Disney and Pearl Harbor: Incredible Success or a Day That Will Live in Infamy?

On the one hand, the Telegraph (UK newspaper) is reporting that Critics torpedo £100m Pearl Harbor. On the other, Wall Street is looking for a smash, pushing Disney stock up over 5% in today’s trading. The Telegraph article isn’t making me any more eager to see the film, at 165 minutes long, with 100 of those spent leading up to the Japanese attacke, 40 minutes recreating the attack (in admittedly spectacular fashion), and then 25 minutes or so wrapping up the rest of World War II. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Updated 5/22: Online sources are reporting that Disney plans to trim part of the ending that might offend Japanese and German sensibilities for showings in those markets. A source said: “We’ve tried very hard not to portray the Japanese in a very bad light. They are a huge market and accounted for 20 per cent of profits for Titanic.” As usual, money talks. Japanese Americans are already protesting the film. Floyd Mori, president of the Japanese American Citizens League, America’s largest Asian American civil rights organization, said the film “could fuel hatred of Americans of Asian descent and he said Japanese groups around the United States have heightened security measures out of fear of a backlash.”