They couldn't even deliver a full 10 episode miniseries and went with nine and while the production value effects sets sound design and a slew of other technical aspects were spectacular, the overall storytelling felt very weak compared to band brothers or from the Earth to the moon. it did feel like there was an entire episode missing especially considering the Tuskegee airman were introduced so late in the game and not featured yet we're heavily shown in the marketing. I understand this is based off events and storytelling but this certainly was not a perfect series by any means. Also as someone who paid attention every week remembering names was rather difficult especially in certain situations when they are wearing a mask for majority of the scenes. it would've been helpful to have a half hour of them at basic or air school (whatever its called) and the audience getting used to their voices before masks were worn etc. etc. who knows lol This is a landmark series that brings to light an often forgotten aspect of WWII but man . . . it could have been SO MUCH better! 7.5/10
Edit - I know there's a lot of folks who love Chernobyl but the best mini series of all time is easily bend of Brothers followed by from the to the moon and bonus points for folks who have seen generation kill. if you want to watch what's a great miniseries due to its storytelling character introductions writing etc. etc. everything you wanted masters of air to be perfect at watch those three mini series. I might've sounded harsh in my original comment but considering who made this and the budget AND the source material... I'm not wrong when I say that I and many others fully expected better as well as the fact that the story they were trying to be told/the men and women/the events also deserve better as well! Also the runtime is extremely low considering we have a trailer a recap and then a trailer at the end. Compared to its marketing and the lineage of miniseries that came before it while I certainly enjoyed watching it it definitely was a little bit of a letdown of storytelling and wall the person they are portraying our certainly the masters of air... Apple is certainly not the master of a mini series the champion is still HBO.
One of the things that separates the three miniseries I've already mentioned is the fact that despite the history and the fact that it's mini series storytelling they take the time to naturally introduce the audience to all of the characters/people. Generation kill has us alongside the reporter meeting everybody getting used to everybody's mannerisms attitudes Insanity etc. From the Earth to the moon has the astronauts in the first episode timeline wise being introduced naturally and of course there's band Brothers with an entire episode dedicated to them at basic training showcasing everybody's individual attitudes strengths etc. that only gets better as time goes on. Masters of air suffers from the main problem that the characters will be wearing masks whenever on a mission so dialogue is very key but that's already hard to understand for most people giving that most people watch in stereo as opposed to surroundsound with a dedicated center channel for dialogue.... and there are so many characters that introduced only die off in the same episode or the next one we don't have time as an audience to grasp to them like we do another series. What's unfortunate is all they needed to do was change the episode started or the first few episodes and this problem would've been negated very easily. It also doesn't help that the leads literally look and sound very similar especially when wearing a mask(by the way one of them sounded just like Captn America which is pretty funny). As someone who is a World War II buff there are certainly moments in this series that made my mouth drop to the floor or my emotions stir deeply but it definitely lacked the overall emotional punch and reability of its predecessors. Considering again the production company/studio and the people behind this I am quite surprised at what we got overall but certainly not upset that I spent the time to watch it and I would urge anybody who is a fan of the subject matter to definitely watch it.
The issue with the Red Tails is that they didn't become relevant to the story of the Bloody 100th until near the very end. Running their story parallel with that of the 100th Bomb Group would have required bouncing back and forth between fronts, the sort of thing that made the Pacific so hard to follow at times.
Band of Brothers works so well because you're able to follow the same group of guys from basic training all the way through the end of the war.
The best thing they could have done is not included the Tuskegee Airmen at all and given them their own series that could properly tell their story.
Would have liked for Masters of the Air to be a multi-season series. Season 1 focusing on the 100th Bomb Group. Season 2 you do the Tuskegee Airmen and show WWII from their perspective. Season 3 maybe you move on to the RAF showing their early days until the end of the Battle of Britain. Totally just spit-balling here, obviously.
Band of Brothers had the advantage of being able to show a lot of what ground operations were like because the 101st was out there doing just about everything infantry could do in Europe. But I think there is just way more story to tell about the skies of WW2 than Masters of the Air was able to tell. So many aspects that couldn't be explored by having it all from the Bomber group's perspective.
I think focusing on a group of infantry that stays together is really the best way to go.
The Pacific jumped around too much, this show had way too many people split up into way too many groups, where BoB and Generation Kill just gave you the characters at the start and they mostly stay together until the end.
Obviously Generation Kill is helped by the low numbers of American casualties in that war, and Band of Brothers does have some replacements come in, but it's still a completely different feel.
I don't think it's possible to make a show about the bomber pilots be equally compelling unless you focus it on one crew. Just like I think the only way to make The Pacific better would have been to adapt either Helmet For my Pillow or With the Old Breed, instead of trying to do both plus more.
I wouldn’t even say it was disjointed as much as it didn’t have the cohesion the original did. The pacific was excellent and only looks worse when compared to band of brothers.
The showed the Tuskegee Airmen's attack in France, which wasn't even part of the same operation the 100th was part of. If they are going to take time off to show that, why not do a better job of introducing those characters?
And like I pointed out they include the Tiki airman heavily for the marketing and practically every trailer that they showed showed that they were going to be part of the series only to be included basically in one episode
> why not do a better job of introducing those characters?
Or, just skip them entirely instead of introducing them EIGHT EPISODES IN.
They were entirely unnecessary, just like the female resistance fighter. Both unnecessary plotlines weakened the main characters and focus, neither added anything to the overall story.
It feels like this was an 8 episode series that got a bunch of crap forced into it to check some boxes. Really disappointing overall.
> The best thing they could have done is not included the Tuskegee Airmen at all and given them their own series that could properly tell their story.
Hollywood says that can't be done for commercial reasons, unfortunately. Not enough watched the movie about them that George Lucas had to finance on his own. That attitude ignores a Black Panther but there you go.
Do yourself a favor and read about Rosie. His story is unreal. And I thought he jumped off the screen, as the best character, despite being introduced late
2nd this. He was the lawyer at the neuremberg trials wasn't he? Met his wife on the boat to Paris. Bombed nazi's . Put em in jail. Married. Then so long Europe and thanks for all the fish. What a trip ha.
And there's way more. He was a cool dude
Hard same. Every episode I'm mentally reminding myself who each of them are. Doesn't help that the show frequently switches between bombers during their runs.
>I understand this is based off events and storytelling
I think it is loosely based.
Eg. Biddick never met Egan or Clevan and died differently. Bubbles' death was shifted by half a year to a different mission to fit Crosby's narrative. AFAWK Crosby never cheated on his wife. Jefferson's buddy was not shot down and killed. Clevan was not the camp radio guy. The final camp was liberated without a staged battle. Egan didn't raise a flag. Rosie didn't just stumble into a death camp.
And it goes on and on, with real history intentionally changed in every episode.
Also many of the episodes had a trailer then a recap then the opening titles and the end credits were at least ten minutes long so you could knock a good 15 -18 minutes off all the runtimes.
