A new teaser trailer has been released for “Midway,” a $100 million World War II movie that will hit theaters November 8.
Released last week, the trailer shows the major World War II conflict, Battle of Midway, but depicts it with heavily computer-generated aircraft battles and explosions reminiscent of a video game trailer, peppered with some real submarine scenes.
Watch the trailer below for your own assessment:
Director Roland Emmerich, who also directed “Independence Day,” resurrected the battle in the film, and also highlights the details of how the battle emerged following the attack on Pearl Harbor, USA Today reported.
Emmerich said the epic battle is still significant 77 years later.
“It shows an America that’s not the superpower, a country that just came out of a big recession and tried to stay out of a war but got sucked into it. It was a simpler time, but it also was a time where you had to put your life in danger for ideals,” he said.
In 1976, another version of Midway was released, but Emmerich explained that his movie is a different take on the battle.
Emmerich’s Midway stars Woody Harrelson and Dennis Quaid as Navy admirals.
Emmerich focuses a lot on the unrecognized hero of Midway, Dick Best, and his fellow Navy pilots who are best known for “flying down on a Japanese aircraft carrier at a 90-degree angle from 14,000 feet in the air, with enemies shooting at them,” USA Today stated.
Ed Skrein, the actor that plays Dick Best, said it was “a dream role.” He added, “We see a man who is not just a cardboard cutout of a war hero. He is not a finished, polished article as soon as we meet him. The audience goes on a journey with him.”
“Being a pacifist in 2019, it’s an interesting proposition to enter into the world of patriotism, nationalism and military strength,” Skrein said. “But speaking to American military personnel, it gave me a real understanding and empathy, which I think is becoming lost nowadays in the sense that we all have our personal beliefs, and we put our heart on our sleeve and leave it there. We don’t tend to challenge ourselves, and that’s the best thing about my job and about projects like this.”
Mandy Moore plays Dick Best’s wife, Ann. Skrein said, “As much fun as it is to be doing this masculine, brave war effort, it was the emotional scenes with Mandy that really resonated with me.”
Emmerich said, “The amazing thing is nobody really thought it was very special. It was this generation that just shrugged it off afterward. They did stuff that today probably nobody would ever, ever do again.”
