Yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day, and more somber than usual due to the mass shooting a few days ago. I always like to watch this movie around this time of year. A little depressing in recent years since virtually all of the aircraft shown in the movie, once state of the art, are now retired, except for the venerable Hawkeye.
I'm always amazed at how some people were confused by this movie. Knew another SF fan who for some reason thought Commander Owen assumed Tideman's identity in the past after he went back in time and the "real," different Tideman was in the limo at the beginning of the movie. Took some time to convince him that Tideman was nothing but a fiction Owen and Laurel came up with and didn't exist before 1941. All the foreshadowing was there right from the beginning of the movie. The reclusiveness. The trip to see Lasky - a low level employee he's never met face to face - off on what should have been just a routine job assignment but not showing his face. Delaying the Nimitz's departure two days until the time storm. Smart enough to be able to help design the Nimitz.
One unusual notion came to me this year. Owen is stuck in 1941. James Farentino was born in 1938, so assuming characters are usually not the exact ages of the actors playing them, let's say Owen was born in 1942, about four years later. It would be interesting if the "Tidemans" were Owen's parents. Even more of a complete time loop if you are your own father. Captain Yelland did say that Owen had no family whatsoever. This could fit right in. The Tidemans have a son and leave him at an orphanage because that's how Owen remembers his childhood. Owen grew up in foster homes, so he never had any real family.
As for the periodic calls from some fans for a remake, how about taking a page from the 1960 Twilight Zone episode "The Last Flight," where a WW I pilot found himself landing at a 1960 air base? The Enterprise (CVN-80) gets garbled radio chatter on unusual frequencies from a pilot lost in fog desperately trying to get a response from his carrier, the Enterprise, as he's low on fuel. They direct him in via radio and are surprised to see an F4F Wildcat landing on the deck, while the pilot finds he's not on the CV-6 he took off from. The different Enterprises confuse him and he eventually learns the truth about Pearl Harbor and WW II, maybe from a book (on a tablet or e-book reader) a crewman had brought to read. The argument becomes whether or not they can let him go back to his ship armed with that knowledge. He might even steal the tablet to show his superiors and escape with it, but by then the battery is dead and maybe the screen is shattered and nobody in 1941 has ever seen transistors, much less microelectronics, and they have no conception of lithium batteries, so they have no idea what that little slab is. It would be many decades before his son could reverse-engineer it and become an Musk or Jobs-like mogul. I'm sure it would be possible to shoehorn in a dogfight or two even in a story like that.
I'm always amazed at how some people were confused by this movie. Knew another SF fan who for some reason thought Commander Owen assumed Tideman's identity in the past after he went back in time and the "real," different Tideman was in the limo at the beginning of the movie. Took some time to convince him that Tideman was nothing but a fiction Owen and Laurel came up with and didn't exist before 1941. All the foreshadowing was there right from the beginning of the movie. The reclusiveness. The trip to see Lasky - a low level employee he's never met face to face - off on what should have been just a routine job assignment but not showing his face. Delaying the Nimitz's departure two days until the time storm. Smart enough to be able to help design the Nimitz.
One unusual notion came to me this year. Owen is stuck in 1941. James Farentino was born in 1938, so assuming characters are usually not the exact ages of the actors playing them, let's say Owen was born in 1942, about four years later. It would be interesting if the "Tidemans" were Owen's parents. Even more of a complete time loop if you are your own father. Captain Yelland did say that Owen had no family whatsoever. This could fit right in. The Tidemans have a son and leave him at an orphanage because that's how Owen remembers his childhood. Owen grew up in foster homes, so he never had any real family.
As for the periodic calls from some fans for a remake, how about taking a page from the 1960 Twilight Zone episode "The Last Flight," where a WW I pilot found himself landing at a 1960 air base? The Enterprise (CVN-80) gets garbled radio chatter on unusual frequencies from a pilot lost in fog desperately trying to get a response from his carrier, the Enterprise, as he's low on fuel. They direct him in via radio and are surprised to see an F4F Wildcat landing on the deck, while the pilot finds he's not on the CV-6 he took off from. The different Enterprises confuse him and he eventually learns the truth about Pearl Harbor and WW II, maybe from a book (on a tablet or e-book reader) a crewman had brought to read. The argument becomes whether or not they can let him go back to his ship armed with that knowledge. He might even steal the tablet to show his superiors and escape with it, but by then the battery is dead and maybe the screen is shattered and nobody in 1941 has ever seen transistors, much less microelectronics, and they have no conception of lithium batteries, so they have no idea what that little slab is. It would be many decades before his son could reverse-engineer it and become an Musk or Jobs-like mogul. I'm sure it would be possible to shoehorn in a dogfight or two even in a story like that.