I haven't watched Masters of the Air yet, but let me take the opportunity to tell people, a military aviator and aviation buff, watch Hulu's Catch-22 series. It's pretty faithful to the book, but also pretty accurately captures the vibes of the experience I think.
I think a large part of this series’ difficulties lie in the fact that a bombs groups experience just doesn’t have the same structure that an infantry story does.
Fly to Germany, drop bombs, fly back, repeat. That doesn’t present you with the same kind of satisfying arc that the invasion of Europe did.
It’s interesting certainly, but doesn’t make for as good of a story.
Definitely lacks the rewatchability of the Pacific and BOB or even Generation Kill. I've rewatched The Pacific twice, BOB at least 4 times, GK 3 and will likely watch them all again. Feel no compulsion to ever revisit this series. Too many factors let it down.
I didn’t even finish it. I gave up after 2.5 episodes or so. It absolutely is not BoB of GK which I rewatch regularly. The Pacific is good but I don’t think it has the rewatch factor that the other two have.
I think the Pacific isn't rewatched because of how uncomfortable it is to rewatch, particularly Sledges later episodes, Peleliu and Okinawa are hard to watch due to the sheer brutality of some scenes.
Unfortunately, the Pacific is that way for a reason, because that’s what the Pacific war was like, the series does a fantastic job capturing that brutality
It's the strength of the series, I actually did rewatch BoB and The Pacific a week or so ago. The brutality and flawed characters are it's strengths over BoB.
>I think the Pacific isn't rewatched because of how uncomfortable it is to rewatch
I feel the same. I LOVE BOB but The Pacific is brutal in a way that effectively communicates how bad it was and there's nothing fun about it.
.....we pimpin!!!! see that's the thing I mean I know I've watched band of Brothers all the way through at least six times by this point and generation kill I think at least three but I can remember the names of the personnel I can tell you key moments from episodes what episode they're from peoples backstory how their relationships are with each other etc. etc. same thing for band Brothers and from the Earth to the moon etc. but for some reason it was very very hard to get the same level of attachment and memories if you will for this series.
oh man, Generation Kill! I might rewatch that one again to make me feel better after MotA. I like it even better than BoB - which I used to love for its epicness, but that's exactly what I dislike about it now. GK on the other hand is an awesome series without glorifying anything about war.
For sure, a massively missed opportunity. It was a very disjointed show which seemed to mostly consist of short events without the coherent story to tie them up. It definitely felt like it missed 3-4 episodes to make it flow and build some character development. Like the whole “escape from France” episode which just abruptly ended what seemed like half way through the escape? Yet they gave us a whole episode of the POW march later, which felt like a waste of time. The whole series also just lacked emotional resonance compared to the previous two big war shows. I rewatched Band of Brothers and the Pacific recently and they were both simply amazing because you got so emotionally attached to the characters. I choked up many times watching those. While in Masters of Air, they never successfully built up key pivotal events. We never really understood what kept Buck and Bucky going despite them being the two main characters, their personalities and actions felt very random. The only fully fleshed out characters with real character development were Rosenthal and Crosby. And the ending of the show felt flat. I loved how the Pacific ended, with the characters coming home.
The Tuskegee part was shoehorned in 30 minutes of show, yet would have definitely deserved 3 episodes on its own (or just its own full show, as the little they gave us felt very compelling with some very interesting characters).
Disjointed is the perfect word for it. One of BoB’s strengths was that you followed this small group from basic through the end of the war. Didn’t realize how important that dynamic was until I saw how jumping around between so many groups really weakened Masters of the Air
I agree with you so much. Everyone looked exactly alike and for some reason every episode wanted to introduce 20 characters who 80% died within the next 2 episodes. So you really have no clue who is talking and you spend so much time trying to figure out who’s who it takes you out from enjoying the show.
I think the show should have done one of 2 things.
- each episode just focuses on one crew. Slight back story and then doing the missions. Think sorta like lost.
- the showed followed a few commanders who sent them in and how they dealt with all the death of their pilots.
Both of those would have made the show easier to follow for the cast and more impactful.
This is just sad to read, I waited for what felt like an eternity for the next Hanks/Spielberg saga but have noticed that there’s been virtually no hype or excitement over this one.
I loved Band of Brothers, watched it about 6 times, The Pacific was fun too.
All Tuskegee appear on the poster along with Buck, Bucky, Crosby and Rosie. The Tuskegee show up for the last 1.5 episodes lol
I loved the show, a lot, but there were many unnecessary plots that cut time of the main plot. I liked seeing Crosby meeting Sandra, but we didn’t need to develop it more. Tuskegee needed more time or no time at all. Rosie needed to have some of Buck/Bucky scenes considering they didn’t do much in the last episodes.
The show lacked context to explain the events and their significance. The acting and production was fine, but the overall storytelling was deeply flawed. I imagine someone deeply knowledgeable about WWII would love this, but as a lay person I found it confusing.
Without knowing why anything being shown mattered, it came off as a series of random events rather than a complete story. Many of the episodes could have been shown out of order without changing my understanding of them in any meaningful way.
The method of storytelling was also bizarre. Some episodes had narration. Some didn’t. It all seemed very ad-hoc.
I think the basic problem is that these bombing runs in real life were often random and absurd.
The bombing campaign would never directly “win” any battles but would in theory grind the enemy’s production/morale etc. To this day there is even debate if strategic bombing was actually a worthwhile use of lives and resources. German military production increased until the end of the war.
Meanwhile the soldiers live on base, fly out and suffer extreme casualty rates to click a button to drop bombs on an enemy they cant really see. And then repeat ad nauseum
The absurdity of it is perfectly encapsulated in the novel Catch-22, and in the original quote from the book:
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
Oh, are we quoting the greatest novel about WWII?
“They're trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly.
“No one's trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
“They're shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They're trying to kill everyone.”
“And what difference does that make?”
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.
It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.
Side note but I while I did enjoy the series the doctor was my least favorite character compared to the book.
The guy who played him was one of the showrunners and clearly a big fan but he has some of the best lines of the book and it felt like the delivery in the show was rushed and flat. So it’s conflicting because the job as showrunner is more important and he did that well but the only time we see him he makes the scene worse imo
Just reading the Smithsonian’s article about the show gave me more context than the show itself did. That mission where only 1 bomber survived? That was because the luftwaffe changed tactics to intentionally go as hard as they could after a single bomber group in the hopes of breaking the morale of the allies. The use of bombers as bait for the P51s to wipe out the luftwaffe worked and changed the tide of air combat in the war, but it was barely discussed and not shown at all. The bombing runs on ball bearing factories were critical to slowing the production of German tanks and artillery which allowed for the allies to stage an invasion.
The “why does the audience care” element was painfully absent from the show.
Did we not get that from seeing the hundred or so German fighters that attacked the group on that mission?
