Editing Pearl Harbor (film) (section)

===Critical response===
On [[Rotten Tomatoes]], ''Pearl Harbor'' holds an approval rating of 24% based on 194 reviews, with an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "''Pearl Harbor'' tries to be the ''[[Titanic (1997 film)|Titanic]]'' of war movies, but it's just a tedious romance filled with laughably bad dialogue. The 40-minute action sequence is spectacular though."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1108389-pearl_harbor/|title=Pearl Harbor (2001)|website=[[Rotten Tomatoes]]|access-date=September 17, 2020}}</ref> On [[Metacritic]], the film has a score of 44 out of 100 based on 35 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".<ref>[https://www.metacritic.com/movie/pearl-harbor "Pearl Harbor Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More at Metacritic"] [[Metacritic]]. Retrieved: March 23, 2012.</ref> Audiences surveyed by [[CinemaScore]] gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Singer |first1=Matt |title=25 Movies With Completely Baffling CinemaScores |url=https://screencrush.com/movies-with-crazy-cinemascores/ |website=ScreenCrush |date=August 13, 2015 }}</ref>

''[[Chicago Sun-Times]]'' critic [[Roger Ebert]] gave the film one and a half stars, writing: "''Pearl Harbor'' is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialogue, it will not be because you admire them." Ebert also criticized the liberties the film took with historical facts: "There is no sense of history, strategy or context; according to this movie, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because America cut off its oil supply, and they were down to an 18-month reserve. Would going to war restore the fuel sources? Did they perhaps also have imperialist designs? Movie doesn't say."<ref name="Ebert">[[Roger Ebert|Ebert, Roger]]. [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pearl-harbor-2001 "'Pearl Harbor'."] ''[[Chicago Sun-Times]]'', May 25, 2001. Retrieved: June 25, 2009.</ref> In his later "Great Movies" essay on ''[[Lawrence of Arabia (film)|Lawrence of Arabia]]'', Ebert likewise wrote, "What you realize watching ''Lawrence of Arabia'' is that the word 'epic' refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. [[Werner Herzog]]'s ''[[Aguirre, the Wrath of God]]'' didn't cost as much as the catering in ''Pearl Harbor'', but it is an epic, and ''Pearl Harbor'' is not."<ref>Ebert, Roger. [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-lawrence-of-arabia-1962 "'Lawrence of Arabia'."] ''[[Chicago Sun-Times]]'', September 2, 2001. Retrieved: November 10, 2020.</ref> Ed Gonzalez of ''[[Slant Magazine]]'' gave the film one out of four stars and wrote, "Middlingly racist, humorless, and downright inept, ''Pearl Harbor'' is solely for fans of [[fireworks]] factories."<ref name="slantmagazinerev">{{cite web |last1=Gonzalez |first1=Ed |title=Review: Pearl Harbor - Slant Magazine |url=https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/pearl-harbor/ |website=Slant Magazine.com |date=May 23, 2001 |publisher=Ed Gonzalez |accessdate=October 26, 2024}}</ref>

[[A. O. Scott]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'' wrote, "Nearly every line of the script drops from the actors' mouths with the leaden clank of exposition, timed with bad sitcom beats."<ref name="Scott">Scott, A.O. [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/25/arts/25PEAR.html "Pearl Harbor: War Is Hell, but Very Pretty."] ''[[The New York Times]]'', May 25, 2001. Retrieved: June 25, 2009.</ref> Mike Clark of ''[[USA Today]]'' gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "Ships, planes and water combust and collide in ''Pearl Harbor'', but nothing else does in one of the wimpiest wartime romances ever filmed."<ref name="Clark">{{cite news |date=June 7, 2001 | last=Clark |first=Mike |newspaper=[[USA Today]] |url=https://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/pearl-harbor/2001-05-25-pearl-harbor-review.htm |title='Pearl Harbor' sputters — until Japanese show up. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060916045846/https://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/pearl-harbor/2001-05-25-pearl-harbor-review.htm |archive-date=2006-09-16 |access-date=2023-11-30 }}</ref>

