Wing Commander Movie Night: Midway
The Wing Commander movie club watched The Fifth Element on Friday and it certainly wasn't Boron! (everyone laugh) Next up, we're going back to World War II… but in the Pacific this time! We're going to be watching the 1976 film Midway and you can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.
Midway is a star-studded, big budget war movie about the 1942 Battle of Midway, a naval engagement that changed the direction of World War 2 in the Pacific and which enshrined the aircraft carrier as the centerpiece of naval doctrine. Midway attempts to tell the story of the battle, a challenging thing for a conflict where the two sides rarely encountered each other.
Wing Commander's Kilrathi War has always been patterned after World War II in the Pacific so it's not a surprise that there are some clear connections to look out for! We'll talk about some connections to the real battle shortly, but first the 1976 film specifically was used as referenced during the making of the Wing Commander movie. In a March 1999 Salon interview, Chris Roberts credits Midway as a major inspiration: “‘Das Boot’ heavily influenced the film in terms of its look. Films like ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ [and] ‘Midway’ -- I tried to make my film in a sort of old-fashioned World War II sense.” A similar quote from Roberts was included in both the DVD liner notes and on the movie's official website: "WING COMMANDER is a hard-core war movie set in space. In some ways, it has more in common with Midway and The Battle of Britain than with a science fiction film," he adds. "It has lots of effects and combat scenes, all of which serve the characters and story. I wanted to make a film about people under the incredible tension of battle." The April 1999 issue of Cinefex talks about how the VFX team watched the movie to prepare for the capital ship battle sequences:
Seeking inspiration for the movement of the juggernaut capital ships, Digital Anvil viewed documentary footage and studied the war films Tora! Tora! Tora! and Midway. "After viewing these films," Brown stated, "Chris Roberts was adamant about holding on shots of these big ships coming across screen for a long time. That was more daring an approach than I was at first comfortable with, but in the end these long-duration shots worked very well, and they went a long way toward establishing the necessary sense of spectacle." This sense of spectacle - in the best Victory at Sea tradition - is particularly well illustrated partway through the film, when Tiger Claw is led into a trap and badly damaged during the ensuing battle.
And let's go ahead and get the obvious one done with: Wing Commander Prophecy's megacarrier is, of course, named after the historic battle. That doesn't inform much about the movie… but it's a good indication of how the battle itself continues to capture our imagination generations on.
Wing Commander stories have borrowed from the battle itself several times... going all the way back to the original Claw Marks, which uses some of the setup for the McAuliffe Ambush. Here Ches M. Penney stands in for cryptographer Joseph Rochefort:
On 2634.228, Confederation cryptographer Ches M. Penney partially decodes the current Kilrathi cipher. The intercepted message refers to a punitive strike being launched against the Confederation, starting with the colony on McAuliffe and the space station Alexandria in orbit around it. Confederation High Command launches a couter-offensive twice the size of the anticipated enemy fleet; it is to reach McAuliffe first and ambush the attackers.
On 2634.235, the Kilrathi fleet reaches McAuliffe. It is four times the predicted size; the incomplete translation of the intercepted message had underestimated the size of the Kilrathi offensive. So begins the McAuliffe Ambush engagement.
When William Forstchen told the complete story of McAuliffe in Action Stations, he doubled down on the connection and had Penney responsible for exacty the same trick as Rochefort:
"It's from Lieutenant Ches Penney," Speedwell announced, "one of our better cryptologists out on the frontier. Here's the original burst signal."
First there was a sharp, high-pitched squeal, lasting barely a second, then it was replayed after decompression, a quavering tone nearly a dozen seconds in length.
"Long signal," Skip announced.
"Penney had damn little to go on. The Cats have been shifting codes at increasingly shorter intervals. Something in the initial part of the tone caught his attention. That's the signature message, which tells the receiver which coding system to use. Seems that they recycled an older code that we had partially cracked, and Penney remembered it. Anyhow, here it is in Kilrathi."
Speedwell pointed to the screen as page after page of text scrolled past in the strange, blocked pictographs of what Skip knew was Kilrathi.
"Even here, most of the message is filler, so he started to run random pattern searches and finally hit on it."
The translation in English now appeared. Skip read the text once and hit the stop button. Turning in his chair he refreshed his mug of coffee, then turned back to the screen, features pale, reading slowly.
"Target Vikyah?" he whispered, already sensing what the answer was.
"McAuliffe," Speedwell replied.
