We were learning about Pearl Harbor my freshman year of high school so my teacher showed us this movie. One kid was like “This movie is three hours?!” And my teacher said “We’re skipping to the action scene. The rest of this movie sucks.” He’s one of the wisest men I ever met.
My history teacher during my freshman year of high school showed us “Tora! Tora! Tora!” We can all agree that’s the most historically accurate depiction of the attack on Pearl Harbor in cinema!
LMAO... I just rewatched this movie on HBO Max. Have to agree, I was slogging through the love story and build-up, and when the attack finally arrived, it felt like a different movie.
My grandfather was actually at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked. My mother told that he went to see this movie when it came out, and he was furious at how they portrayed the military.
I've seen other films with this kind of portrayal of our armed forces. Granted, they were all Soviet propaganda films calling for our destruction, but still.
Well Marie bullock when you grandfather was at pearl harbour during the attack the Americans knew the Japanese were going to attack there lot of stuff going on in pearl harbour
When I spoke to Doug personally he mentioned his father was a Naval Officer, hence why he took the films issues so personally. His family had a long military history. And I have to say as a brother of a Marine and grandson of a Coast Guard veteran, takes this shit film personally also.
My Mom gave birth to me while she was in the Coast Guard in 1982. She met my Stepfather there in '85 while in Training. Neither of them could Swim. But that was NO excuse. They HAD to learn and were put through Rigorous Swim Drills prior to beginning service. This movie thinks you're an idiot. As a kid who grew up in a Military household, this movie is disgusting.
@@Tornado1994 I remember reading a book about a battle in the Pacific. It mentioned that not all sailors knew how to swim during WW2. Honestly, if you are on a sinking ship 100s of miles from shore, what good is swimming gonna do you anyway?
Fun fact (you probably know this) Doug was born in Italy due to his father being stationed there. And as someone who has had multiple relatives in every single war we’ve had and a vet for a husband I fully get why he is offended by this shit movie. It’s totally an immature black and white portrayal of this event that paints America as God and throws everyone else under the bus. Any real student of history will tell you it’s never that simple.
I personally know a Pearl Harbor survivor. He was on the San Francisco. Luckily the ship was behind a crane so the Japanese couldn't get to them. He lived through that shit. His story is one that I could listen to over and over again. He has said time and time again that this "movie" is the worst depiction of Pearl Harbor.
That’s the same with my great-grandpa and D-Day. He used to tell us all the stories of Dieppe, D-Day, and the march across Europe. It was really something else hearing them multiple times. He got to see Saving Private Ryan before he passed. I remember seeing him visibly shaking, and tearing up during the landing scene. It was the closest, he said, Hollywood got to real combat.
It's like the veterans who went to go see the movie Dunkirk, where some of them were about ready to have panic attacks because it felt so real for them, despite being arguably more a horror film than a war film.
@Thibault Derese Who's this "we" business? Fury was nonsense yes but Dunkirk was the only movie I wanted to see in theatres and came out of it having greatly enjoyed it in over a decade.
Thibault Derese well it’s easiest hands down, because it was the first to try portray any part of War accurately. Without the “nobody was scared and all the soldiers & leaders were great” schtick of the John Wayne-type war movies, Bay’s Pearl Harbour, or 1990s Memphis Belle.)
I actually talked to a marine about the soldier not being able to swim, and he said back then, some soldiers actually weren’t able to swim. That’s why today, it’s required. So I guess that part of the movie can actually be accurate
That's a good point and I'm glad you brought that up but the movie makes it feel like a sick joke or just a random line than trying to be historically accurate.
@@kikio0529 Actually as I understand it sailors believed that learning how to swim was considered bad luck because if you knew how to swim then you were preparing for a sinking and ergo most sailors thought it was bad luck to learn how to swim.
Thank you for pointing this out. Just because someone is in the navy doesn't mean they have to know how to swim, the same as not everyone in the air force has to know how to fly. I hate this movie as much as anyone but saying a sailor doesn't know how to swim is an insult to the military is pretty far fetched.. I was in the military and was not insulted in the least.
Saw this on opening day with my grandma, I’ll never forget my grandma saying during the scene where the torpedoes are about to slam into battleship row while sailors are painting the side of the ship, “It’s Sunday, sailors did not paint ships on Sunday!” Not sure if this was true, but even my grandma was calling out Michael Bay’s depiction of the event.
I remember this review; it's one of the few times I've seen Doug truly angry- not to be funny, not to add emphasis, but legitimately ready to explode. And rightfully so- seriously, what kind of asinine piece of shit makes a movie like this and genuinely thinks it's doing ANYBODY justice?
+Roflcopter_launchpad 111 And it was all over the single most common issue in the Navy and Marines at the time apparently never being an issue. How do I know he was wrong about it? It was debunked by a FUCKING MARINE.
Hi, Ethan from Four years in the future here, just want to say I've still never seen Doug get so angry at anything. It's almost scary how angry he got.
That moment when you realize the 2020 movie “Midway”, a film focused on the Battle of MIDWAY, is more faithful and honorable towards the disaster at Pearl Harbor than the movie titled PEARL HARBOR is!
The more shocking part is that Midway - the most recent one - was done by Roland Emmerich…and about 98% of that movie is really accurate - even the most outrageous things you think were done for drama or badass points actually happened X_x
Here's an explanation of NC's rant. Not everyone could swim at Pearl Harbor. What Doug was so angry about was the fact that Michael Bay didn't properly show the issue. He explains this in an editorial, I forget which, where he compares it to Titanic where the problems caused by the lack of enough lifeboats was shown and explained unlike here where it's a throwaway line by one random guy. Titanic respected the titular event enough to show the smaller problems and how they caused more deaths unlike Bay who more or less used Pearl Harbor as a way of filling seats with people looking for a romance set against a tragedy like Titanic. Doug was angry and couldn't put his thoughts into words but that's what he meant by that.
mateo trujillo That makes sense... Because I re-watched carefully and the point he makes effectly goes beyond that military men being not able to swim on a boat. He was more taking a jab at how Bay's view the world and particularly America...
I respect their courage truly, but what sense does it make to choose a career like the navy if you can't swim? That's like being a firefighter who's severely afraid of fire.
Neil Roberts As for your claim, I can’t find any evidence what you said was true, because basic swimming ability was part of basic training for the US Navy, going back to essentially its formation. Can you link to the testimony you are referring too???
Well, I guess the way they were doing it was perhaps portraying it as helping him hold on and maybe survive. Perhaps that would've worked, if maybe he told him that *before* they went off to make sure he did his best to survive. The way portrayed here, as it's portrayed here, was to suggest maybe he thought telling him that would automatically heal him and turn him into an invincible war-ending hulk.
I've said it once and I will say it again: The parts that are focused around the Japanese are very well done, are surprisingly not racist, and are probably the most enjoyable scenes in the whole movie. They are the only parts in the movie that give me Tora! Tora! Tora! vibes
+Tahkozz I cannot believe there managed to be an American movie (other than Unbroken) that managed to portray asian actors in no cliched way that people associate them with. People in other countries are just people, people!
+Tahkozz This movie is considered to be overly glorifying Japaneses in China and Korea. Many veterans were offended. And Doug is complaining the portray of Japanese is not positive enough. "Japanese never fired on civilians".
Sam Phillips I think during a Q+A at a con he confessed that it was originally scripted but he couldn't get the emotional level quite right, so he went off script and lost his voice
The TV show "The Brady Bunch" showed the soldiers more respect than Michael Bay. I remember when the family visited the Arizona in Hawaii and they had a moment of silence while Robert Reed read the memorial plaque out loud.
Ben Hamilton And the Japanese’s sympathetic portrayal during the first part of the movie is instantly erased by the way they made the Evil Japanese attack the hospitals and civilians. There are accounts of the Japanese waving their arms at civilians and children to warn them to get out of the way, but now they’re just wicked soulless killing machines for “drama”!
TheBossBros73 There’s no point replying to this guy. Don’t reward him for pretending to be too stupid to understand. Ignore the troll. He just wants attention.
Thibault Derese Yamato believed he could get the US to the negotiating table, if his full plan was executed. That means the third wave had been launched and was successful against the repair depots and the above-ground fuel storage tanks. Pearl would have been unusable as a refuelling and repair base for years, if the third wave was successful. That would have cut off every American/Allied base west and Australia, from Mainland US support until 1943 at the earliest. Both Midway and Guadalcanal would have fallen in that scenario, because everything would have been put towards rebuilding and safeguarding Pearl from invasion or another attack, and we lose the listening posts that intercepted Japanese communications in the Far East.
T D it’s actually a very, very, old saying/belief, that dates back to before the unification of the Greek city-states. Hitler was also a methhead by the beginning of the war, so any sayings attributed to him, after that point, have to be taken with a grain of salt. As likely it was Gobbels just spreading more propaganda to make, corporal hitler, appear as a (military) genius to his followers.
And one of the most memorable scenes in Tora Tora Tora happened completely by accident. When the Japanese fighters are attacking the airfields, it was a somewhat windy day when they were filming, and one of the radio-controlled P40s got blown sideways and started heading toward the camera crew, so they blew it up prematurely. And in a completely unscripted occurrence, the prop came off and started cartwheeling across the runway.
