Luke Evans Will Go to War in Roland Emmerich’s ‘Midway’

Another good actor is cast in a potentially mediocre movie.

Roland Emmerich’s upcoming war epic drags us further into the fray with a new casting announcement, proving that the director is sticking with a formula that has made his most successful movies worth watching. As Luke Evans joins Woody Harrelson and Mandy Moore in Emmerich’s super expensive Midway, this latest onscreen take on the Pacific arena of World War II is intent on throwing some talented actors into outrageous and noisy warring territory.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Evans, best known at the moment for his roles in tentpole movies like The Hobbit, Fast & Furious 6, and Disney’s live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, has joined Midway in the pivotal role of a war hero. He will be filling the shoes of Commander Wade McClusky, who was a United States Navy aviator who was later awarded the Navy Cross for his efforts in the eponymous battle.

Story-wise, we can likely expect Midway to be about as traditional as any war movie gets. The film will chronicle a game-changing victory for the Allied forces in WWII — the first naval victory against the Japanese that horrendously impaired the Imperial Army’s fleet capabilities during the rest of the war.

With the addition of Evans to the Midway line-up, the film keeps building up a strong ensemble of actors, and this is, in itself, a fine thing. Harrelson, Moore, and Evans have so far been able to hold their own abundantly well as featured characters in all their other projects. When you’re as charismatic as they are, there’s nothing you can’t do with a good script.

However, we also know Emmerich, or at least the Bayhem-esque style he tends to adopt. His bombastic but narratively basic filmmaking engenders a good amount of skepticism about Midway — even if it is an explosive war movie. Furthermore, our worries are compounded by the fact that Emmerich has often utilized the talents of casts that deserve so much better than the thinly scripted characters who inhabit even his most distinctive movies.

This isn’t much of a problem in a hypothetical disaster movie or a fictionalized political action thriller — stories where extreme artistic license can easily be taken in the name of having a hoot of a time. In contrast, Midway sports a real-life narrative. Unfortunately, its wartime scenario could easily devolve into broad statements of American exceptionalism, and considering the film’s $100 million budget, I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine the spectacle of Midway‘s biggest set pieces. I wonder if they’ll go full Independence Day with the destructive carnage, too.

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