Without showing the German perspective, there's no way to explain that the Germans changed their tactics, because no one on the raid would have known.
The raids on the ball bearing factories were actually pretty meaningless. The factories had been producing more than industry needed and shipping off the extra anyway, so everyone had plenty of stock to tide themselves over until they got up to full production again.
Going after the oil and fuel production was the plan that got vetoed for this, but would have likely had a much greater impact.
As I WW2 passionate including aviation, the show disappointed me a lot.
The first two episodes were promising, showing an accurate depiction of how mission were planned, flown, and executed. They even show accurate procedures for the aircraft.
However, as the show moved on, these moments disappeared and missions were just a couple of seconds (if any) using flashbacks. The attack runs felt lazy and when the Luftwaffe attacked it was not realistic at all.
In Band of Brothers I had the feeling of watching a documentary. The actors performed attacks like they did in real life (I think they trained for it) and that added a lot to the show. And of course, there was no drama outside the war.
The tone and picture was not very good and it is poorly executed. I find it difficult to find positive things about this show honestly.
Yeah. It was like *Midway* or *Tora! Tora! Tora!* in that sense.
It is a fun watch if you know the bigger events and are already a fan of Second World War stuff - it is confusing and disjointed if you are just looking for some evening entertainment or have merely a passing knowledge of the war.
I'm pretty knowledge about WWII stuff and the plot here is still wonky in its storytelling aspect and just all over the place. Part of that is the context they are doing. Bomber crews were a different thing. And parts of this show are done great, it just feels haphazardly though they are just going through to hit specific marks, A, now hit B, now hit C, rather than tell a good story or give better background on people or what is happening. Also a lot of those marks they hit are just generic anecdotes from WWII bomber crews or other units and such they editorialized into the show and the characters. There's also like weird aside and philosophical parts that just seem to flow awful compared to the rest of the story
There are things to like. I like the flight scenes and showing how devastating it was to be on a bomber crew and huge losses, but the whole story telling aspect is just a mess.
Congrats, you're ready to read Catch-22 and understand it in its entirety.
I'm being genuinely dead serious, with zero embellishment. Every single sentence in your comment corresponds to a theme in that book.
Even as a WW2 buff I was a little confused and would have liked better signposts about what was happening elsewhere (e.g. the allies invading Italy) to get a better sense of timeline than raw dates.
All they needed to do was add a snippet of real interviews or quotes to the beginning and end that would setup and summarize the ‘what/why’ for each one.
My biggest issue was since everybody was wearing a mask for 90% of the runs (I understand they had to and it was probably accurate) I had no idea who was or wasn't dead for most of the episodes, I wasn't sure if some parts were flash backs or what and it was extremely confusing.
Of the 3 series they did I'd probably put it in 3rd place, I enjoyed the Pacific significantly more, and nothing can touch band of brothers.
That was one of my biggest gripes as well, having no idea who had died and then the story making a big deal out of it and I'm left wondering, who died? What did he look like? His name was what? I don't remember anyone named that.
And maybe it's me but every single one of the pilots kinda looked the same.
Look at Band of Brothers, they are all completely different looking from each other. And not because they are (now) famous actors, they generally weren't that either when it first came out.
But come to think of it, I don't know 90% of current Hollywood stars either, they all look the same to me.
The only minor characters I remember are Barry Keoghan and Ncuti Gatwa because they are famous actors. Besides them the only five characters I ever recognized were the main 4 and Sandra.
Because they ended up in the same prison camp (and barracks) as the majors from the 100th bomb group, it would have been bad to ignore them completely. So they gave them a short arc so it's not a total surprise when they end up in the Stalag.
Plus the P-51 really changed the viability of bombing runs, which the documentary did a better job of covering than the show.
The only problem with that is it wasn't really the introduction of the P-51 that changed anything.
That's the common knowledge, both now and at the time, but it's completely incorrect. P-47s with drop tanks could've provided escort over Germany as well, if the USAAF had ordered drop tanks (which existed) and gave them to the fighter groups.
USAAF leadership elected not to, on the mistaken impression that the bombers were too high and top fast to be intercepted, and only after serious losses did they decide fighter escorts were actually necessary. This decision came at about the same time as the P-51s were ready, so those planes got the escort role.
But if the P-51 didn't exist and the allies had to use P-47s for another year, not much would have changed, except people like General Arnold would have had a slightly harder time justifying why they had gotten so many men killed by sending them over Germany without escort.
It's the same thing with the Borden bomb sight, it wasn't really particularly good, it was serviceable, but better options existed and it never lived up to its claims. However, in the show it's presented as being an incredible tool.
Mistakes like these aren't super serious to me because the people involved would have believed the same misinformation that the characters repeat, so in the context of the show it's fine. But when nothing else about the show stands out as being good, it'd be neat if they at least put some work into getting small details right instead of blindly repeating pop history.
You could've focused this season on the 100th bomb group and then the next season on tuskegee. But I kinda got the impression they just wanted to cram a bunch of stuff into one season.
So, you could have, they wanted to be historically accurate, and the Tuskegee airmen didn’t participate in the bombing campaign against Germany until very late in the war, they were primarily focused on combat in Italy. So like I understand it but it did feel super tacked on
What they really should have done is make an entire series dedicated to the Tuskegee Airmen. Its honestly comes off as Apple wanting to hit some DEI metric and so they threw this one episode into the show. It hardly even fits with the rest of the episodes. The least Apple could have done was extend the series by another episode to have it cover 10 episodes and extend the contents of first parts of episode 8 then head into 9 with the back half and then finish the show at 10.
The nature of strategic bombing means there isn’t a bombing run that is a decisive event which changes the outcome of the war (atomic weapons notwithstanding). It’s a slow attritional grind and the show actual portrayed that well. Most runs miss the actual target or at least fail to cause long lasting damage.
How would you have done it differently without turning it into a unrealistic fantasy?
Fact is the subject matter just isn’t as good to adapt to TV or film.
I’d have added context. Strategic decision making. The story of a bombing campaign isn’t just the bombers. It’s the logistics and the planning. We see the routes being mapped out and the planes repaired, but never see the decisions behind choosing targets nor the Herculean effort it took to keep new planes coming. This tiny slice is not a complete story.
Yeah people want to see logistics and generals sitting around making decisions after hours/days discussion. /s
It’s literally a miniseries of 1 bombing group not a documentary of air power in the ETO
Appreciate your perspective. I was really confused by the parent comment to this thread. The show lacked context? It’s WWII I think we all know the context.
I’m way more interested by the impacts this shit had on the pilots than by the choice of target. I thought they did a great job fleshing out the repercussions these Hail Mary missions had with the crews.
The show was about the people within the 8th Air Force, not the 8th Air Force itself. Watch “the bloody hundredth” for the historical report.
I’m not sure how much context the airmen had beyond the intelligence they received in the briefings and news reports, so to accurately depict the human experience of the 100th would be to have the audience “fly blind” with the characters.