If I were directing a movie, if I hired Michael Bay at all, I'd only take him in if he agreed to do half of the action. That and nothing else. Action is clearly the only thing that this guy is decent enough at directing.
Michael Bay has got an eye for great action sequences, even in his earlier films like Bad boys, The Rock and even Armageddon. He's almost always got serious issues everywhere else but there is no point in denying he can create great action scenes.
Ethan Kuhn This is stupidly obvious, but just because you were in the military doesn’t mean you have the exact same experiences as other people in the military and know the exact same things. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to understand. Duh.
This right here, this is my most favorite NC review. I don't know why, but for some reason those Michael Bay sketches were somehow genuinely emotional. Even without those, Critic losing his cool and screaming at Bay for three minutes is by far a monument of cinematic glory all on its own. I don't think I can say this enough when I say: thank you for this, Doug. Thank you for sharing this with us
Winnie the Pooh: Eeyore! World peace has been declared! Isn't it wonderful? Eeyore: Yeah but Pearl Harbor still happened. Winnie the Pooh: Well we can't change history. Eeyore: I'm talking about the Michael Bay film.
I know from experience that a lot of people in the Navy can't swim and passed my depth preception test by blinking my eyes one at a time. Just saying... By the way, that rant from 25:27 through 27:40 is fucking beautiful.
@@Mike-ds4ht that’s not an opinion. That shit Was fucking true. There were Many soldiers, and I do mean, MANY!! Naval soldiers that couldn’t swim. I’ve asked plenty of WWII vets and they all said the same thing.
@Dlox it's not the patriotism, it's how much it gets imbedded from such a young age that just makes it ludicrous how passionate Americans are, they take it to such an extent where they can't really be critical of America, because of all the "American dream bullshit" that being said it is a baby country it's only been around for a couple of hundred years
@@tomstorey8559 I'd be fascinated to learn of a country that DOESN'T try to instill patriotism in it's youth. Reinforcement of societal norms and ideologies at an early age is pretty standard for any culture.
I'm really shocked that this didn't cause public outrage from Japan. Firing on a hospital would've been considered a disgraceful and dishonourable act.
@@justanotherafol9723the point here is that Japan deliberately avoided the likes of hospitals during the attack and so to illustrate them doing the opposite betrays the intent of the filmmaker
Well considering they machine gunned Australian nurses in Banka island and regularly shot medics despite that being completely against the geneva convention, it's not like the Japanese were above this. But I agree that it's dishonest to show the Japanese killing civillians when they didn't
I think the logic is that you don't need to know how to swim since you're on a boat. If the boat sinks, you die weather you know how to swim or not. It's... sorta logical.
***** Actually, I did not know there were sailors that couldn't swim and a mandatory test was post WWII until just now. It's actually a surprising and interesting tidbit. I thought the ellipses made it obvious, but I don't take offense, you can't really establish tone in the span of a few sentences properly.
None of the 5 Sullivan brothers who were killed off Guadalcanal could swim; rather they drowned or were killed some other way, or both I don't know, but following that incident brothers could no longer serve together.
He should have given Bay some credit though. He held off writing in a underage girl, that he overly-sexualize. That’s an immense amount of self-control on Bay’s part.
Yes. It actually takes it as the pre-emptive strike it was, not the “sneak attack” it’s portrayed traditionally in American media. If they hit the fuel storage at pearl, Guadalcanal falls, Aussie land is isolated, and likely Midway is a loss(the listening stations Guad supported, got them the needed comm intercepts)
Call me a complete moron but I don't think I ever saw Tora! Tora! Tora! But I kind of prefer this film from my own childhood blindness... ...I genuinely wish my dream of being a pilot was still alive and I didn't have a fear of heights, but my own childhood goggles literally all I cared about, and I shit you not, was just the airplanes... What the hell was wrong with my younger self? At least I was the second best in Combat Flight simulator against my family. And youngest too.
I personally hate this movie. I wrote a three-page long review for History class describing all the ways I hate this movie and why it was so terrible. ... If I could direct my own version of this to correct all of the mistakes, for starters, I would cut out the romance entirely. Bye-bye, stupid love interest, stupid cliches, and just STUPID! Then, I would have the prologue show the boys planning to join the military in their youth, one wanting to be a pilot and one wanting to be a member of the Navy. I would choose likeable actors and give them likable personalities and quirks that would make them more relatable to the audience, along with drives for joining the army. I wouldn't make these characters the best in their particular group, just average or slightly above. I'd have them be separated for training them have them reunite when they' were both stationed in Pearl Harbor. I would give the Japanese fighters respectful portrayal and honestly describe their reasons for the attack, not demonizing or villainizing them. I would station the friend in the Navy on the Utah or Nevada, so that when the attack came (showing what actually happened, no images of American innocence dying or lies, just facts and accurate representation of the tragedy), he could be one of the soldiers trapped in the sunken wreckage. A good portion of the movie could go to AirForce guy demanding the government to save Navy guy only to be faced with the fact that nothing could be done to save his friend from the wreckage, and Navy Guy's thoughts and experiences while trapped in the wreckage before his death. I would dedicate the first half of the movie to this, along with character development and development of the relationship between these two childhood friends who took different paths to achieve different roles. The AirForce guy, after the death of his friend, would sign up for the air-raids, go and attack Japan with revenge on the mind, then have a crisis when he realizes that he's doing to them exactly what they did to him. He'd crash, get captured by the Japanese, and nearly get killed before the Chinese arrive. The movie would end with an elderly version of AirForce guy visiting a memorial to those who died at Pearl Harbor, running a hand over Navy Guy's name. No words, no music, no evidence of the life this man has lived since Pearl Harbor (romance, family, flashbacks), just silence and facial expressions on the mourners. End the movie on a quiet, respectful note that leaves an impression of how the tragedy still hurts and affects people today. ... I know I sound preachy and these changes may suck, but hey: at least it wouldn't suck as much as this. Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go and rant somewhere about how much Transformers 3 sucked.
Watch Tora! Tora! Tora! That movie is the most accurate telling of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The movie is long but worth the watch. The first half tells of the events leading up to the attack while the second half tells of the attack. It also tells it from both the Japanese and the Americans' POV. The movie is kind of old so there are no special affects or computerized mumbo jumbo that Michael Bay is so fond of. The explosions in Tora! Tora! Tora! are 100% real!
Rafe: Evelyn, loving you kept me alive. NC: It just...didn't keep me from leaving you. That. That right there is perfectly defines how terrible these characters are written.
Technically, there *are* soldiers of the era in the Navy that don't exactly know real swimming survival skills. Though if you intended to enlist in the Navy, you must have known that you would eventually need to swim.
Matthew Cobalt, In the context of this review I think the issue of sailors being unable to swim matters more since Nostalgia Critic chose to make his big rant about it.
Technically, everyone was required to be able to swim with instruction when they enlisted. At least the Radio man I knew was, but then he joined after Pearl Harbor and the Navy had new lessons written in blood by then.
I swear that rant never gets old. It's one of my all time favorite NC moments, along with his Avatar rant. One serious rant, one comedic rant. Yes I know there were people in the army stationed at sea and in the navy that couldn't in fact swim (due to necessity for soldiers and all that) but people need to stop using that excuse to try and say the rant is bs. That wasn't the point of the rant nor the focus, it was the trigger. The firing on hospitals proves that. Also Is it just me or we're new skits added? I swear those Michael bay skits weren't in the Pearl Harbor video last time it was uploaded...
4:22 Father jerk 6:52 Giggles 7:56 I passed him 9:50 The promise of sex will bring you home 12:12 smart enemy plots in a giant hot tub with toy battleships with no markings identified as map 21:31 konnichiwa 23:30 Brushing teeth 24:13 I can't swim says Navy 25:16 Critic's rage 31:13 what you're asking can't be done ... violent reaction
You shouldn't be so impressed with that rant. It was completely ignorant and wrong. There were definitely some U.S. Navy sailors during World War II who didn't know how to swim. This is one of the things that Michael Bay actually got right in the movie.
The one good thing I can take from this movie is that the Japanese side was depicted fairly well on the whole (aside from the whole "shooting-at-hospitals-to-be-assholes" thing) . Everything else is rage inducing to a point that my heart beats so fast it shreds itself on its own palpitations.
Not really, they're still depicted as a bunch of mysterious assholes doing Very Foreign Things like meeting in Foreign Buildings and planning their attack in a Foreign open-air pool with no security of any kind (um...) Try watching _Tora! Tora! Tora!_ where you seen the Japanese aircrews training and being goofballs and the leaders meeting in a room in an actual building like sensible people.
Blue Baron the Imperial Japanese Navy scenes were arguably really good too. Just a shame they even got some of the historical details wrong, like the Zeroes in late war colors and Yamamoto being with the carriers except he was actually in the Sea of Japan at the time of the attack.
My teacher showed this for the whole class at the last day of the year. At the end, everyone was crying and or blowing their nose.( What were u gonna expect, it was 6th grade) and, as much as I wanted to feel something, I just was bored by the whole movie, and was actually kinda scared of the darker scenes. All I can say is, this could have been so much, and fell short
@@brandonsanchez8197 this difference with this one however is that it came from a very real place. Doug’s father served so he holds this subject very near and dear.