In his review for ''[[The Washington Post]]'', [[Desson Howe]] wrote, "although this [[The Walt Disney Studios (division)|Walt Disney movie]] is based, inspired and even partially informed by a real event referred to as Pearl Harbor, the movie is actually based on the movies ''[[Top Gun]]'', ''[[Titanic (1997 film)|Titanic]]'' and ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]''. Don't get confused."<ref name="Howe">Howe, Desson. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/entertainment/movies/reviews/pearlharborhowe.htm "''Pearl Harbor'': Bombs Away."] ''[[Washington Post]]'', May 26, 2001. Retrieved: June 29, 2009.</ref> [[Peter Travers]] of ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' magazine wrote, "Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale – a British actress without a single worthy line to wrap her credible American accent around – are attractive actors, but they can't animate this moldy romantic triangle."<ref name="Travers">{{cite magazine |date=May 25, 2001 |last=Travers |first=Peter |author1-link=Peter Travers |title=Pearl Harbor |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/pearl-harbor-109641/ |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070817081055/http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/5948445/review/5948446/pearl_harbor |archive-date=August 17, 2007 |url-status=live |access-date=2023-11-30 }}</ref> ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine's [[Richard Schickel]] criticized the love triangle: "It requires a lot of patience for an audience to sit through the dithering. They're nice kids and all that, but they don't exactly claw madly at one another. It's as if they know that someday they're going to be part of "the Greatest Generation" and don't want to offend [[Tom Brokaw]]. Besides, megahistory and personal history never integrate here."<ref name="Schickel">Schickel, Richard. [https://web.archive.org/web/20010610124039/http://www.time.com/time/sampler/article/0,8599,128046,00.html "Mission: Inconsequential."] ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', May 25, 2001. Retrieved: June 25, 2009. {{Dead link|date=March 2021}}</ref> Robert W. Butler of ''[[The Kansas City Star]]'' wrote, "The dialogue is so unrelentingly banal as to make one reconsider whether [[James Cameron]]'s writing on ''Titanic'' was really all that bad."<ref>{{cite news |last=Butler |first=Robert W. |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kansas-city-star-and-on-this-day-a/157872584/ |title=And on this day, a bomb dropped |date=May 25, 2001 |access-date=October 26, 2024 |page=104 |publisher=[[The Kansas City Star]] |via=[[Newspapers.com]] }}</ref>

''[[Entertainment Weekly]]'' was more positive, giving the film a "B−" rating, and [[Owen Gleiberman]] praised the Pearl Harbor attack sequence: "Bay's staging is spectacular but also honorable in its scary, hurtling exactitude. ... There are startling point-of-view shots of torpedoes dropping into the water and speeding toward their targets, and though Bay visualizes it all with a minimum of graphic carnage, he invites us to register the terror of the men standing helplessly on deck, the horrifying split-second deliverance as bodies go flying and explosions reduce entire battleships to liquid walls of collapsing metal."<ref name="Gleiberman">{{cite magazine | last=Gleiberman |first=Owen |url=https://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,256349,00.html |title='Jarhead' |magazine=[[Entertainment Weekly]] |date=June 1, 2001 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131211101901/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,256349,00.html |archive-date=December 11, 2013 |url-status=dead |access-date=2023-11-30 }}</ref>

In his review for ''[[The New York Observer]]'', [[Andrew Sarris]] wrote, "here is the ironic twist in my acceptance of ''Pearl Harbor'' – the parts I liked most are the parts before and after the digital destruction of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese carrier planes" and felt that "''Pearl Harbor'' is not so much about [[World War II]] as it is about movies about World War II. And what's wrong with that?"<ref>{{cite news |last=Sarris |first=Andrew |url=http://observer.com/2001/06/shrek-and-dreck-well-not-quite/ |title=''Shrek'' and Dreck? Well, Not Quite |newspaper=[[The New York Observer]] |date=June 10, 2001 |access-date=June 25, 2009}}</ref>

Critics in Japan received the film more positively than in most countries with one likening it to ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind]]'' set during World War II and another describing it as more realistic than ''[[Tora! Tora! Tora!]]''<ref name="japan"/>

In 2023, ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' cited Bay's direction of ''Pearl Harbor'' as one of the fifty worst decisions in film history. Andy Greene described it as a less successful attempt to replicate the success of ''Titanic'' and Bay's previous film, ''[[Armageddon (1998 film)|Armageddon]]''.<ref>{{cite magazine| date=September 25, 2023 |last=Greene |first=Andy |title=The 50 Worst Decisions in Movie History |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-lists/the-50-worst-decisions-in-movie-history-1234824872/michael-bay-decides-hes-the-man-to-tell-the-story-of-pearl-harbor-1234827243/ |accessdate=December 23, 2023 |quote=[[James Cameron]] had just obliterated all box office records by turning the [[Titanic]] disaster into a [[Leonardo DiCaprio]]-[[Kate Winslet]] romance. Bay himself just scored a huge hit taking the story of an asteroid nearly wiping out all life on Earth into a Ben Affleck-[[Liv Tyler]] love story, complete with [[I Don't Want to Miss a Thing|an Aerosmith ballad]] that hit Number One. Why not smash the two movies together, sprinkle a smattering of actual history from World War II, and watch money start raining down from the sky?}}</ref>