C: Yeah, pretty much.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker A: And then this is also my notice. All right. This is the first time we see, like, you know, locals from Hawaii, like, actual people and not just, you know, military.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker C: They looked very 1970s to me. It's not clear to me where they got these extras.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker A: Obviously, as, like you said, this was not filmed in Hawaii, so of course, they had to make them look like they're in Hawaii by putting them all in Aloha Tower. I mean, you know, granted, we like our aloha tyrant hoi, but we wouldn't. Everyone wouldn't be wearing it. But then we get Rochford talking to. Is it Nimitz? Someone?
• 1:08:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker C: Yes, it would have been Nimitz.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. I was like, you know, all right, were we better than the Japanese or just luckier? And then we end with the big, giant Churchill quote that, like, the beginning block of text went in my eyes and completely out of my brain after I read it.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It was, I think, a Churchill quote about the battle of Midway and how great it was.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker A: Well, yeah. And with that, our movie ends.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker C: I did have one final note about Charlton Heston. I guess you guys didn't pick up on this, but he crashes a jet plane. When it cuts back to the crash, it's a crash of a US Navy jet plane from the fifties.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker A: I did not catch no more propeller.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker C: That might have been part of his problem.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker B: I didn't see that.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker A: Oh, man. Wow. Wow, that's. That's great. Shall we move on to our spy fact versus spy fiction?
• 1:09:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker A: ZJ, did you have anything else you wanted to talk about for this particular section, or did we know?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker C: I think I went through mine, mine during the movie.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker A: So I've got very short stuff. I know Zach Scott's and decent amount. So let me go first. At one point in the, uh, movie, they refer to. Refer to sync Pack. I was like, what is sync Pack? S c I N c p a C. Commander in chief, Pacific Fleet headquarters. So that's commander in chief, CIC or Cinc. And then Pac. Pac, yeah. So that's what that stands for. It's not quite an acronym. They use all of. All of the word in and all and part of the word Pacific and none of fleet. Last thing I've got. This movie uses a slur for japanese people a lot. I went through the script 24 times. They say it in this movie.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker C: Yep. It's incredibly historically accurate.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker A: Pearl harbor uses it six times. Tora. Tora. Tora uses it four times. Windtalkers uses it ten times. So all of the movies we've covered here on the spy fi guys that I can think of, this has definitely got the most of it. It's a lot.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker B: It's interesting much.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, 24 times. Really? I like, I went through the scripts, like, all right, let me try searching japanese or just the three letters gap. Oh, wait, they came up with Japanese. Let me add a space after that. Oh, I'm forgetting when they pluralize it, they gave me another ten. I was like, oh, my goodness, 24 times. All right, Zach, what do you got?
• 1:10:54
  Speaker B: My research comes from a blog. Michael C. Smith puttering in the study. He says quite a few things about the movie. This is fairly accurate. Tracksfoot was known in the battle by the mid 1970s. He highlights the book incredible victory by Walter Lord. So he says there's quite a few accurate things, like the Doolittle raid code breakers, Nimitz's effort to defend Midway. The most obvious is that Charlton Heston's character is fictional, but he approximates the intermediary role of Commander Edwin Layton. Nimitz's intelligence chief, who, against Washington's express directions to the contrary, obtained and relayed the cryptanalysis results directly to Nimitz.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker A: Interesting. Tune in. In about two months time, we might hear more about Layton.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. He wanted to interpret it himself, so he wanted to go look. So a few other things. In reality, the aircraft never landed on the Yorktown as it was under attack. This was the Charlton Heston's. He was the squadron leader from the Yorktown. Yeah, the Yorktown was under attack. So he was redirected to the enterprise where less than two aircraft that ran out of fuel were shot down while circling and made up half the strike. The film doesn't show the Yorktown being abandoned. It was abandoned and then sunk, which.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker A: CJ told us about just not too long ago.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker C: Abandoned, re unabandoned, re abandoned and then sunk.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker B: So next, about Rochefort. Rochefort. He did wear a smoking jacket and carpet slippers.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker A: Oh, yes, I was wondering about that. Yeah.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker B: The movie gives the impression he's just a kind of weird guy, eccentric. But the reality was he was working long hours on concrete floors in a room that was chilly. It was chilly in order to get the computer equipment operating more efficiently.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker A: Of course.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker B: And by the way, he passed away one month after the movie came out. Really interesting. He was certainly scapegoated by the DC Naval Intelligence Committee. After the battle for being right, King turned down Nimitz's recommendation that he receive a medal for his intel work. He was transferred to command of floating dry dock in San Francisco. He never went to sea again. One interesting note, and is the last thing I have. Henry Fonda, the actor, worked as an aide for Nimitz briefly at Singapac headquarters on Guam in 1944 to 45.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker A: That's cool.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, it was not. Fonda recalled a close relationship and he assumed Nimitz was irritated at getting a Hollywood store place on his staff, however briefly. So that was kind of interesting. And then I think, did we talk about this for Torator? Tora? Both Yamamoto and Nimitz were missing fingers. I think we talked about it during Toratora.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker A: I don't recall.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yamamoto lost two during the Battle of Tsushima. Nimitz in a operation engine room tour. So anyway, that's what I have first by fact versus fiction.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker A: Shall we go through our favorite quotes next?