Actually, that part about the sailor not knowing how to swim.... It's probably one of the more accurate things about the movie. I was in the navy, and I knew a number of guys who couldn't swim in boot camp, about 1/3 of the sailors who graduate RT go right to a boat.... probably not being a very good swimmer. I always found that funny and ironic....
There's an old cynical joke that the Navies of the world traditionally favored sailors that didn't know how to swim, because they would be more enthusiastic when defending their boats... ;) But then usually that's pure coincidence, even in Napoleonic times they had swimmers on board of their ships, even if it never was 100% of the crew.
It is an awesome move but this fucking piece of shit got a higher rating than the movie that actually shows pearl harbour. It got a lower rating if that's possible because it was slow and showed the USA as unprepared and unorganised. Fucking hell
Apieceof Toast I think the worst part was Roger Ebert, one of the best critics of all time said that Tora! Tora! Tora! Was too predictable and we all know PEARL HARBOR WILL BE INVADED BY JAPAN giving it a star while this piece of shit gets a star. And a half. The historical accuracies, characters and how actual civilians(a flight teacher)saw the Japanese invasion an hour before the actual attack instead of symbolism of America's innocence was better and an explanation on why America was so unprepared(tl;dr no one believed an attack would happen even after the mounting evidence of an attack.)
Li Bass Master I feel the exact same way about “Maleficent” and “About a Boy” I despise both of those with a passion that knows no bounds! However, films I love that everyone else hates includes: The Lone Ranger Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides The Jazz Singer (Neil Diamond) The Road to El Dorado Annie (2014) 1941 Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit Titan A.E. Atlantis the Lost Empire Trainwreck Michael The Boondock Saints The Magnificent Seven (2016) Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi Flash Gordon Xanadu Something Wicked This Way Comes Dragonheart Return to Oz Dune The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
@@jamesmoyner7499 waaaaait a sec, did I miss something in "about a boy"? I thought it was a touching and charming little flick but was it offensive or something?
Destitute and Decadent watched this “film” on Netflix back in February last year and I really wanted to stop watching it multiple times, but I figured I should finish it. That was one of the worst mistakes of my life. I hated this “movie” everyone is a selfish a hole, the man is lying to be near the woman, the kid blackmails the man when he finds out the truth, the kid has to deal with bullies because he is living his mom’s dream of singing even though he can’t sing, the mom is a jerk for forcing her kid to sing. The Room was a better film than this garbage!! I have warned people to stay away from this and some have actually heeded my warning. While other have found out the hard way how bad it is. I went into watching this thinking it was going to be about a man who is going to be a dad and suddenly starts to imagine a kid that isn’t there to sort of prepare him to be a dad.
Not really surprising. No matter the quality of the film, the score is always the best part of the film. Rarely do we ever find a bad film where the score is as bad as the film.
So many angry moments, but the treatment of the Eagle Squadrons is horrendous: they didn't get " assigned" or " volunteer" to go to England, they left America, braved the Atlantic Convoys and applied to join when they reached Britain. Those guys FOUGHT to go into battle, risking the ire of a neutral nation that didn't want its citizens involved.
Sam Russell the eagle squardon, was formed after the battle of Britain, and almost all of them joined by going over to Canada, joining the royal canadain air Force,
Wait a bloody minute, when they crash land at 34:39, where are the other crew members, you don't mean to tell me that the only survivors were the pilots, what about the gunners or the navigator or the flight engineer, at least the tail gunner would have a better chance of surviving the crash than the pilots.
0:55 Ah yes, those good old smartphones in 1990. They just don't make them like they used to. Reminds me of when I got my first Amazon Echo Plus (2nd Gen) for my birthday in 1963.
The sitcom "The Brady Bunch" showed more respect for Pearl Harbor! The family and Alice went to Hawaii and visited the Arizona Memorial. Mr. Brady read the memorial plaque out loud to his quiet family. That showed a lot of respect in my opinion.
Doug, I love your reviews so please don’t take this the wrong way. My grandfather was at Pearl Harbor. He didn’t know how to swim then and still doesn’t to this day (he’s 94). At the time it wasn’t considered a requirement. I know...on a boat surrounded by water...it should be. But (sigh) it wasn’t.
This is definitely one of my least favorite movies of all time. I mean, really, a 3 hour long movie where the Pearl Harbor attack is simplified and used as a simple background story, all for the purpose of having three popular actors involved in a love story that had NO PURPOSE whatsoever?!?! Anyway, great review on a bad movie!
Supposedly the movie was so hated that not only US survivors of the attack but the JAPANESE media bashed the film. To paraphrase Honest Trailers “The only film about Pearl Harbor to be attacked by both American and Japanese survivors of the attack.” I practically lost it when they combined Yamamoto and Nagumo into one character. SERIOUSLY? What’s next, making the US Military look stupid? Oh wait!
Well, after the Shark Repellent in the TV show and the movie, the Bat Credit Card didn't really bother me......... except the Shark Repellent was more useful.
@@blockyvids2 It was 1966. Campy Batman was excuseable back then but Batman and Robin came out in 1997. People had had enough of campy Batman because Batman (1989) came out and it was edgy and dark.
"How close are those Japanese planes again?!" Pulls out the map. Priceless moment! I saw this movie when I had just turned 16, during which the film was having its last run in theaters (bizarrely, just over one week before 9-11 happened) while two other contenders that I saw weeks apart, JURASSIC PARK III and Tim Burton's PLANET OF THE APES remake, were still having their day at the box office. With the exception of the dogfights and Pearl Harbor sequences - and being the hormonally charged teenager and aerial warcraft fan, I was fond of such while only getting an inkling of what makes a good film work, I was quite naturally at the edge of my seat - I didn't really think the rest was so hot, and it would be years before I would recognize how an even bigger piece of shit it was than when I first saw it. Although, strangely, there were a few things I liked about it apart from the action: Josh Hartnett as Danny actually turned out to be a WAY better actor than Ben Affleck and I WAS moved by his final scene, and some of the Hans Zimmer music was good (I at one point got the soundtrack on CD). Also, you have to realize at that point that there was a resurgence of classic Hollywood themes going on at the time, notably historic romance and WWII epics, and it's pretty clear that this movie was attempting to fuse the elements of films like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, TORA! TORA! TORA! and THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (a number of which I happened to watch on Turner Classic Movies before and after seeing PEARL HARBOR). Even more interesting, later in May 2002 (after 9-11 when airport security was beefed up and military barricades thrown up at the terminals), I actually visited the REAL Pearl Harbor with my family as part of a Mother's Day vacation to Hawaii. My old man and I visited the actual dock where the Arizona memorial was. We were told that we could take pictures of the memorial and out-of-service destroyer and submarine exhibits, but not the contemporary destroyers because of the 9-11 war (the military personnel didn't want to risk any of their technologies being compromised by tourists I supposed). I even picked up a book titled PEARL HARBOR IN THE MOVIES by Ed Rampell and Luis I. Reyes, which also covered Michael Bay's film among the countless movies made following the attack (a large number of which were filmed at Pearl Harbor itself) and was actually published in May 2001 to coincide with its release (complete with plot synopsis and spoilers). But this book turned out to be FAR more accurate and entertaining than the film itself, to say the least. Speaking of which, I noticed something very interesting that this shit movie and the vastly better, criminally underrated and far more historically accurate TORA! TORA! TORA! have in common (not so sure that it's just me): the Japanese scenes before and during the Pearl Harbor attack actually have more REAL drama than the American scenes!!! Also, just love the dramatized re-enactments climaxing with "PORN IT!" 🤣
I know he went on a rant about it, but back then knowing how to swim was not a requirement to join the U.S. Navy. Don't believe me look up the U.S.S. Indianapolis. when I joined the navy in 2007 out if the 86 people in my division 25 couldn't swim at the start of it. now you have to learn how to swim to graduate boot camp.
Also having good eyesight was important for the military, especially things like identifying allied from hostile vehicles and soldiers. It's kinda important to not shoot your friends.
Brainwashed Americans- that not historically correct !!! Me, neither was saving private Ryan as they gave parts to Americans who historically should have been British or French
I remember me seeing this in the movies as a school trip for history class my junior year and just remember sitting there and trying not to fall asleep then just saying fuck it and going to sleep.
My grandfather was a Merchant Marine for decades, from the 40's - 70's, and he didn't know how to swim. It's been 20 years, we can have someone make an accurate film of it again. My brother always said it was a story about how the Japanese bombed a love triangle.
when the nostalgia critic gets angry, it's funny
when Doug Walker gets angry, it's fucking scary
agreed
true dat bro
+EVO6reviews Doug's anger is real, NC's is comedic. Of course, when DOUG is angry, something isn't just bad, it's outright offensive and terrible.
Where can I find an angry Doug?
+EVO6reviews No, it's simply... right. Getting angry at Michael Bay is right. (Freaking "Age of Extinction" !!)
We were learning about Pearl Harbor my freshman year of high school so my teacher showed us this movie. One kid was like “This movie is three hours?!” And my teacher said “We’re skipping to the action scene. The rest of this movie sucks.” He’s one of the wisest men I ever met.
