Finished Episode 3 “Regenburg Schweinfurt” and I’m speechless. The scene with all the pieces of 17s shot down falling like rain is surreal but matches what I read in my WWII books… daunting. So far it’s very very good.
EDIT: Don’t get me wrong, it’s still clearly Hollywood, but… damn.
I’m with you on this and I thought Masters of the Air was just OK. I don’t know if it was because they tried to pack too much in, but it felt rushed and a bit all over the place. Plus I never really warmed to Austin Butler… However he was quite good in that Biker movie?
Between BoB and the Pacific it is a coin toss for me. BoB was undoubtedly a better series, but the Pacific resonated a lot more, primarily due to the Theatre of Ops and where I live.
I hated Masters of the Air. Simply loathed nearly every moment of it. But my far-bigger-ww2-geek friend (who forced us to synchronize our viewing across 8 time zones) loved it. So I guess I should defer to the knowledgeable. The other friend in our sync-viewing party was watching from Belgium. There’s a scene where a yank parachutes into Flanders. The farmgirl who sees him land starts excitedly speaking in French. That brought him to my level of hate. Just goes to show, you can’t please 'em all.
I just watched the original Jurassic Park with my 19yo daughter. I loved the book and was gobsmacked by the film when it came out in '93. Oddly though, I haven’t seen nor read it since. So, although I hoped it would hold up, I did not expect it to. That was maybe the most enjoyable shared movie experiences that I have ever had with her.
Interesting concept. Why so? Were you chatting online at the same time?
One of the best bits of TV I’ve ever watched. Plus humvees.
That is awesome. I always re-watch movies that I loved, especially when I have said “you have to see this”, with a sense of trepidation. Too many have not aged well.
It had its flaws but do you think you hated it because of a degree of ‘subject matter expertise’? i.e. You are an actual aviator and (even for me) a lot of the ‘pilot stuff’ was cringe-worthy?
I couldn’t get into Generation Kill for that reason.
Probably the only contemporary TV series like that I have actually enjoyed revolved around a group of British EOD ‘squaddies’ in Afghanistan. Maybe because it mainly focused around what when on in camp and the black humour that ensued.
Thats really interesting! I have spoken to a few people who were “there” and they all said it captured it all fairly well. I’ve never served so i wouldnt know, so would be interesting to know your views on it.
One of the absolute best war films I’ve ever seen was “kajaki” on @Scoop recommendation. I absolutely bawled my eyes out watching that film. Unashamedly so.
Only watched a couple of episodes, but from what I did see I thought it was a very sanitised (or dramatised?) version of events. Although there is at least one character that makes me think ‘I know that guy’ and I guess it summed up the futility, chaos and absurdity of the situation, IMHO it was a lot shittier than that.
Phew! that was a lot of thoughts to finally get those couple of sentences out 
And to add a bit of context. I deployed as part of Op Falconer in 2003
We were on Discord. The one friend had read the book and had been anticipating the series for a year at least. He’s younger. Years prior, me and the other friend turned him onto Band of Brothers and The Pacific. So the synchronized viewing seemed like a good idea. It was dumb and impractical and lasted maybe three episodes.
Why didn’t I like it? It didn’t look or feel at all real and the characters didn’t behave in ways that I thought were genuine. I don’t know the military but I do know me and my friends when we were in our twenties. And I know what France looks like from 30,000. The film just seemed over the top. Too much was happening, too close and too fast—with a myriad of technical mistakes that left me embarrassed for its creators. One scene had a burning B-17 trying to return to base. As it flew overhead the trail of smoke was blown by the wind in a line angled away from the longitudinal axis of the plane. 99% of people, including pilots, see that, note the inaccuracy and move on. But I am a bit of an ###. I facepalmed and couldn’t drop it. Every 12 seconds of watching the series was like that for me.
Those friends sync-viewing were also civilian pilots. They too saw the mistakes and moved on. (Well the Flemish girls speaking French did almost end watching for the Belgian.) But he got over it and enjoyed the show over all. So it’s just me!
Replying to @GaiusBaltar below (we posted simultaneously. Then don’t have the girl speak or hire a Dutch actor and have her speak Flemish-ly.
Like I said, I was a much too critical audience because I feel the show to be a missed opportunity to make the air real real like BoB did for war a the ground level. @komemiute should enjoy it as my friends did: an entertaining and somewhat accurate portrayal of an amazing true story.
Concerning the farm girl, my guess is that the casting director couldn’t find any suitable actors who spoke Flemish/Vlaams so they went with French.
I get where you’re coming from smokinhole and it reminded me of what happened when I watched “Napoleon” from Ridley Scott. I definitely had “eye rolling” moments with the historical inaccuracies like Napoleon being present at Marie Antoinette’s execution and the totally fictional meeting between Napoleon and Wellington on a Royal Navy ship after his defeat at Waterloo.
Finished Episode 5.
Sombre, dramatic, powerfully painful.
Big fan of this one - I scooped it up in early access a couple of years ago, and I’m eagerly looking forward to when my son is ready to play it with me- he has a huge curiosity about all things space -related.
I feel that’s the big thing that makes or breaks these dramatizations. I’m no SME in aviation or B-17s, but I do know my history and immediately Google anything I sense is sus, and MoTA had so much sus crap from twisting history I came to hate it. There was also some basic narrative issues that persisted throughout the series.
The more I learned about Ambrose’s fraudulent research and the old-boys-club nature of Band of Brothers the more I started to dislike that series too, but not as much as MoTA. BoB gets some things wrong but I feel it’s not as egregious as MoTA. The Pacific I absolutely hated on my first watch because of the disjointed story, but by my third watch and the “Reel History” interviews with Sledge’s son I started to appreciate it much more.
I thought that The Pacific was probably the most authentic series of the 3. It stuck pretty closely to Sledges’ book narrative and depicted the true horror of war, especially Okinawa, more than the others.
BTW, there is a fastening Eugene Sledge on YouTube. He spoke almost as well as he wrote.
BoB definitely had its defining iconic moments, like the Normandy drop, the Brecourt Manor assault, and Bastogne. But other incidents, like the Pvt Blithe falsification were puzzling. You can say what you will of Dick Winters, who reminds me a lot of Don Blakeslee. Those two men were exceptionally good at inspiring and leading men who were in the business of killing the enemy. They found their calling.
MoTA did feel rushed. The book is lengthy and often reads like a documentary. It seemed like the series took a long time to bring to market and I can imagine that it was a mess for the editors. Sure, I wish that the story had been better crafted. But I’m glad that it made it to screen. Most, if not all, of those veterans have left us, and I’m not sure that those airman got their due. Their bravery is right up there with the victors at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima, IMHO.
One of my favorite books is Undaunted Courage. It pains me to think of it as fiction, knowing what the expedition accomplished. I’d almost rather not know, although that would be irresponsible.
Knowing the odds but doing it anyway is the epitome of bravery IMHO.
Every single airman, particularly bomber crew and regardless of nationality, who climbed into an aircraft for a mission knew that their chances of survival were slim. But they did it anyway.
That is why I can probably forgive MoTA for all it’s flaws.
Episode 6… By the end some of the protagonists meet in the Stalag Luft 3.
This episode was stunning and at the cost of sounding like I’m messing with y’all, I can’t stop loving this.
Deep, empathic, humane, powerful.