• 1:13:49
  Speaker B: Yes. EJ, as our guest, would you like to go first?
• 1:13:52
  Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to pick probably one of the biggest quotes in the movie, which is Yamamoto right at the end. Leave that to me. I am the only one who must apologize to his Majesty. Thought it was just cool.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker B: He gets all the big lines at the end. Yeah, yeah. Christian, I can go next. So the first under the tiki bar, Charlton Heston says, don't give me any of that racial bigot crap.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker C: Yeah. He said something like, I'm not a racial bigot or something. Or is it. Is it the line that you transcribed?
• 1:14:25
  Speaker A: I think it was that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker B: But the context is, I don't know, problem with her being japanese. I'm just worried about my son, you know, what's it gonna do to his career? There's a part where someone mentions, I think it's Coral sea. It says, what happened at Coral C? And someone says, we got hurt. I like the subtle ones. There's a part where someone says. Or Nimitz says, let's get to battle stations. Signal the hornet. Like a lot of the chatter. Scratch one flat top. Racism, Christian. When someone says he'll find the carrier, sees part Sioux Indian.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker B: I found it especially funny because, like, how would that help if you're in an airplane?
• 1:15:01
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker C: It's unclear. The pilot was part Sioux Indian, but I don't think it was given as an explanation for why he found the carrier.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker B: No, of course not. It doesn't make any sense. Then. My last one, speaking of Star wars, this running of Star wars, somebody says, pipe down and stay off the air until I report contact. Cut the chatter. Red three.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. All right, so I've got one funny one and one that's actually based on intelligence, so I'll do the funny one first. I think it's from Charlton Heston six months after Pearl harbor. Boy, you've got some lousy sense of timing when talking about dating a japanese girl.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker C: Yeah, I remember that one.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker A: And then from Rochford, we've got, you know, we've cracked Yamamoto's staff level code, but that don't mean we just reel it off word for word, like a song. We get a flicker here and a glimmer there. Missing pieces fall into place.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker B: That's total spies.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker C: I did have a second quote.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah?
• 1:15:54
  Speaker C: Which was from Halsey. I can tell you this, Raydhe. You play it the way you feel it, not the way you think I'd play it. You go to see, find Yamamoto and chew his ass.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was great. I like that part where they have the new guy, like, being brought up.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker C: To run a carrier, Halsey, who you recommend? And he says, I recommend Bruins. And he kind of looks at him like, that's really inconvenient.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker A: I also like, you know, that he's. Yeah, Halsey's like, complaining about the tree blocking his view. And when Spruance comes to see him, like, his last line is like, I'll get someone to cut the. Cut down that tree. But the way he says it, it feels like there should be some follow up that is like, it's like the start of a joke or that, that, you know, Halsey should have said something return, but it's just nothing. It just ends with that.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker C: You know, I think that that's very similar to what we saw in Tora, Tora, Tora. Where it's something that happened and so it just feels so out of place when it's in the film.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. There's like, you know, they have to include the things that actually happened, but it just feel so random.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker C: No narrative purpose to it. Some of you do establish that Halsey's kind of a impetuous needs to see everything that's going on.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker B: It's only a little too real all of a sudden.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker A: Alrighty. Shall we go on to our ratings?