My history teacher during my freshman year of high school showed us “Tora! Tora! Tora!” We can all agree that’s the most historically accurate depiction of the attack on Pearl Harbor in cinema!
27:59 - Here's my response to Disney's Wish
@@robertcarldecker good teacher
LMAO... I just rewatched this movie on HBO Max. Have to agree, I was slogging through the love story and build-up, and when the attack finally arrived, it felt like a different movie.
Lucky you we had to watch the whole thing!
My grandfather was actually at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked. My mother told that he went to see this movie when it came out, and he was furious at how they portrayed the military.
My great grandfather survived to I'm glad he died before this film came out to avoid this peice of shit
My Great Grandfather served in the Military at that time, and I'm pretty sure he rolls in his grave every time this film is played.
I've seen other films with this kind of portrayal of our armed forces. Granted, they were all Soviet propaganda films calling for our destruction, but still.
shrillbert why are you watching years old Communist progranda
Well Marie bullock when you grandfather was at pearl harbour during the attack the Americans knew the Japanese were going to attack there lot of stuff going on in pearl harbour
When I spoke to Doug personally he mentioned his father was a Naval Officer, hence why he took the films issues so personally. His family had a long military history. And I have to say as a brother of a Marine and grandson of a Coast Guard veteran, takes this shit film personally also.
I wonder if my cousins took this shit seriously. I know one's in the Navy but I wonder if he even saw this shit.
My Mom gave birth to me while she was in the Coast Guard in 1982. She met my Stepfather there in '85 while in Training. Neither of them could Swim. But that was NO excuse. They HAD to learn and were put through Rigorous Swim Drills prior to beginning service. This movie thinks you're an idiot.
As a kid who grew up in a Military household, this movie is disgusting.
@@Tornado1994 I remember reading a book about a battle in the Pacific. It mentioned that not all sailors knew how to swim during WW2. Honestly, if you are on a sinking ship 100s of miles from shore, what good is swimming gonna do you anyway?
Fun fact (you probably know this) Doug was born in Italy due to his father being stationed there.
And as someone who has had multiple relatives in every single war we’ve had and a vet for a husband I fully get why he is offended by this shit movie. It’s totally an immature black and white portrayal of this event that paints America as God and throws everyone else under the bus. Any real student of history will tell you it’s never that simple.
@@leenut91 That's why if you want the accurate Pearl Harbor experience, you watch Torra Torra Torra.
I personally know a Pearl Harbor survivor. He was on the San Francisco. Luckily the ship was behind a crane so the Japanese couldn't get to them. He lived through that shit. His story is one that I could listen to over and over again. He has said time and time again that this "movie" is the worst depiction of Pearl Harbor.
That’s the same with my great-grandpa and D-Day. He used to tell us all the stories of Dieppe, D-Day, and the march across Europe. It was really something else hearing them multiple times.
He got to see Saving Private Ryan before he passed. I remember seeing him visibly shaking, and tearing up during the landing scene. It was the closest, he said, Hollywood got to real combat.
It's like the veterans who went to go see the movie Dunkirk, where some of them were about ready to have panic attacks because it felt so real for them, despite being arguably more a horror film than a war film.
@@Lt_Voss That's what basically a war film kinda is in one respect, a horror film. It was a good choice for Dunkirk
@Thibault Derese Who's this "we" business? Fury was nonsense yes but Dunkirk was the only movie I wanted to see in theatres and came out of it having greatly enjoyed it in over a decade.
Thibault Derese well it’s easiest hands down, because it was the first to try portray any part of War accurately. Without the “nobody was scared and all the soldiers & leaders were great” schtick of the John Wayne-type war movies, Bay’s Pearl Harbour, or 1990s Memphis Belle.)
When Critic yelled, "YOU SON OF BIIIIIIIIICH!" I...felt that...I felt that so hard for a second it felt like he was actually yelling at Michael Bay
I actually talked to a marine about the soldier not being able to swim, and he said back then, some soldiers actually weren’t able to swim. That’s why today, it’s required. So I guess that part of the movie can actually be accurate
That's a good point and I'm glad you brought that up but the movie makes it feel like a sick joke or just a random line than trying to be historically accurate.
@@kikio0529 Actually as I understand it sailors believed that learning how to swim was considered bad luck because if you knew how to swim then you were preparing for a sinking and ergo most sailors thought it was bad luck to learn how to swim.
Thank you for pointing this out. Just because someone is in the navy doesn't mean they have to know how to swim, the same as not everyone in the air force has to know how to fly. I hate this movie as much as anyone but saying a sailor doesn't know how to swim is an insult to the military is pretty far fetched.. I was in the military and was not insulted in the least.
@@jonsanford2539 fair BUT. The thing is that humans can swim but we can't fly so it isn't the same as a pilot not being able to fly
If were being honest you dont even really have to be able to swim to make it in
Saw this on opening day with my grandma, I’ll never forget my grandma saying during the scene where the torpedoes are about to slam into battleship row while sailors are painting the side of the ship, “It’s Sunday, sailors did not paint ships on Sunday!” Not sure if this was true, but even my grandma was calling out Michael Bay’s depiction of the event.
My dad was in the Navy and I believe he mentioned this.
aww the widdle tools of murder got a widdle bweak for jesus.
It was true most sailors were off base at church when the attack occurred
She was correct.
I remember this review; it's one of the few times I've seen Doug truly angry- not to be funny, not to add emphasis, but legitimately ready to explode. And rightfully so- seriously, what kind of asinine piece of shit makes a movie like this and genuinely thinks it's doing ANYBODY justice?
Doug said on his fb page that this was probably his most angriest review he's ever done, and i can definitely see why. lol
you should see his Breaking Dawn part I review (wasn't a NC, it was Doug as himself reviewing it)
+Luis Hernandez "Twilight is going to talk to us about ABORTION." Incredibly accurate and surprisingly hilarious.
+Roflcopter_launchpad 111 And it was all over the single most common issue in the Navy and Marines at the time apparently never being an issue. How do I know he was wrong about it? It was debunked by a FUCKING MARINE.
@@pachutoazumadre32xD Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is better.
Hi, Ethan from Four years in the future here, just want to say I've still never seen Doug get so angry at anything. It's almost scary how angry he got.
Son of a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He goes off-script so much. I looooove it! You can tell he cares about this stuff. His dad was in the military. You're awesome, dude.
Well, Bay’s “interpretation” is the same as making a 9/11 movie about a cop who doesn’t exist, and have him take over heroics of other real people.
I did not know that...
And he doesn't do the bullshit ass kissing that Michael Bay and so many jackasses who never actually served do. He sticks to facts.
@@LandSharkCorner yeah, Doug was actually born in Italy because that's where his dad was stationed at the time
I would love to see Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood tried to make a movie "Pearl Harbor".
That moment when you realize the 2020 movie “Midway”, a film focused on the Battle of MIDWAY, is more faithful and honorable towards the disaster at Pearl Harbor than the movie titled PEARL HARBOR is!
And they had to CGI the ships in.
I know, right?! And I saw the original version of MIDWAY and even that version was more historically accurate than PEARL HARBOR!!!
@@JeffreyDeCristofaro Hawai Mare Oki Kaisen was more Accurate than Pearl Harbor, and that was Japanese Propaganda!
@@JeffreyDeCristofaro The 1976 Midway is severely underrated, man.
The more shocking part is that Midway - the most recent one - was done by Roland Emmerich…and about 98% of that movie is really accurate - even the most outrageous things you think were done for drama or badass points actually happened X_x
As a former army soldier, thank you for the rant about accurate portrayals in movies.
I salute you, soldier.
As a history lover, it's why I hate a lot of "historical" movies, books, or shows. Half of the time, they don't even care to make it decently accurate
Why bother stating you were in the army?? Who cares?
Thank you so much for your service, sir.
Thank You for your Service
Worst line ever NC forgot to mention: I THINK WW2 JUST STARTED!!!
No BS it's a line in the flim. Makes Bat Credit Card look decent.
Som Keshav pathetic and inaccurate. Wars names don't become well known until afterwards like the Great War (now World War 1).
Som Keshav so why not say this?
We are now at war!
Not really good but better yes?
Som Keshav now at war
Means now America's at war too
If it needs a fix say: America is now at war!
Better?
Som Keshav the line is because you don't know the name of the war during the frist battle.
Som Keshav yes so why say it in the movie that's supposed to be set in the time period of the war?
Here's an explanation of NC's rant. Not everyone could swim at Pearl Harbor. What Doug was so angry about was the fact that Michael Bay didn't properly show the issue. He explains this in an editorial, I forget which, where he compares it to Titanic where the problems caused by the lack of enough lifeboats was shown and explained unlike here where it's a throwaway line by one random guy. Titanic respected the titular event enough to show the smaller problems and how they caused more deaths unlike Bay who more or less used Pearl Harbor as a way of filling seats with people looking for a romance set against a tragedy like Titanic. Doug was angry and couldn't put his thoughts into words but that's what he meant by that.
mateo trujillo That makes sense... Because I re-watched carefully and the point he makes effectly goes beyond that military men being not able to swim on a boat. He was more taking a jab at how Bay's view the world and particularly America...