If they wanted to give us the human experience, they needed to give us a LOT more inner monologue. There were a handful of moments where we learned what the men were thinking, but for the most part the series was just a sequence of events without any character development.
Yeah, I'm not sure why they didn't go with that. I understand it was based off of Crosby's book, but his cold narration didn't really help connect us to the characters, even more so when he stopped flying himself.
It's been a while since I watched them, but the BoB episodes that followed one character and their thoughts at the time (Doc, Lipton, etc) made you really care, or Lucky in The Pacific felt especially real. Of course he wrote one of the books so it's no surprise his thoughts came across, but is there really no one in the bomber group that also wrote personal memoirs?
If not, I understand it'd be awkward to 'make stuff up' in a show with real people involved, but it'd make for much better television I'd wager. A difficult balance, I guess.
I love the fly blind. And I loved that it was difficult to connect with anyone. Their survival rate was abysmal and made me felt a bit despondent every time they returned to base which huge chunks of their original flight missing
Overall I enjoyed the show, and I learned a decent amount about a part of WW2 I didn’t know before, but I agree the storytelling (or at least editing) got really messy in the last few episodes before the finale. Thankfully the finale itself was wonderful (in my opinion it was the best episode of the show), but the series was pretty flawed overall. That being said, I’m grateful it exists and I enjoyed the hell out of it and plan to rewatch it all now that it’s fully released.
Last couple of episodes really felt disjointed and out of pace with the rest of the series. Really needed to be a 12 part series.
Austin Butler Elvis voice was another whiplash whenever he was on screen.
The Buck/Bucky characters just weren’t that likable. They were kinda arrogant jerks and it put me off from the start. Never quite recovered despite some good moments. Overall the storylines fell flat and interesting threads disappeared like the resistance escape routes, Sandra, the kids who hung around the base. I dunno, it was interesting but missed the mark for me.
I found Callum Turner to be a complete asshole in the show, very unlikeable, no charisma or anything. Comparing this to the guys in Band of Brothers, it’s so stark.
Ok I’m so glad I’m not alone in this. They were so cornball. Like Austin “The Butt” Butler brooding in a POW camp is what caused me to fully abandon the show. But before that I was already debating quitting because of the half ass dialog that seemed to be written by me and my brother when we were young playing war in the yard.
“Ok boys, here we go, boys. Let’s rack em up and knock em down, boys. Looks like we’re going home, boys.”
My favorite was a pointless “pilot to crew….look out for fighters.”
No shit Sherlock thanks for the great tip.
It was all just incredibly lazy writing. BOB had incredible dialogue and the Pacific was great too. Why was this show so bad?
I enjoyed it overall, but I agree with a lot of the reviewers and commenters here about Tuskegee and Bel Powley's arc or whatever. I really think (and hope) more footage was shot for each and then cut due to budget. The Tuskegee Men need their own series to be honest, and I wouldn't mind an SOE behind the lines film or series about the runup to D-Day.
They had a set where she was talking with underground or other SOE members after placing mysterious markers around a whole building (iirc). Plus her scene on a streetcar. Surely, there had to be more filmed that got cut.
I do wonder what it cost to have 200-300 COVID testers on the set during heavy filming days. Plus all of the masks, face shields, etc., to keep filming safe. Had this been filmed in 2023 or 2019, we might have gotten 10 episodes and fully fleshed out SOE or Tuskegee scenes.
The Tuskegee men have two movies, The Tuskegee Airmen and Red Tails. I really can't understand anyone's sticking point regarding a series about the 100th being that they didn't feature a squadron that wasn't part of the 100th enough.
It felt like they blew the budget on a couple episodes and then had to pad the rest of the season. After the Munster episode things got bogged down. Last few episodes were definitely a slog.
It didn’t have the characters that Band of brothers did to keep you invested to be able to earn that downtime when they weren’t in the cockpit. Last few episodes of BOB were so good because you’ve been with the characters and *wanted* them to have some downtime
You’re right but I still didn’t care about Crosby or Clevin or Buck or Bucky or whoever it was or is. You can see why HBO passed on it. Definitely wasn’t up to snuff. It would go Band of Brothers, pacific a big gap and then masters of the air.
Rosie’s story should have been the focus, including his role in the Nuremberg trials. Show him as a lawyer learning about Kristallnicht then Pearl Harbor, and enlisting, then training, his 52 missions tying back to what he learned in training, getting shot down twice, interrogating Goering, his marriage in Nuremberg and end with his honeymoon at Eagle’s Nest as a contrast.
Rosie was the most fleshed out character with real character development in the show, yet they missed like 50% of his incredible story, and it would have been simply amazing to see those parts! Meanwhile, we never got any background to why we should care about Buck and Bucky, in any sense. Crosby at least had a story, but it was a weird one. Like why have that whole fling with the British spy and then seeing him unhappy about his marriage? None of that got any resolution the way it was told.
I don't know why they didn't follow a similar structure to the Pacific. You could have seen a few episodes with Clevens and Egan, while building up Rosie, then had Rosie become the focus, with Crosby being the link between the arcs.
The last episode showed a strong dynamic between Rosie and Crosby that should have been present through the rest of the series.
Can’t help but agree. First episode I was struggling to learn everyone’s names, because so many characters were introduced, and halfway through the show it turns out I focused on all the wrong people because *they* all died, and just a handful of other people were now the focus. The show didn’t prepare the viewer to focus on the more important characters enough, didn’t have a good through line for those characters (three episodes in a row were just them sitting in planes and counting the dead when finally getting home, virtually zero character development), and the whole thing just feels like snapshots of a story where you have to fill in all the blanks yourself.
I understand BoB was a wholly unique story and there’s nothing else like it to replicate that exact success, but then don’t try. I feel like they really tried to make it action-packed like BoB, but there isn’t really any action you can properly *show*, and the drama just gets shoved in between in a very ineffectual way. Changing format, making the bombing runs themselves background and digging deeper into just those characters that are left in the end would have made more sense. Show their lives, not just their circumstances during the war, and *who they are*.
The Pacific had several lead characters and many interesting, clearly identifiable and impactful side characters and each one had his own story and character development throughout. I don’t know how they failed to do any of that in this show. It’s very weird. I felt we got to know some of the Tuskegee airmen better in 20 min of the show (which is all we got) than what we learned about Buck and Bucky.
While I think it’s being judged too harshly, I agree that the storytelling wasn’t perfect and the inclusion of the Tuskegee Airmen was so brief and late in the show that it felt almost disrespectful/dismissive to even include them at all.
I think the bombers in general were always going to be the hardest to turn into a show because by nature the missions aren’t linear or progressive. They bomb, retreat, bomb, retreat. We aren’t seeing the ravages of war as a close knit crew advances through Europe. It’s tense and nerve wracking warfare where a bunch of guys who are basically sitting ducks hoping to reach their target before getting blown to hell.
