Again, ten years ago this summer I posted http://mcsmith.blogs.com/general/2006/07/midway_collecto.html about the collectors edition DVD of the 1976 movie. I picked up the Blu-ray version a few months ago, and finally got around to watching it this weekend with Grayson and Parker. I really enjoyed it this time – I didn't notice the better image quality initially, but as the movie went on, I realized that I was seeing a lot of details and things in the background that I had never noticed before.
The older I get the more I appreciate the movie because it tells the story as accurately as it can, and although it is technically inaccurate in terms of the hardware, candidly, that is really secondary to the story. The better image quality did make one thing a lot clearer, which is that almost everything that the characters say, and this is especially true for Nimitz, Halsey and Spruance, is something that the real historical figures would never have actually said, but it is necessary exposition for the story. For the first time, it comes across almost like a stage play. Again, I am starting to appreciate that a little better the older I get.
But, again, the thing that the Blu-ray release really does is bring out a lot of the detail in the background – from crowd scenes, to flight deck scenes, to panoramic shots of ships in action, and even to the historical footage. For some reason, I just never really noticed all the detail before