Yeah, you’re right, My granddad was in the navy and he actually couldn’t swim at the time either
Plus, and I could be wrong, I think his dad served in the military as well. So that could've fueled his rant too.
I respect their courage truly, but what sense does it make to choose a career like the navy if you can't swim? That's like being a firefighter who's severely afraid of fire.
billa107
His father served in the Navy, which also adds to his despise of the scene.
The “I can’t swim” bit is true, severe survivors from the Oklahoma testified to hearing someone screaming that as she rolled over
severe?
Tornado1994 ?
Neil Roberts Severe survivors, instead of SEVERAL Survivors.
Doctor Cthulhu autocorrect got me
Neil Roberts As for your claim, I can’t find any evidence what you said was true, because basic swimming ability was part of basic training for the US Navy, going back to essentially its formation.
Can you link to the testimony you are referring too???
"Danny you can't die ya know why because you're gunna be a father"
Danny: wait...you're pregnant?
*starts deflecting japanese bullets with dad-bod*
Danny: I would cry, if I wasn’t squinting hard enough to pinch off my tear ducts.
Broken rubber is scarier than any Japanese plane.
Well, I guess the way they were doing it was perhaps portraying it as helping him hold on and maybe survive. Perhaps that would've worked, if maybe he told him that *before* they went off to make sure he did his best to survive. The way portrayed here, as it's portrayed here, was to suggest maybe he thought telling him that would automatically heal him and turn him into an invincible war-ending hulk.
@donovandirk6063 "Thank God I got shot, then. You made this mess, this is your problem now, asshole.🖕"
I've said it once and I will say it again: The parts that are focused around the Japanese are very well done, are surprisingly not racist, and are probably the most enjoyable scenes in the whole movie. They are the only parts in the movie that give me Tora! Tora! Tora! vibes
+Tahkozz I cannot believe there managed to be an American movie (other than Unbroken) that managed to portray asian actors in no cliched way that people associate them with. People in other countries are just people, people!
+Buck Wade Letters from Iwo Jima.
+Buck Wade You seen Letters from Iwo Jima? If you haven't go watch it now.
+Tahkozz
This movie is considered to be overly glorifying Japaneses in China and Korea. Many veterans were offended. And Doug is complaining the portray of Japanese is not positive enough. "Japanese never fired on civilians".
+Apothecary2 Even if it is true, it is still less ridicules than PC police accusing everything and everyone being racist or sexist.
I get the sneaking suspicion that 25:15 to 27:35 was unscripted.
Sam Phillips i think it started being unscripted at 22:30
Sam Phillips I think during a Q+A at a con he confessed that it was originally scripted but he couldn't get the emotional level quite right, so he went off script and lost his voice
Probably was scripted, but I think it came completely from the heart.
Sam Phillips I agree.
Either way it shows his anger about this movie.
The TV show "The Brady Bunch" showed the soldiers more respect than Michael Bay. I remember when the family visited the Arizona in Hawaii and they had a moment of silence while Robert Reed read the memorial plaque out loud.
When a show titled The Brady Bunch shows more respect to the soldiers than the film titled Pearl Harbor, you done fucked up, Michael Bay.
That was a great moment.
"Konichiwa!" "Konichiwa!" "All your base are belong to us!" IM DEAD
...just like the Arizona
Ben Hamilton And the Japanese’s sympathetic portrayal during the first part of the movie is instantly erased by the way they made the Evil Japanese attack the hospitals and civilians. There are accounts of the Japanese waving their arms at civilians and children to warn them to get out of the way, but now they’re just wicked soulless killing machines for “drama”!
TheBossBros73 There’s no point replying to this guy. Don’t reward him for pretending to be too stupid to understand. Ignore the troll. He just wants attention.
"Victory belongs to those who believe in it the most."
But don't both sides equally believe in victory?
That is why there is also the saying heros and villians are the same, the only difference between them is who's telling the story
Nah. We believed in it just a little bit more apparantly
Thibault Derese Yamato believed he could get the US to the negotiating table, if his full plan was executed. That means the third wave had been launched and was successful against the repair depots and the above-ground fuel storage tanks.
Pearl would have been unusable as a refuelling and repair base for years, if the third wave was successful. That would have cut off every American/Allied base west and Australia, from Mainland US support until 1943 at the earliest.
Both Midway and Guadalcanal would have fallen in that scenario, because everything would have been put towards rebuilding and safeguarding Pearl from invasion or another attack, and we lose the listening posts that intercepted Japanese communications in the Far East.
Key word....most. lol.
T D it’s actually a very, very, old saying/belief, that dates back to before the unification of the Greek city-states.
Hitler was also a methhead by the beginning of the war, so any sayings attributed to him, after that point, have to be taken with a grain of salt. As likely it was Gobbels just spreading more propaganda to make, corporal hitler, appear as a (military) genius to his followers.
I like how Doug plays Bay as a more human character instead of making him a complete douche. A rare high road was quite wecoming.
It's funny considering that Bay is often sighted as being one of the most difficult to work with directors in the movie industry.
well that's because he reviewed his transformers movies
@@tristanhartup4936 and from his response to critics, I'm just gonna say that Bay is probably not a good person
SuperSwordman1 you can say that shit again!
And one of the most memorable scenes in Tora Tora Tora happened completely by accident. When the Japanese fighters are attacking the airfields, it was a somewhat windy day when they were filming, and one of the radio-controlled P40s got blown sideways and started heading toward the camera crew, so they blew it up prematurely. And in a completely unscripted occurrence, the prop came off and started cartwheeling across the runway.
Yeah, I saw the HISTORY BUFFS episode explaining that.
@@JeffreyDeCristofaro I think we all did
Or the B-17 landing on one leg.
Thank you for sharing this.
If I were directing a movie, if I hired Michael Bay at all, I'd only take him in if he agreed to do half of the action. That and nothing else. Action is clearly the only thing that this guy is decent enough at directing.
Will 2139 he doesn’t even do that correctly
He doesn’t even do that well enough anymore.
TBH, I’d actually want Michael Bay to direct a “Hey, Dude” movie. Given how boring of a show it was, at least he’d make the movie more interesting!
And porn, apparently.
Michael Bay has got an eye for great action sequences, even in his earlier films like Bad boys, The Rock and even Armageddon. He's almost always got serious issues everywhere else but there is no point in denying he can create great action scenes.
My dad actually has a poster of the movie in his workshop. He admitted he never saw the movie so I have no real idea why he has it.
Maybe he's Michael Bay!
(Joke)
Because 'Murica.
🍆💦💦💦
@@pathaorion Maybe he just thinks it looks cool
Critic reacts this way so strongly about the US military because his father was in the military
I agree with him too.. Bay is normally a douche, but this movie is the only place where it really hurt
are you sure
Whatever the reason it's one of the few times he is actually a real reviewer... instead of the pompous dick he usually is.
Angela Gonzalve so? I was in he military and I really don’t see the big deal about this film.
Ethan Kuhn This is stupidly obvious, but just because you were in the military doesn’t mean you have the exact same experiences as other people in the military and know the exact same things. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to understand. Duh.
This right here, this is my most favorite NC review. I don't know why, but for some reason those Michael Bay sketches were somehow genuinely emotional. Even without those, Critic losing his cool and screaming at Bay for three minutes is by far a monument of cinematic glory all on its own. I don't think I can say this enough when I say: thank you for this, Doug. Thank you for sharing this with us
NC screaming at Michael Bay was a far better acting performance than that of the main cast of Pearl Harbor in the entire film.
I’m lucky, my teacher showed this to us in class but only bothered to show action scenes and how they might compare to how people actually reacted.
Smart teacher
cutie evee 2 no she showed them the ACTUAL movie, but only the action scenes
Why would a teacher show a review about a movie
Could a Michael Bay team up with Martin Scorsese work for an action movie if, like you said, Bay only directed the action sequences?
Winnie the Pooh: Eeyore! World peace has been declared! Isn't it wonderful?
Eeyore: Yeah but Pearl Harbor still happened.
Winnie the Pooh: Well we can't change history.
Eeyore: I'm talking about the Michael Bay film.
Oh bother.
That’s funny.
I know from experience that a lot of people in the Navy can't swim and passed my depth preception test by blinking my eyes one at a time. Just saying...
By the way, that rant from 25:27 through 27:40 is fucking beautiful.
No the fuck it wasn't. What is wrong with you?
@Unpopular Opinions poorly-acted indignation is poorly acted
Yeah, he’s one of the better things that happened on the internet.
@@Mike-ds4ht that’s not an opinion. That shit Was fucking true. There were Many soldiers, and I do mean, MANY!! Naval soldiers that couldn’t swim. I’ve asked plenty of WWII vets and they all said the same thing.
By god, NC is absolutely right. Michael Bay films everything like porn
+Red Ram
That, or he directs movies like they are commercials.
Explosions are his money shots!
@Bilal Khalid
Correct. If i knew i could make crap filmaking and still earn millions at box office, i probably would've become a director.
Before this vid I legitimately never knew that he directed porn
Why would he show John Turturro's bum in Transformers Revenge of the Fallen? That was so gross! 🤮
Oddly enough, my grandfather served 30 years in the Navy and sailed around the world three times and never learned to swim.