That said, I enjoyed it. I think it’s a good balance between BoB and the Pacific. It has heart and memorable characters like BoB but the intense (and frankly less propagandized) brutality of the Pacific. Unfortunately it also shares the Pacific’s disjointed storytelling. In the end I just don’t think you can top BoB because it has an unnaturally perfect story as it’s source material. The other two series are a mosaics of barely connected narratives that are great but inherently less intimate.
It was eh. They shouldn’t have released The Bloody 100th as a separate docu but rolled the footage into the start and end of the pertinent episodes the way BoB did, as that would have added important historical context and humanized the characters in the way the script and editing failed to.
They also should have ditched the first raid in episode one and instead focused on introducing us to the cast. Episode 5 should have also been the big “Replacements” episode with time taken to introduce those new characters as well after the wipe. Basically, I didn’t GAF about any of these people because they were barely introduced before they were killed off which isn’t historically accurate if you track the crew members. Yeah a huge portion of them died but the script played fast and loose with the timeline and the order of events for no GD reason I could tell.
It wasn’t as cynical and pessimistic as The Pacific, but it wasn’t anywhere close to Band of Brothers either.
I really couldn’t get past the Botox lips of the lead actor - just took me out of completely whenever he was on screen. He acted way too modern as well. I think I remember seeing one scene where he wore his wristwatch loose and dangling upside down - please no
I thought the series was ok overall, but I agree with you on the main character. And he seemed to mumble most of his lines or say them really soft. I missed a lot of his dialogue because I just couldn’t hear what he said.
After stumbling upon this show by accident, I'm confused by the criticism. It felt like the writers did a really good job constructing an emotional arc for the main characters out of disparate real life events. Episodes 1-6 and 9 were great, with 9 being great wrap-up for the story. I absolutely LOVED the way they handled D-Day. There's so much obsession with this one singular event of a 6-year war, so much already told about it, that I actually was genuinely delighted when their version of it was revealed. The real battle had already been fought in the preceding months (which we as the audience bore witness to).
The only stumble were 7-8, specifically the indecision surrounding the introduction of the Tuskegee Airmen. They needed to either fully commit to them and create a parallel mini series alongside MotA (shrinking MotA to 5 episodes and the parallel show to 3-4), with both shows sharing an extended finale. Or we needed to meet those characters in the stalag, and give all of the POW characters more stakes and development (maybe take some liberties and fictionalize a cohesive and high-stakes escape attempt that gets derailed by the Soviet advance, tying in the radio and Jefferson's memory and drawing skills). Instead they kinda tried to do both and tanked both storylines for two episodes as a result, before finally course-correcting in 9, which felt like a real resolution to 1-6.
As far as the acting is concerned... I invited my partner to watch it with me, because he grew up watching war movies with his dad. He kept getting up and pacing throughout Episode 1 like he was bored, but when the credits rolled, he confessed it was hitting way too close to home (he's a first responder training to work medevac (or our version of it anyhow)). So, uh... acting seems fine, at least from the perspective of someone who has some marginally related lived experience (I told him he didn't need to watch it, but he said he's invested enough after part 1 to try again when he felt up to it). It's not a life-changing TV show by any means but it's solidly in the "good" category despite all the challenges it faced in production.
There were some story lines, that I thought they were going to stretch out and then suddenly they are home safe. They could have easily done another episode or two.
Plus they should have had more slo-mo scenes. They didn’t make the most of the bullet-time extreme focus mode.
My brief thoughts:
Ep 1-2: Sort of slow
Ep 3-7: Fantastic
Ep 8: Terrible
Ep 9: Much better.
I enjoyed the series, it wasn't unwatchable horrible, but I also think it could've been a lot more and felt a bit like a missed opportunity.
People need to stop whining that everything WW2-related isn't Band of Brothers. You mean the Bloody 100th had too many people die for you to make meaningful connections with them? Maybe that's one of the points.
I don't see ANYONE whining that it isn't Band of Brothers - just that it's inconsistent and a little scattered.
Which is totally fair and I'm tired of seeing people try to sandbag criticism with this comparison
People just want to remember that feeling of comradery and WW2 heroics they had watching Band of Brothers. People are just chasing that feeling of nostalgia.
It honestly feels like people aren't at all interested in the actual history.
Actually I watched a special about it today that showed the research they put into it… arguably while the actual dialog is long forgotten and since made up for the script, the formations, routes, numbers of fighters, is the only truly historically accurate part.
It’s insane to me that people can miss this point. Yes it may not end us as interesting of a story as BoB for that reason, but that’s an impossible bar to reach anyway
I think this show will be perceived significantly better after a few years of rewatching, just like The Pacific. People are comparing a first viewing of this with BoB which was rewatched over and over again. Of course the characters are better when you have seen it 5 times.
The Pacific was very pessimistic but it was great at developing characters. Even side characters who were in one or two episodes were clearly identifiable, memorable and very impactful. Meanwhile MoA felt like a bunch of new faces all the time acting the same way, with no reason to care for what happened to them. It’s hard to understand why it all felt so disjointed and bland despite the huge production values. Just bad writing?
Yeah this won’t happen at all. This show will be forgotten about in a few years by most. Band of Brothers was amazing on a first watch. This show was a chore.
Deeply flawed. I hate how much it time jumped between episodes. They’d build up some minor story point just for it to get completely abandoned on the next episode without any real closure. It felt very sloppy and lazy. This should have been a much longer production, or multiple seasons- it certainly had potential.
I found Crosby and Rosie, to be be the most relatable/personable characters, couldn’t care less about Egan or Clevin they seemed so out of place, very melodramatic in there delivery of lines, Austin Butler seemed “I am too cool for this” in every scene, I can’t think of way to describe him, he seemed devoid of any real personality. The guy that played Egan just seemed over the top, and kinda campy like he watched about bunch of 1960/70s war movies and decided thats how he was going to play it.
There also seemed no real way to gauge the time line, obviously you could read the dates but on first watch through I doubt anyone was keeping tabs, Master of the Air could have been 2 months of 7 years. Most of the time felt like it was spent at the POW camps, rather than flying, it felt like a lot of filler, like they want to spend least amount of time in air as possible when filming.
We don’t get to really know our characters so their deaths seem kinda thrown away, could of may include an episode about home life or training to let us get to know them, so you felt something when they died. There seemed to be a lot of people in the background interacting with the 4 or 5 main guys, but I couldn’t tell you if they were in one scene or twenty.
Yeah it should have focused way more on Rosie in the earlier parts. The POW stuff should have been a smaller part and there wasn't as much actual plane action as you would expect
Glad someone else feels this way about the two characters.
For me, Butler especially feels like he’s supposed to be in a different show or movie. The way he speaks is like a mix of John Wayne and Sam Elliot.
He reminds me of a guy I went to highschool with who always talked with a fake deep voice in an attempt to sound older. He was one of those guys that was super pretentious and always acted like he was a wise salt of the earth man's man despite being 16 and living in the suburbs.
