Movie With Two Main Characters example essay topic

Pearl Harbor, 15 minute battle, 3 hour movie December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was and will always be a date that will live in infamy. But May 25, 2001, the opening of the movie "Pearl Harbor" is a date that was or at least should be soon forgotten. The noisy, expensive, and entirely to drawn out movie was hyped up for months in advance, only to leave viewers with a confused view of the battle and numb backside. To put it bluntly, the movie was a definite letdown. The movie started out looking like it was going to be very good.

The plot of the attack is a great story, and the writer started out the movie with two main characters, Rafe Mccauley and Danny Walker, played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett. Two great actors. They play two childhood friends who grow up to be flashy pilots in the army, and later fall in love with the same nurse Evelyn Johnson, played by Kate Beckinsale. Now this would have been plenty enough characters to develop a good story line. But when the writers added on three separate love stories, and countless other characters to give stories to, they ended up only giving a glimpse of each character's story. They also gave stories to the entire company with Rafe, Danny, and Evelyn as well.

After that they brought in Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays Do rie Miller, a cook aboard the U.S.S. Arizona Not to mention that later on they also bring in Alec Baldwin, a renegade Major who leads the bombers into a seemingly suicidal raid of Japan, and John Voit, as President F.D.R. After all of these stories were put into the same movie, it not only made the movie far to long, but they did not have enough time to really explore each character. Which is amazing considering the movie lasted over three hours. They should have just stuck with the stories of the main three characters and just left it at that. Viewers would have left less confused and in a lot less time. Another aspect of the movie that was not done well was the characters that they chose to support the three main characters.

Not only were there far to many of them, but they also were all very stereotypical. Rafe and Danny were in a company of your typical war movie characters: the stutterer, the would-be Lothario, the dumb guy and so on. And Evelyn was in a unit of nurses who had the same typical roles: the fat one, the boy-crazy blonde, the shy girl with glasses and so on. These roles seemed to take away from the moving and important portrayal of the war.

Later they brought in Cuba Gooding Jr., the cook whose valor during the attack made him the first African-American to receive the Navy Cross. His character's story is broken down to about six short scenes: he wins a boxing match, discusses manhood with Evelyn, receives a compliment from his commanding officer, cradles the injured officer in his arms and shoots down a plane. Putting his character into the movie simply made him look like the token African-American, and degraded Cuba as an actor. These extras could have easily done their role without having to get into their story, or in the case of Cuba Gooding Jr., not used a big name actor to do an unnecessary cameo. The one good thing about the movie and apparently where all of the 135 million dollar budget went, was the extravagant fighting scene.

After an hour of excessive romanticism the viewers were relieved to have the break of the actual war scene. The detail on the ships and planes was excellent, and the graphics of the bombs dropping and all but destroying the unprepared U.S. forces were great. I think people were actually happy to see all the death and destruction as apposed to the completely drawn-out love scenes. Which only took away from the most important part of this war movie, the war.

All in all, the movie was a flop. Even though it destroyed at the box office. It was way to long, with a jumpy plot, and cheesy love stories. The only good part of the over three hour long movie was the fifteen minute long fight scene. They could have taken out the unnecessary stories of all the side characters and cut the movie time down by about on hour. We would have gotten to see the important attack and the love story without the other needless stories confusing the real plot..