My grandfather was in the RN and, as he once said: 'Swim? To where?'
Really? Is that not a requirement?
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer I guess it wasn't back in the 40s 🤷♂️
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer Where were they gonna swim too?
That’s incredible.
Doug ranting is probably the most patriotic thing I've ever seen and I love it.
Patriot was a better war movie than what Michael bay could ever direct
Yeah typical American gets brainwashed to be overly patriotic
Tom Storey what? You should really see how many Americans hate there country LMAo
@Dlox it's not the patriotism, it's how much it gets imbedded from such a young age that just makes it ludicrous how passionate Americans are, they take it to such an extent where they can't really be critical of America, because of all the "American dream bullshit" that being said it is a baby country it's only been around for a couple of hundred years
@@tomstorey8559 I'd be fascinated to learn of a country that DOESN'T try to instill patriotism in it's youth. Reinforcement of societal norms and ideologies at an early age is pretty standard for any culture.
One of NC's funniest lines ever:
"Buddy, fuck the plaque buildup!"
The timing and delivery is spot on
23:29
Indeed its priceless
23:33
I'm really shocked that this didn't cause public outrage from Japan. Firing on a hospital would've been considered a disgraceful and dishonourable act.
Compared to other war crimes Japan committed, (Unit 731, Nan King to name a few), that actually isn’t as bad.
@@justanotherafol9723the point here is that Japan deliberately avoided the likes of hospitals during the attack and so to illustrate them doing the opposite betrays the intent of the filmmaker
Japan actually loved the movie. I’m not making this up.
Well considering they machine gunned Australian nurses in Banka island and regularly shot medics despite that being completely against the geneva convention, it's not like the Japanese were above this. But I agree that it's dishonest to show the Japanese killing civillians when they didn't
There were Sailors who couldn't swim. 880 people died some drowned. That's why the Navy has mandatory swim test now. :/
Why would you be a sailor if you can't swim?
I think the logic is that you don't need to know how to swim since you're on a boat. If the boat sinks, you die weather you know how to swim or not.
It's... sorta logical.
***** Yeah, I was being sarcastic. Something can be logical while also being EXTREMELY dumb.
***** Actually, I did not know there were sailors that couldn't swim and a mandatory test was post WWII until just now. It's actually a surprising and interesting tidbit.
I thought the ellipses made it obvious, but I don't take offense, you can't really establish tone in the span of a few sentences properly.
None of the 5 Sullivan brothers who were killed off Guadalcanal could swim; rather they drowned or were killed some other way, or both I don't know, but following that incident brothers could no longer serve together.
I liked the Monty Python version better. It was much more historically accurate and had more likeable characters!
Pusher Love Man yes "grannies" beating each other in the mud with handbags just does it for me ;) I love it.
I'm so glad someone else remembers that skit.
I agree
@@theblackbaron4119 Those grannies put far more effort into their performance than any actor in this film.
That "you son of a bitch" is definitely my new ringtone.
“The only thing constant is Porn.” I mean, Rule 34 does exist after all.
I wish it didn’t...
Goddam that website can turn anything lewd! 😳
@@recapnerd2657 it can turn you lewd boi!
the Michael Bay rant was amazing
Sure was, best thing ever, now take that same rant and do it towards Donald Trump.
Critic is a true American in so many ways.
@@tdfern1 fuck yeah lol
I watch that rant only to watch him suffer. That's what he gets for reviewing my favorite movies. Including Pearl Harbor.
He should have given Bay some credit though. He held off writing in a underage girl, that he overly-sexualize.
That’s an immense amount of self-control on Bay’s part.
Moral of the story: watch Tora! Tora! Tora! instead
Yes. It actually takes it as the pre-emptive strike it was, not the “sneak attack” it’s portrayed traditionally in American media.
If they hit the fuel storage at pearl, Guadalcanal falls, Aussie land is isolated, and likely Midway is a loss(the listening stations Guad supported, got them the needed comm intercepts)
Exactly
I saw it as a kid around the time this Bay flick came out. I'd re-watch Tora! Tora! Tora! anyday.
Call me a complete moron but I don't think I ever saw Tora! Tora! Tora! But I kind of prefer this film from my own childhood blindness... ...I genuinely wish my dream of being a pilot was still alive and I didn't have a fear of heights, but my own childhood goggles literally all I cared about, and I shit you not, was just the airplanes... What the hell was wrong with my younger self? At least I was the second best in Combat Flight simulator against my family. And youngest too.
Or Herman Wouk's miniseries.
I personally hate this movie. I wrote a three-page long review for History class describing all the ways I hate this movie and why it was so terrible.
...
If I could direct my own version of this to correct all of the mistakes, for starters, I would cut out the romance entirely. Bye-bye, stupid love interest, stupid cliches, and just STUPID!
Then, I would have the prologue show the boys planning to join the military in their youth, one wanting to be a pilot and one wanting to be a member of the Navy. I would choose likeable actors and give them likable personalities and quirks that would make them more relatable to the audience, along with drives for joining the army.
I wouldn't make these characters the best in their particular group, just average or slightly above. I'd have them be separated for training them have them reunite when they' were both stationed in Pearl Harbor. I would give the Japanese fighters respectful portrayal and honestly describe their reasons for the attack, not demonizing or villainizing them.
I would station the friend in the Navy on the Utah or Nevada, so that when the attack came (showing what actually happened, no images of American innocence dying or lies, just facts and accurate representation of the tragedy), he could be one of the soldiers trapped in the sunken wreckage. A good portion of the movie could go to AirForce guy demanding the government to save Navy guy only to be faced with the fact that nothing could be done to save his friend from the wreckage, and Navy Guy's thoughts and experiences while trapped in the wreckage before his death.
I would dedicate the first half of the movie to this, along with character development and development of the relationship between these two childhood friends who took different paths to achieve different roles.
The AirForce guy, after the death of his friend, would sign up for the air-raids, go and attack Japan with revenge on the mind, then have a crisis when he realizes that he's doing to them exactly what they did to him. He'd crash, get captured by the Japanese, and nearly get killed before the Chinese arrive.
The movie would end with an elderly version of AirForce guy visiting a memorial to those who died at Pearl Harbor, running a hand over Navy Guy's name. No words, no music, no evidence of the life this man has lived since Pearl Harbor (romance, family, flashbacks), just silence and facial expressions on the mourners. End the movie on a quiet, respectful note that leaves an impression of how the tragedy still hurts and affects people today.
...
I know I sound preachy and these changes may suck, but hey: at least it wouldn't suck as much as this. Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go and rant somewhere about how much Transformers 3 sucked.
Also, good review!😂👍🏻
I think I'd actually want to see that.
IceWarrior13 k"
Watch Tora! Tora! Tora! That movie is the most accurate telling of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The movie is long but worth the watch. The first half tells of the events leading up to the attack while the second half tells of the attack. It also tells it from both the Japanese and the Americans' POV.
The movie is kind of old so there are no special affects or computerized mumbo jumbo that Michael Bay is so fond of. The explosions in Tora! Tora! Tora! are 100% real!
AAAAND I WILL GREENLIGHT THAT SOMEDAY!
Rafe: Evelyn, loving you kept me alive.
NC: It just...didn't keep me from leaving you.
That. That right there is perfectly defines how terrible these characters are written.
That wasn't The Critic chewing Michael Bay out. That was 100% Doug.
And boy, was it ever glorious.
Technically, there *are* soldiers of the era in the Navy that don't exactly know real swimming survival skills. Though if you intended to enlist in the Navy, you must have known that you would eventually need to swim.
Well then +1 for historical accuracy.
@@clerickolter
Still -80 for revisionism on the striking of civilian sector buildings.
Also, man this is old.
Matthew Cobalt,
In the context of this review I think the issue of sailors being unable to swim matters more since Nostalgia Critic chose to make his big rant about it.
@@Saul_Leven
That is also true. I only learned this about a few months after my comment here, so there's that I guess.
Technically, everyone was required to be able to swim with instruction when they enlisted. At least the Radio man I knew was, but then he joined after Pearl Harbor and the Navy had new lessons written in blood by then.
I swear that rant never gets old. It's one of my all time favorite NC moments, along with his Avatar rant. One serious rant, one comedic rant.
Yes I know there were people in the army stationed at sea and in the navy that couldn't in fact swim (due to necessity for soldiers and all that) but people need to stop using that excuse to try and say the rant is bs. That wasn't the point of the rant nor the focus, it was the trigger. The firing on hospitals proves that.
Also Is it just me or we're new skits added? I swear those Michael bay skits weren't in the Pearl Harbor video last time it was uploaded...
300-I.Q. Prower
There are two versions of the review. One with the skits, one just a straight review.
@@eldorados_lost_searcher did anyone ask? I personally love both
4:22 Father jerk
6:52 Giggles
7:56 I passed him
9:50 The promise of sex will bring you home
12:12 smart enemy plots in a giant hot tub with toy battleships with no markings identified as map
21:31 konnichiwa
23:30 Brushing teeth
24:13 I can't swim says Navy
25:16 Critic's rage
31:13 what you're asking can't be done ... violent reaction
*Doug's rage
That wasnt a bit o_o;
Now there's a nightmare-inducing thought: Michael Bay directing a movie written by George Lucas.