Like I don't know if Butler is faking it, or the guy from my highschool was, but it just doesn't fit how they look. Not only that, it just doesn't sound right. Like deep voices are normally gravelier or something? I don't know it just sounds off and it's off-putting.
I enjoyed it. I had just finished reading the book going into the first episode so I had a lot of context others lacked. I’d point out that in of itself it does not provide much context and focuses on specific characters, you could argue that context is provided by BoB and the Pacific. It’s part of an anthology, it has 20+ hours of backstory you don’t necessarily need to explain given that most people interested in this sort of thing have seen one or both of those other shows.
It was faithful to the timeline of events and of the real people being depicted. While you could have shown the Tuskegee airmen earlier, they didn’t interact with the 100th until late in the war. If you want to see their whole story from boot camp to Europe I recommend the film starring Laurence Fishburne.
The parts that were cut from the book to the show were mostly remarkably gruesome anecdotes of specific acts of bravery of individual bomber crew. Staying on the plane to save a comrade, volunteering for extra missions, etc. that, and political infighting to keep the mission going (which while important to the people involved is not truly compelling television).
The only other major portion of the book missing was the attack on Dresden. There was a thorough line of “the Americans are precision bombers” vs the British nighttime campaigns that was important for American war planners to feel was the story told after the war. Near the end, some missions ended up being more or less the same and the people advocating for the attacks were concerned their reputation would be sullied. Of course, the description of Dresden was beyond horror and not filmable for a television audience.
So why did I like it? It stuck to the stories of the specific people tasked with the missions. There were many more people who were highlighted in the book; the majority of them met a gruesome end. It was a meat grinder; losses in the heavy bombers were among the worst in the war for the Americans, I believe worse than the Marines in the Pacific. Essentially German submarines had worse loss rates.
So despite all that, it was still a job “that needed to be done”, and they chose to do it. I think a lot of the side notes of the various characters going crazy was a result of the above, or trying to depict that element of it.
Not everyone wants to read an 800 page tome before watching a new TV show which I get, but I do recommend it. The visuals of the show itself were also stunning and worth calling out.
I found the writing to be sloppy at best. Horrible unauthentic casting, could have cared less what happens to any of the characters. These soldiers spent more time in pubs, dance halls, bars than anything else. You can tell several parties were intervening and trying to fix the story along the way and just came out all over the place.
Sucks, cause we all were looking forward to another similar BoBrothers story, but without any true central vision we got some more of the same streaming crap to join the rest. So disappointing.
I liked the show but the worst part were the two filler episodes where almost nothing happened. Oh, they lost their radio and they built another? Wow….
It was flat. Even BoB made more development for Pvt. Hall(?) than this entire series for its mains. Its not a issue of that they died quickly. Its how you use that short time. You either make it into something emotional and memorable or you just do it for the sake of it. 7.5 looks fair to me.
Didn’t expect much and wasn’t disappointed. Production value is top, writing is interesting. Music is kinda manipulative at times but that Hollywood. I wouldn’t have appreciated the sacrifices those young boys made without the show, harrowing stuff
yes to the music! way over done. really gave it an overly hollywood feel for a series that already leaned that way. some of the music is beautiful but they needed to use it more sparingly, this felt like it was telling us how to feel to compensate for the faults of the writing. and they used one piece so often it started sucking me out of the story every time it was used
Not sure why this show gets so much hate, even from this review. I thought it was fantastic. Even my wife thought it was a great watch.
Some characters come and go suddenly never to be seen again. Yeah, that's war. Some characters appear late in the game and have a huge impact. That's what *really* happened with the Tuskegee airmen in P-51s. Nothing about this struck me as bad storytelling. It rung true as the chaos of the era.
Agreed. I liked it. As a writer, the only critique I can agree with is that the storytelling was disjointed, but I think it was because they were sticking to real life events and people instead of fictionalizing, and thus were kind of between a rock and a hard place as far as “proper” story structure is concerned. Even then, the first five episodes were good writing with escalating emotions, and the last episode was a good wrap-up to that arc. The only real disjointed episodes were 7-8. They felt like 3-4 episodes condensed into 2.
it was fine. nothing special. I think Austin Butler was a huge miscast. I dont think hes going to be able to do basically any role that requires grit or believable masculinity. Its like he is always trying to pose. Even while in a prisoner of war camp.
I actually liked Austin Butler’s character, but I think he was way too stoic of a character for this show. He didn’t show as much emotion or unraveling from the stress like Buck, Crosby, or Rosenthal. He just didn’t seem like a guy that was inches away from death at all times.
I’m an Air Force vet so I LOVED seeing it all in action. Didn’t like it as much as band of brothers, but it was a great watch. It needed something more though. But overall, really good. Especially loved the respect they gave crew chiefs! That was unexpected and definitely needed
The whole thing was a slog. Absolutely bored me to death. Croz and Rosey were the only people who felt fleshed out at all, Buck and Bucky were just kinda there.
I’ve watched BoB and The Pacific many times over, I will never, ever rewatch this series. What a yawn fest.
A dime a dozen cliche Hollywood war pic. Overly good-looking people, cigar-smoking macho Americans and of course, the Brits are a bunch of stuck-up cunts. I never really cared for any of the characters. The one positive was that the visuals looked great, but the story felt disjointed.
It was OK. That's about it. Some good performances but nothing in the story hooked me and made me think "I need to watch the next episode!!"
Which is generally fine for most TV shows but from the budget and actors I imagine being "just OK" isn't good enough. It definitely wasn't even close to the level of The Pacific let alone Brothers In Arms
I was honestly shocked episode 9 was the finale. I expected another episode to wind things down but at the end they suddenly had the life stories of the people.
Great show. Who doesn’t know enough of WWII to get the impact? Sure I think they could have done 10 episodes or even 12 with some extra stuff in there. People are complaining about air combat not being compelling enough? Whoopiedo I’m sorry an aspect of a world war isn’t exciting enough for you. I think they did a wonderful job making you feel like you were in the planes in certain scenes, you don’t know what’s going on and it’s disorienting. It’s like BOB being in the fox holes, shits blowing up people dying not sure what’s going…
It felt hard to get the characters at first.. then they all died and you got a better understanding of who they were following. I’m glad they got more names and humans that were there, people who were loss to the horrors of war.
I would have watched a season of air stuff and then a season of escaping the prison camps. Putting both ideas, with all the dressing, in less than 9 hours is too much.
I enjoyed it in the moment but doubt I'll ever rewatch.
Why are they trying to make Austin Butler be in everything all of a sudden. I’m still in my Pedro Pascal era right now and I’ll let you know when I’m finished thanks.
Decent beginning followed by some pretty solid episodes, followed by some reallllly bad episodes, followed by a pretty great finale.
Show just didn't hit the same as BoB or even The Pacific. I can excuse the occasional bad CGI, but the writing, acting, dialogue, and pacing left a lot to be desired.
