Here's one of the posters for the new "Midway" movie coming out this fall. It's apparent the art department at the studio doesn't have any airplane buffs in it. I see one major and at least three minor technical errors in it. Anyone else?
Ron Wanttaja
4 blade prop on an SBD?
Yep, that's the major one. It's also showing gun flashes come out of the wing roots of the SBD (Dauntless' forward-firing guns were on top of the cowl) and what looks to be a P-51 going down in flames in the background (Floats should be happy).Originally Posted by Kyle Boatright
The Zero at the top of the image has a two-bladed prop, but assuming the artist were depicting the Zeke conversions of the T-6, that's accurate.
I don't think the SBDs carried wing bombs at Midway; too far to fly.
I had originally thought the markings were wrong (was expecting the red dot in the middle of the star) but the dot had been eliminated about a month prior to the battle. Probably were planes at Midway that still had it, but the poster would be correct.
The bow on the carrier in the background doesn't match any of the Japanese carriers at Midway...they all had a flight deck mounted high above a lower hull. This could be intended to represent the Yorktown, although the clipper bow is far too aggressive. The bow looks a bit like the Shinano, although I believe it was still a battleship (under construction) at this point.
Ron Wanttaja
The swinging bomb rack is missing too. The chin scoop in front of the bomb is missing, but you could argue that it is obscured by the prop blade.
Dave Shaw
EAA 67180 Lifetime
Learn to Build, Build to Fly, Fly for Fun
I hate it when they remake a movie that was good the first time around. This one will probably be all CGI. I won't be paying to see it.
There is a second "mustang" in the background. No wonder we won the battle - using 1944/45 weapons in 1942 is an unfair advantage.
I'm not that negative about CGI, as long as it's well done with people who are knowledgeable about aircraft and how they fly. I thought the "Dogfights" TV series did pretty well.
The fact is, there aren't that many of these aircraft left any more. They're good for showing closeups of the actor and details of the aircraft themselves, but showing an entire squadron of, say, SBDs is going to take a lot of optical effects that often aren't all that convincing.
And, of course, there ARE no flyable TBDs, and it's hard to tell the story about Midway without showing Torpedo Eight. I'd rather see a whole CGI squadron of Devastors than one or two gray-painted T-6s pretending to be them.
"Flyboys" still makes me cringe when I see some of the sequences. While I know a lot of folks complained, I thought "Red Tails" did pretty well.
They're getting pretty good at this sort of thing, but it's vital to have aviation-knowledgeable people involved. The "Midway" poster that started this thread was a good example...one would expect the artist probably had an SBD model to look at. But the artist decided to depict it with a four-bladed prop, which means they were looking more for spectacle than accuracy. One would hope the CGI folks are a bit better grounded.
Ron Wanttaja
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