@ Jonathan Rogers And co written with M Night Shyamalan.
Would rather George Lucas than Tommy Wiseau
Chexpet Wiseau's writing at least garners a laugh, Lucas' is dreadfully boring
Attack of the clones?
With Uwe Boll as a co-director.
“We’ve had one, yes. What about second romance?”
“Don’t think he knows about second romance, Pip.”
the movie was made in 2001 so bay should get the VHS's too
that rant at like 24:20 is like the realest it's got on this channel. on god my favorite review i've seen so far. I've run it back like 20 times
You shouldn't be so impressed with that rant. It was completely ignorant and wrong. There were definitely some U.S. Navy sailors during World War II who didn't know how to swim. This is one of the things that Michael Bay actually got right in the movie.
Yeah coz all Americans are brainwashed about their military
@@Saul_Leven Ok maybe he was wrong about that one fact but everything else he said in his rant is absolutely true
The one good thing I can take from this movie is that the Japanese side was depicted fairly well on the whole (aside from the whole "shooting-at-hospitals-to-be-assholes" thing) . Everything else is rage inducing to a point that my heart beats so fast it shreds itself on its own palpitations.
#ToraToraTora!!!!
Not really, they're still depicted as a bunch of mysterious assholes doing Very Foreign Things like meeting in Foreign Buildings and planning their attack in a Foreign open-air pool with no security of any kind (um...) Try watching _Tora! Tora! Tora!_ where you seen the Japanese aircrews training and being goofballs and the leaders meeting in a room in an actual building like sensible people.
I think Tora! Tora! Tora! Represents the Japanese better
Watch tora tora tora. It depicts pearl harbour unbiased
Richard did you say Tora tora bora?
Well he did do one thing right, any scene with President Roosevelt. He was epic
Blue Baron the Imperial Japanese Navy scenes were arguably really good too. Just a shame they even got some of the historical details wrong, like the Zeroes in late war colors and Yamamoto being with the carriers except he was actually in the Sea of Japan at the time of the attack.
Because of his rant, I'm waiting to hear Real Thoughts on this one.
Jarek Gunther those were his real thoughts
My teacher showed this for the whole class at the last day of the year. At the end, everyone was crying and or blowing their nose.( What were u gonna expect, it was 6th grade) and, as much as I wanted to feel something, I just was bored by the whole movie, and was actually kinda scared of the darker scenes. All I can say is, this could have been so much, and fell short
Did they show all 3 and a half hours??
Any relation to Vinegar Joe?
Oh damn.
Sorry you had to watch through 3 hours of this mediocre horse radish.
Rubber duckey Godzilla!
FUCKIN BUBBLES!!
+Oscar Dighton What's the name of the song in the opening?
yeah
fuck ya sparkle sparkle sparkle
logan medina b-b-b- bubber ducky ducky bababa
You know I heard Micheal Bay doing 9/11.
Just saying.
Yeah, like that shit isn't milked enough...
Ah sh*t the honest trailers is right again like TMNT.
God please no...
PLEASE tell me your joking!
Can't said.
The rant was absolutely beautiful.
I think he was genuinely pissed off and I salute him for that
He raged more than he did with the bat credit card
@@brandonsanchez8197 this difference with this one however is that it came from a very real place. Doug’s father served so he holds this subject very near and dear.
"Wait... a fuck."
The best ever primer to possible one of the greatest rants ever.
Thank you Doug.
what is this, the passion of the Bay?
If that were so, we would've had a 2.5 hour long movie just about Bay being torture and falling over in slow motion
It's actually based on the movie The Greatest Story Ever Told, though Passion of the Christ is a similar movie
The world may never know
I was gonna say, this review had more Christ symbolism than the Matrix movies!
wow. Umm. I worry about Doug having a stroke or something from a review at some point.
Actually, that part about the sailor not knowing how to swim.... It's probably one of the more accurate things about the movie. I was in the navy, and I knew a number of guys who couldn't swim in boot camp, about 1/3 of the sailors who graduate RT go right to a boat.... probably not being a very good swimmer. I always found that funny and ironic....
There's an old cynical joke that the Navies of the world traditionally favored sailors that didn't know how to swim, because they would be more enthusiastic when defending their boats... ;)
But then usually that's pure coincidence, even in Napoleonic times they had swimmers on board of their ships, even if it never was 100% of the crew.
I also remember a vet who served in the navy at the pacific say that he couldn't swim so there is that.
Eeyup. My brother was a marine, he served on an aircraft carrier, and he can't swim any more than I can.
+Nathaniel Smith yeah but when was the last time a aircraft carrier sunk
But why would anyone with any common sense, go to the Navy, if they know they can't swim? It's just dumb.
"Everyone brave enough, step forward."
*Takes a quiet step backward*
Watch "Tora! Tora! Tora!" It's a much better movie about the Pearl Harbor raid.
Frank Baldwin yea
It is an awesome move but this fucking piece of shit got a higher rating than the movie that actually shows pearl harbour. It got a lower rating if that's possible because it was slow and showed the USA as unprepared and unorganised. Fucking hell
Tora Tora Tora is amazing! My Dad likes to watch a lot of war movies and we've really bonded watching it together!
Apieceof Toast I think the worst part was Roger Ebert, one of the best critics of all time said that Tora! Tora! Tora! Was too predictable and we all know PEARL HARBOR WILL BE INVADED BY JAPAN giving it a star while this piece of shit gets a star. And a half.
The historical accuracies, characters and how actual civilians(a flight teacher)saw the Japanese invasion an hour before the actual attack instead of symbolism of America's innocence was better and an explanation on why America was so unprepared(tl;dr no one believed an attack would happen even after the mounting evidence of an attack.)
That was a badass movie
Yeah I hate Pearl Harbor with a burning passion and tora tora tora needs more respect
Li Bass Master I feel the exact same way about “Maleficent” and “About a Boy” I despise both of those with a passion that knows no bounds!
However, films I love that everyone else hates includes:
The Lone Ranger
Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides
The Jazz Singer (Neil Diamond)
The Road to El Dorado
Annie (2014)
1941
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
Titan A.E.
Atlantis the Lost Empire
Trainwreck
Michael
The Boondock Saints
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Flash Gordon
Xanadu
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Dragonheart
Return to Oz
Dune
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
Tora Tora Tora is the most accurate movie about the Pearl Harbor attack.
@@jamesmoyner7499 the fuck, man? People love Atlantis (for good reason)
@@jamesmoyner7499 waaaaait a sec, did I miss something in "about a boy"? I thought it was a touching and charming little flick but was it offensive or something?
Destitute and Decadent watched this “film” on Netflix back in February last year and I really wanted to stop watching it multiple times, but I figured I should finish it. That was one of the worst mistakes of my life. I hated this “movie” everyone is a selfish a hole, the man is lying to be near the woman, the kid blackmails the man when he finds out the truth, the kid has to deal with bullies because he is living his mom’s dream of singing even though he can’t sing, the mom is a jerk for forcing her kid to sing. The Room was a better film than this garbage!! I have warned people to stay away from this and some have actually heeded my warning. While other have found out the hard way how bad it is.
I went into watching this thinking it was going to be about a man who is going to be a dad and suddenly starts to imagine a kid that isn’t there to sort of prepare him to be a dad.
Lord Nelson couldn't swim. He had one arm and one eye yet still won the Battle of Trafalgar. A lot of people went into the Navy and couldn't swim.
when I was in the army ROTC program, we were required to complete a swimming test every year. navy ROTC didn't. how's that for irony?
@@sparkreno19 Massive Irony.
He got his eye shot out at trafalger and died moments later....he didn’t start the battle with one eye....
@@pr.deltadash1921 Er He Did. He lost the sight of his right eye at the Siege of Calvi 1794
Fun fact: FDR actually could stand up. He had leg braces and could imitate walking
That scene was still entirely fictional though.
*NEVER HIRE AN ACTION MOVIE DIRECTOR FOR A ROMANCE FILM.*
A *SHITTY* Action Director
Yeah! That'd be like DC hiring a writer who hates superhero movies! ... wait.
@@GreyOverlord74 What R U Talking About?
By that logic, titanic would never have been made.
in Ang Lee's 'HULK' case...
As long as Michael Bay stays away from horror...
too late
fucking Purge dude
Benjamin Lê and Drag Me to Hell, I was being facetious...
DNAsGhostzHouze comedy? tell me he didnt do comedy
As if horror hasn't already been systematically ruined in the past 30 years or so...
24:13 Now we know to never give Bay to the Critic. I don't even think Doug was acting there.
+Alex James
He was truly pissed off.
scary movies
His father was in the navy and stationed in Italy and his family lived there for a little bit
Jacob Kindermann Really? That's interesting.
scary movies
24:17 starts possibly the greatest rant NC has ever made.
This movie is horrendous, but I'll give it this, Hans Zimmer's score is great
Viktor Schlatte and the Faith Hill song
That was beautiful
It's Hans Zimmer, everything he touches turns into badass music
Hans Zimmer might as well be the child of a muse, he can't do wrong
Hans Zimmer is the balls.
An evergreen comment.