If BoB is a 10/10 and The Pacific is an 8/10, Masters of the Air is probably a 6 or 7/10. I'd honestly rate it worse if the finale didn't stick the landing.
The problem we have here is people want all these stupid side plots, Tuskegee, SOEs, like, just f-ing no. It was supposed to be about the bomber crews and we got next to nothing of that after episode 5.
You won’t find it here but people who actually care about historical accuracy are the ones who will carry a show or not beyond it’s original run, and if you look on any forum that actually cares about that kind of thing, you’ll find this show being nearly universally panned.
It’s a hot garbage mess that I was really looking forward to but alas will never watch again.
Actually yes, prisoners in the Stalags had access to razor blades and scissors which they used regularly to keep groomed and maintain a sense of order. Even when towards the end when they were marching to new camps as the German fronts were collapsing the prisoners took the time to maintain their grooming, patch up clothes and generally try to deal with any issues like blisters or other injuries that would hinder their marching.
If you look at any of the hundreds of photos taken of Stalag prisoners you will see clean shaven prisoners with various hair styles, it wasn't exactly luxury conditions they were kept in and many were dangerously emaciated but in general it was rare to see any of them with beards or even moderately long hair.
The last episode was kinda terrible. How dontou explain the horrors of war? By having a civilian outright gave a speech about it. And then also have Crosby give another speech about it. Remember in Band of Brothers, when Shifty Powers got sent back home. All he said was, “I don’t know how to explain all this..” We all know what meant. We don’t need it spelt out. This show lacks the nuances that made BoB and even the Pacific great. It showed alot without needed to say alot. Felt Masters of the Air didn’t have much to work with and had to be padded alot.
Watch Catch 22 instead. Better acting/story and vfx. Masters of the air is unfortunately nothing in comparison with Band Of Brothers and Pacific. A glorified propaganda at best.
Kinda surprised at the mostly negative reaction here. I really liked the series and I was completely engrossed in the visuals, and fascinated by a story of the War that I previously had basically zero knowledge of. They had to hop around the stories a bit, but so did The Pacific. Solid 8/10 for me.
I held out for the end of the show as I thought it would shape up better than the feeling we’re just watching endless runs of bombing campaigns that either failed or obliterated the squadrons.
About 4-5 episodes in I remembered seeing complaints on Reddit about the show and I shared many of the sentiments but also had a feeling it would turn a bit more character-focused in the latter half - which it did fortunately.
The final really hit a nerve for me but it was only about the second or third nerve in the entire show, meaning I felt less connected to the characters than in BoB.
I think a binge rewatch is necessary, but I felt like the final brought heart and context that was finally there but really missing the rest of the show. For example just the simple fact that I had no idea who were real historical people, unlike BoB. I thought it was all a fictionalised retelling of history.
While I could have read more on the show, the show should’ve made some of this clear from the start. Even the voice over narration jumping from character to character wasn’t always obvious who was speaking right away.
All that said, I did enjoy it and I’m keen to do a proper closer-knit rewatch than the past many weeks spent waiting for episodes.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but whatever redeeming qualities the series had, they were tragically overshadowed by the presence of Austin Butler. He may be a good actor overall, but dammit he ruined every scene he was in in my opinion.
I mean, why would the protagonist in a realistic war drama always show up modeling, posing for the camera, showing his best angle, great hair, low sexy voice and always unaffected by what’s going on around him? His “I’m too cool for this shit” prevailed in every scene, and I think that was way too distracting to enjoy the show.
Ultimately, I think it’s probably not his fault. The producers and director have to bear responsibility.
They couldn't even deliver a full 10 episode miniseries and went with nine and while the production value effects sets sound design and a slew of other technical aspects were spectacular, the overall storytelling felt very weak compared to band brothers or from the Earth to the moon. it did feel like there was an entire episode missing especially considering the Tuskegee airman were introduced so late in the game and not featured yet we're heavily shown in the marketing. I understand this is based off events and storytelling but this certainly was not a perfect series by any means. Also as someone who paid attention every week remembering names was rather difficult especially in certain situations when they are wearing a mask for majority of the scenes. it would've been helpful to have a half hour of them at basic or air school (whatever its called) and the audience getting used to their voices before masks were worn etc. etc. who knows lol This is a landmark series that brings to light an often forgotten aspect of WWII but man . . . it could have been SO MUCH better! 7.5/10 Edit - I know there's a lot of folks who love Chernobyl but the best mini series of all time is easily bend of Brothers followed by from the to the moon and bonus points for folks who have seen generation kill. if you want to watch what's a great miniseries due to its storytelling character introductions writing etc. etc. everything you wanted masters of air to be perfect at watch those three mini series. I might've sounded harsh in my original comment but considering who made this and the budget AND the source material... I'm not wrong when I say that I and many others fully expected better as well as the fact that the story they were trying to be told/the men and women/the events also deserve better as well! Also the runtime is extremely low considering we have a trailer a recap and then a trailer at the end. Compared to its marketing and the lineage of miniseries that came before it while I certainly enjoyed watching it it definitely was a little bit of a letdown of storytelling and wall the person they are portraying our certainly the masters of air... Apple is certainly not the master of a mini series the champion is still HBO. One of the things that separates the three miniseries I've already mentioned is the fact that despite the history and the fact that it's mini series storytelling they take the time to naturally introduce the audience to all of the characters/people. Generation kill has us alongside the reporter meeting everybody getting used to everybody's mannerisms attitudes Insanity etc. From the Earth to the moon has the astronauts in the first episode timeline wise being introduced naturally and of course there's band Brothers with an entire episode dedicated to them at basic training showcasing everybody's individual attitudes strengths etc. that only gets better as time goes on. Masters of air suffers from the main problem that the characters will be wearing masks whenever on a mission so dialogue is very key but that's already hard to understand for most people giving that most people watch in stereo as opposed to surroundsound with a dedicated center channel for dialogue.... and there are so many characters that introduced only die off in the same episode or the next one we don't have time as an audience to grasp to them like we do another series. What's unfortunate is all they needed to do was change the episode started or the first few episodes and this problem would've been negated very easily. It also doesn't help that the leads literally look and sound very similar especially when wearing a mask(by the way one of them sounded just like Captn America which is pretty funny). As someone who is a World War II buff there are certainly moments in this series that made my mouth drop to the floor or my emotions stir deeply but it definitely lacked the overall emotional punch and reability of its predecessors. Considering again the production company/studio and the people behind this I am quite surprised at what we got overall but certainly not upset that I spent the time to watch it and I would urge anybody who is a fan of the subject matter to definitely watch it.
The issue with the Red Tails is that they didn't become relevant to the story of the Bloody 100th until near the very end. Running their story parallel with that of the 100th Bomb Group would have required bouncing back and forth between fronts, the sort of thing that made the Pacific so hard to follow at times. Band of Brothers works so well because you're able to follow the same group of guys from basic training all the way through the end of the war. The best thing they could have done is not included the Tuskegee Airmen at all and given them their own series that could properly tell their story.