"How do we know that?"
"Because it reports our translight burst transmitter is down due to intense solar flares as reported from the Carlin system. There's only one Confed base offline at the moment, and that's McAuliffe, where we've been having problems with flares of late. This message reporting the signal problems was sent by one of their listening posts inward to Kilrah yesterday. Twelve hours later it was repeated back outwards, Skip, back outwards to an Admiral Nargth."
"McAuliffe," Skip whispered. "Damn it all, they're going for McAuliffe."
"Looks that way. There's a lot of holes in the message, Skip. Penney pulled this one out right from the very edge. It looks like we caught, at best, maybe a quarter of the message, but we know the code name for this Admiral Nargth's command, and their target is McAuliffe."
... except it turns out he'd already used the trick for a previous novel, Fleet Action. The Kilrathi need to stop falling for this!
Most of the message was untranslated but one line highlighted in red leaped out at him . . . "Remove target 2778A on moon of Nak'tara from primary strike list. Accident has destroyed target, . . ." there were several lines untranslated . . . "shortage in antimatter weapons produced from 2778A expected, will update."
Jason looked back up at Vance.
"They took the bait. We broadcast the false message on a code we knew they had already cracked. Their listening post, most likely right in their embassy office picked it up and passed it back to Kilrah. Nak'tara means Earth. It means that whatever it is they're preparing out there in Hari is being aimed for an attack straight at Earth. Damn it, the bastards are getting ready to strike."
...
"First of all, what the hell was this signal you had me send?"
As Geoff explained Banbridge's features lit up.
"Same trick we Americans once used against the Japanese at Midway with the fake report of a water distillery breaking down. The Japanese picked it up and reported to their fleet that 'target X' was short of water, and by that little trick we knew their next target was Midway. Vance always did know his history."
Action Stations also introduces the fact that Commander Turner is descended from the commander of Torpedo Squadron 8, who died during the battle. At the end of the book, Turner reflects on how their heroism is like that of the Confederation fighters defending McAuliffe.
Skip's gaze shifted to the other print, of a naval battle, back when fleets still sailed on water.
"You had an ancestor in that one, didn't you?"
"Squadron Leader, Torpedo Eight," Turner said proudly, even though he was speaking of someone dead nearly three quarters of a millennium.
"And they all got shot down, but not one of them wavered from the attack on the Japanese carriers. Their heroic sacrifice pulled the fighters down to sea level, allowing the dive-bombers to slip through. Damn, what guts they had then," Skip said, looking back at Turner who arched an eyebrow in surprise that his friend remembered the story from the Battle of Midway.
And would you like to play the battle itself? You can't do it in a Wing Commander game but you can do it in an extremely similar, related one: Origin's 1993 Pacific Strike allows you to play through the battle as a pilot aboard the USS Enterprise. The game uses Wing Commander III's RealSpace engine and the overall design of the game is adapted from Wing Commander I! Pacific Strike is as close to possible as the fictional concept of abandonware: Origin actually did abandon support for it and offer everyone who purchased the game refunds! In that light, it might be fair to pick up a copy on the Internet Archive.
Pre-Show!
We're going to try something new this week by including a pre-show, like how you might watch trailers, cartoons or newsreels before a movie! We'll post the preshow material here and you can watch it any time… or show up half an hour early and we'll do a group watch in the Discord chat!
During the actual 1942 Battle of Midway, acclaimed director John Ford was present and filmed footage of the action which he turned into an 18-minute propaganda film titled The Battle of Midway. Both the Wing Commander movie's production notes and the more recent book XBox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood claim that The Battle of Midway was influential to the film. Here's the complete film, which is in the public domain:
Inspired by the heroism of the torpedo pilots who gave their lives in the initial strike, Ford also cut an eight minute film about Torpedo Squadron 8 which shows the pilots and crews in the days before the battle. Given the connection to Action Stations, it's also worth a watch!
Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?
Midway is currently available for rental or sale digitally at all storefronts. Please note that that you want the 1976 film and not the 2019 version of the story. A copy is also available for download from Archive.org. If you're interested in tracking down a physical copy, a BluRay version was released in 2013 and remains in print today. If you are unable to track down a copy please ping a member of the WCCIC staff on the Discord in advance of the watch.
There is a significantly extended TV cut of Midway available which we won't be covering. If you're interested, though, copies are available on the Internet Archive either with or without commercials!
How do we watch the movie together?
It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!
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