When I heard Doug's speech about the attack, I F#$King cheered.
I love how Bay couldn't be bothered to edit out the modern ships from the shots, and instead just decided to blow them up too.
Can we at least all agree the soundtrack to this film was fucking fantastic. Hans Zimmer is a masterclass composer.
Agreed
It’s one of my favorite scores by him
Not really surprising. No matter the quality of the film, the score is always the best part of the film. Rarely do we ever find a bad film where the score is as bad as the film.
"Someone who's in the military and serves on a battleship can't swim?!"
I dunno, maybe he ate a devil fruit.
So many angry moments, but the treatment of the Eagle Squadrons is horrendous: they didn't get " assigned" or " volunteer" to go to England, they left America, braved the Atlantic Convoys and applied to join when they reached Britain. Those guys FOUGHT to go into battle, risking the ire of a neutral nation that didn't want its citizens involved.
Sam Russell the eagle squardon, was formed after the battle of Britain, and almost all of them joined by going over to Canada, joining the royal canadain air Force,
"IS THIS GUY BRUSHING HIS TEETH?!?!?" For some reason I found that line priceless.
How has that picture of the guy brushing his teeth not become a meme yet?
Wait a bloody minute, when they crash land at 34:39, where are the other crew members, you don't mean to tell me that the only survivors were the pilots, what about the gunners or the navigator or the flight engineer, at least the tail gunner would have a better chance of surviving the crash than the pilots.
Every pilot survived in the Doolittle raid, the ones who died were executed
Wow!
This was one of the best so far!
I L.O.V.E. the speech at 25:10 to 27:55
0:55 Ah yes, those good old smartphones in 1990. They just don't make them like they used to. Reminds me of when I got my first Amazon Echo Plus (2nd Gen) for my birthday in 1963.
Good eye, I never would of even thought about how out of place a smart phone would be in a 90's flashback.
Well, if Michael Bay couldn't be bothered to be accurate with the history, why should Nostalgia Critic?
A man a head of its time
The saddest part: at the Pearl Harbor gift shop they sell this film on DVD and Blu-Ray for full price ($19.95).
yikes.....
Why not sell Tora Tora or A Pearl Harbor Documentary not this coat hanger abortion
@@GrimdarkCrusader20th who the hell cares
@@tomstorey8559 People who care about history give a shit
It's funny you brought that up, considering that I actually bought several movies on video in Hawaii during my family vacation there.
The sitcom "The Brady Bunch" showed more respect for Pearl Harbor! The family and Alice went to Hawaii and visited the Arizona Memorial. Mr. Brady read the memorial plaque out loud to his quiet family. That showed a lot of respect in my opinion.
25:28 ... I have never been more proud of Doug, then during this speech! Thank you good sir!
Doug, I love your reviews so please don’t take this the wrong way.
My grandfather was at Pearl Harbor. He didn’t know how to swim then and still doesn’t to this day (he’s 94). At the time it wasn’t considered a requirement. I know...on a boat surrounded by water...it should be. But (sigh) it wasn’t.
This is definitely one of my least favorite movies of all time. I mean, really, a 3 hour long movie where the Pearl Harbor attack is simplified and used as a simple background story, all for the purpose of having three popular actors involved in a love story that had NO PURPOSE whatsoever?!?!
Anyway, great review on a bad movie!
3 hours!!!!! Whew, good thing I never saw the whole thing then jesus christ! I'm surprised NC didn't make that more clear in the review honestly.
I fell asleep during part of the movie only to wake up to see the attack because it was so long
Supposedly the movie was so hated that not only US survivors of the attack but the JAPANESE media bashed the film. To paraphrase Honest Trailers “The only film about Pearl Harbor to be attacked by both American and Japanese survivors of the attack.” I practically lost it when they combined Yamamoto and Nagumo into one character. SERIOUSLY? What’s next, making the US Military look stupid? Oh wait!
"If your going to suck, suck all the way"
"What can i say, i know how to keep em coming"
Bruv, im dead
24:17-27:33 This is my favorite righteous fury moment.
I have never seen this man as angry as the Bat Credit Card in any other review
And he's freaking amazing and right
The Bat Credit Card is a dumb thing in a Batman movie that I saw as a joke. This is misinformation about a real life tragedy.
Well, after the Shark Repellent in the TV show and the movie, the Bat Credit Card didn't really bother me......... except the Shark Repellent was more useful.
@@LadyOnikara The Shark Repellent Bat-Spray was the GOAT.
@@blockyvids2 It was 1966. Campy Batman was excuseable back then but Batman and Robin came out in 1997. People had had enough of campy Batman because Batman (1989) came out and it was edgy and dark.
Are... Are those Oliver Hazard-Perry class frigates... In a WWII movie?
I’m overjoyed that I’m not the only one who was bothered by that!
I'm also bothered by that
they thought we wouldn't notice, but we did, and we hate them for it.
Yep.
Bay used them because he thought they looked cooler. A perfect example of Michael Bay putting visual intensity above everything else.
"How close are those Japanese planes again?!" Pulls out the map. Priceless moment!
I saw this movie when I had just turned 16, during which the film was having its last run in theaters (bizarrely, just over one week before 9-11 happened) while two other contenders that I saw weeks apart, JURASSIC PARK III and Tim Burton's PLANET OF THE APES remake, were still having their day at the box office. With the exception of the dogfights and Pearl Harbor sequences - and being the hormonally charged teenager and aerial warcraft fan, I was fond of such while only getting an inkling of what makes a good film work, I was quite naturally at the edge of my seat - I didn't really think the rest was so hot, and it would be years before I would recognize how an even bigger piece of shit it was than when I first saw it. Although, strangely, there were a few things I liked about it apart from the action: Josh Hartnett as Danny actually turned out to be a WAY better actor than Ben Affleck and I WAS moved by his final scene, and some of the Hans Zimmer music was good (I at one point got the soundtrack on CD). Also, you have to realize at that point that there was a resurgence of classic Hollywood themes going on at the time, notably historic romance and WWII epics, and it's pretty clear that this movie was attempting to fuse the elements of films like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, TORA! TORA! TORA! and THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (a number of which I happened to watch on Turner Classic Movies before and after seeing PEARL HARBOR).
Even more interesting, later in May 2002 (after 9-11 when airport security was beefed up and military barricades thrown up at the terminals), I actually visited the REAL Pearl Harbor with my family as part of a Mother's Day vacation to Hawaii. My old man and I visited the actual dock where the Arizona memorial was. We were told that we could take pictures of the memorial and out-of-service destroyer and submarine exhibits, but not the contemporary destroyers because of the 9-11 war (the military personnel didn't want to risk any of their technologies being compromised by tourists I supposed). I even picked up a book titled PEARL HARBOR IN THE MOVIES by Ed Rampell and Luis I. Reyes, which also covered Michael Bay's film among the countless movies made following the attack (a large number of which were filmed at Pearl Harbor itself) and was actually published in May 2001 to coincide with its release (complete with plot synopsis and spoilers). But this book turned out to be FAR more accurate and entertaining than the film itself, to say the least.
Speaking of which, I noticed something very interesting that this shit movie and the vastly better, criminally underrated and far more historically accurate TORA! TORA! TORA! have in common (not so sure that it's just me): the Japanese scenes before and during the Pearl Harbor attack actually have more REAL drama than the American scenes!!!
Also, just love the dramatized re-enactments climaxing with "PORN IT!" 🤣
Screw "Titanic". I think Michael Bay just really wanted to make his own version of "Top Gun".
More like Titanic meets Top Gun.
I know he went on a rant about it, but back then knowing how to swim was not a requirement to join the U.S. Navy. Don't believe me look up the U.S.S. Indianapolis. when I joined the navy in 2007 out if the 86 people in my division 25 couldn't swim at the start of it. now you have to learn how to swim to graduate boot camp.
Also having good eyesight was important for the military, especially things like identifying allied from hostile vehicles and soldiers. It's kinda important to not shoot your friends.
The hair flipping part killed me
Bay's take on the USS Arizona explosion was even wrong.
Yeah, but it’s affect is good, I was even scared the s**t out of me when watching it with earphones
Brainwashed Americans- that not historically correct !!!
Me, neither was saving private Ryan as they gave parts to Americans who historically should have been British or French
im a vet and thank you for deffending those who went through hell , and didnt come back. Thank You.
I remember me seeing this in the movies as a school trip for history class my junior year and just remember sitting there and trying not to fall asleep then just saying fuck it and going to sleep.
Except the bombing part, that was fucking cool!!
You did the right thing
To be fair The Rock is actually one good movie Michael Bay directed. Unfortunately, i dont believe that he'll ever make a good movie again...
+The Morrigan Whichever movie is his last.
oh yeah, forgot about Pain n gain.
The Island too. Not a masterpiece but it's a nice scifi flick (still porned though)
+The Morrigan lol what if i told you that after that "good" movie sean connery decided to quit acting.
I thought he gave up acting after league of extraordinary gentlemen? you know, after he realized that movie bombed?
My grandfather was a Merchant Marine for decades, from the 40's - 70's, and he didn't know how to swim. It's been 20 years, we can have someone make an accurate film of it again. My brother always said it was a story about how the Japanese bombed a love triangle.