• 1:17:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. So here on Spotify, guys, we do ratings on a scale of one to ten martinis, one being Avengers 1998 and ten being even better than no time to die or mission Impossible, ghost protocol. So how would we rate midway the old 119 76? CJ, as our guest, would you like to go first?
• 1:17:27
  Speaker C: Sure. I'd probably give it. I think I'd give it a four. I was not a fan of this movie. Maybe I'm just not a Charlton Heston fan. And there was a lot of Charlton Heston. I do think that narratively it structured things to make more sense. But then I really resented that the actual battle sequences were just a total hodgepodge of random stuff that they put together.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker A: All right. All right. Interesting, interesting, Zach.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker B: So, yeah, I also didn't think the movie on the whole was that good. The part with the girlfriend was super interesting and the battle scenes were exciting. Like when they hit the carriers, I was like, wow. But it doesn't save the movie. I really enjoyed Tora Toro. Tora. Because I could tell what was happening and I thought I. They handled it very well. This movie, not so much. I've seen better World War Two movies, better ones from the seventies. So I'm going to give it a five out of ten it is. Okay. Perfectly okay.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker A: All right. Um. Hmm. I'm wondering. I'm wavering about wear out. I think I was initially considering a six. I think I'll bring it down to a 5.5. I'm. You know, it was fine. I. I mean, there are parts of not knowing about midway at all, other than what I love it. I learned at, you know, the national cryptologic museum gave me an overview of what happened there. It is more of like a history. Well, love story aside, that, which is just giving you a flavor of the times of what was going on, it is almost like it's a history book, which is also how I felt about the longest day. Or the Tora, Tora, Tora. And even a bridge too far. It's. It's telling a story that happened, but not doing it in a real narrative way. It's just. All right, these are the events that happened, and, yeah, it was fine, actually. Now I'm kind of curious. What did I give all those other things I just talked about? Bridge too far. I said seven. Torah, Torah, Tora. I said six. And what was the other one? Oh, yes. The longest day, I said, where'd it go? When did we do the longest day? I think it was further back at you than we think it was. Anyways, I feel like, oh, here it is. I get a five. So, yes. Would I rate this higher than the longest day? Interesting. Interesting.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker B: I definitely would not. I thought longest day was pretty good.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker A: All right, I am bringing it down to a five, then, so at least it's at the same level. Long as it was fine, it wasn't a good spy movie. This at least had more actual spy action. But the movie, on the whole, was not that. Not as good. Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm there with you, Zach, at a five. I'm very curious to see what we will think of, you know, 20, nineteen's midway when we come back in two months time, because it is. I think, from what. I'm. No spoilers here, but I think it is more structured that, like, well, as a 2019 movie and in a narrative way. And it kind of has to, because that's how audiences like their films nowadays. So we will see. We will see what. And so, ZJ, do you have anything you want to promote?
• 1:20:46
  Speaker C: Nope.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker A: All right, well, thank you all for joining us. Like we said, in two weeks time, or, sorry, two months time, we'll be back with our part two of this duology for. With. With ZJ for 20. Nineteen's Midway. And in between, we'll have one of our spy fiction films to be TBD. And what that will be, you'll find out once you see it pop up in your feeds. You can find us on social media at the Spy Fi guys on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as on YouTube. And you can find our merch store on redbubble.com. until next time, I'm Christiane.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker B: And I'm Zach.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker A: We are the spy fi guys signing off. Thank you for listening to the spy fi guys. If you enjoyed our podcast, please be sure to give us a five star rating on iTunes. The theme song from this podcast is mistake the Getaway by Kevin McLeod from incompetech.com licensed under creative comments by attribution 3.0. Films, books and television shows reviewed by our podcast are the intellectual property of their respective copyright holders and no infringement is intended.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker B: This is a personal podcast. Any views, statements, or opinions expressed in this podcast are personal and belong solely to the participants. They do not represent those of people, institutions, or organizations that the participants may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity unless explicitly stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker A: You can find our podcast on social media at thespyguys on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.