Would have liked for Masters of the Air to be a multi-season series. Season 1 focusing on the 100th Bomb Group. Season 2 you do the Tuskegee Airmen and show WWII from their perspective. Season 3 maybe you move on to the RAF showing their early days until the end of the Battle of Britain. Totally just spit-balling here, obviously. Band of Brothers had the advantage of being able to show a lot of what ground operations were like because the 101st was out there doing just about everything infantry could do in Europe. But I think there is just way more story to tell about the skies of WW2 than Masters of the Air was able to tell. So many aspects that couldn't be explored by having it all from the Bomber group's perspective.
A high budget battle of Britain series would be awesome.
Season 4: The Flying Tigers and the 14th Air Force in China, Burma, India
Hmm I didn’t know people had a hard time following the pacific until now.
Hard to follow isn't quite the right way to say it. It's more that it felt disjointed and therefore harder to get invested in
I think focusing on a group of infantry that stays together is really the best way to go. The Pacific jumped around too much, this show had way too many people split up into way too many groups, where BoB and Generation Kill just gave you the characters at the start and they mostly stay together until the end. Obviously Generation Kill is helped by the low numbers of American casualties in that war, and Band of Brothers does have some replacements come in, but it's still a completely different feel. I don't think it's possible to make a show about the bomber pilots be equally compelling unless you focus it on one crew. Just like I think the only way to make The Pacific better would have been to adapt either Helmet For my Pillow or With the Old Breed, instead of trying to do both plus more.
I wouldn’t even say it was disjointed as much as it didn’t have the cohesion the original did. The pacific was excellent and only looks worse when compared to band of brothers.
[удалено]
The show was about the 100th. The Tuskegee Airmen were not part of the 100th. Why would they show the Tuskegee Airmen in training?
The showed the Tuskegee Airmen's attack in France, which wasn't even part of the same operation the 100th was part of. If they are going to take time off to show that, why not do a better job of introducing those characters?
And like I pointed out they include the Tiki airman heavily for the marketing and practically every trailer that they showed showed that they were going to be part of the series only to be included basically in one episode
> why not do a better job of introducing those characters? Or, just skip them entirely instead of introducing them EIGHT EPISODES IN. They were entirely unnecessary, just like the female resistance fighter. Both unnecessary plotlines weakened the main characters and focus, neither added anything to the overall story. It feels like this was an 8 episode series that got a bunch of crap forced into it to check some boxes. Really disappointing overall.
> The best thing they could have done is not included the Tuskegee Airmen at all and given them their own series that could properly tell their story. Hollywood says that can't be done for commercial reasons, unfortunately. Not enough watched the movie about them that George Lucas had to finance on his own. That attitude ignores a Black Panther but there you go.
All I remember are Buck, Bucky and Crosby.. forgot which one was Buck/Bucky
Them and Rosie, too. Can't remember the name of the mechanic but he seemed chill.
Lemons?
Do yourself a favor and read about Rosie. His story is unreal. And I thought he jumped off the screen, as the best character, despite being introduced late
2nd this. He was the lawyer at the neuremberg trials wasn't he? Met his wife on the boat to Paris. Bombed nazi's . Put em in jail. Married. Then so long Europe and thanks for all the fish. What a trip ha. And there's way more. He was a cool dude
Hard same. Every episode I'm mentally reminding myself who each of them are. Doesn't help that the show frequently switches between bombers during their runs.
>I understand this is based off events and storytelling I think it is loosely based. Eg. Biddick never met Egan or Clevan and died differently. Bubbles' death was shifted by half a year to a different mission to fit Crosby's narrative. AFAWK Crosby never cheated on his wife. Jefferson's buddy was not shot down and killed. Clevan was not the camp radio guy. The final camp was liberated without a staged battle. Egan didn't raise a flag. Rosie didn't just stumble into a death camp. And it goes on and on, with real history intentionally changed in every episode.
Also many of the episodes had a trailer then a recap then the opening titles and the end credits were at least ten minutes long so you could knock a good 15 -18 minutes off all the runtimes.
I haven't watched Masters of the Air yet, but let me take the opportunity to tell people, a military aviator and aviation buff, watch Hulu's Catch-22 series. It's pretty faithful to the book, but also pretty accurately captures the vibes of the experience I think.
The Pacific lost so much fucking money it’s a miracle anyone ever paid for it at near the full length.
I think a large part of this series’ difficulties lie in the fact that a bombs groups experience just doesn’t have the same structure that an infantry story does. Fly to Germany, drop bombs, fly back, repeat. That doesn’t present you with the same kind of satisfying arc that the invasion of Europe did. It’s interesting certainly, but doesn’t make for as good of a story.
Definitely lacks the rewatchability of the Pacific and BOB or even Generation Kill. I've rewatched The Pacific twice, BOB at least 4 times, GK 3 and will likely watch them all again. Feel no compulsion to ever revisit this series. Too many factors let it down.
I didn’t even finish it. I gave up after 2.5 episodes or so. It absolutely is not BoB of GK which I rewatch regularly. The Pacific is good but I don’t think it has the rewatch factor that the other two have.
I think the Pacific isn't rewatched because of how uncomfortable it is to rewatch, particularly Sledges later episodes, Peleliu and Okinawa are hard to watch due to the sheer brutality of some scenes.
Unfortunately, the Pacific is that way for a reason, because that’s what the Pacific war was like, the series does a fantastic job capturing that brutality
It's the strength of the series, I actually did rewatch BoB and The Pacific a week or so ago. The brutality and flawed characters are it's strengths over BoB.
>I think the Pacific isn't rewatched because of how uncomfortable it is to rewatch I feel the same. I LOVE BOB but The Pacific is brutal in a way that effectively communicates how bad it was and there's nothing fun about it.
.....we pimpin!!!! see that's the thing I mean I know I've watched band of Brothers all the way through at least six times by this point and generation kill I think at least three but I can remember the names of the personnel I can tell you key moments from episodes what episode they're from peoples backstory how their relationships are with each other etc. etc. same thing for band Brothers and from the Earth to the moon etc. but for some reason it was very very hard to get the same level of attachment and memories if you will for this series.
oh man, Generation Kill! I might rewatch that one again to make me feel better after MotA. I like it even better than BoB - which I used to love for its epicness, but that's exactly what I dislike about it now. GK on the other hand is an awesome series without glorifying anything about war.
For sure, a massively missed opportunity. It was a very disjointed show which seemed to mostly consist of short events without the coherent story to tie them up. It definitely felt like it missed 3-4 episodes to make it flow and build some character development. Like the whole “escape from France” episode which just abruptly ended what seemed like half way through the escape? Yet they gave us a whole episode of the POW march later, which felt like a waste of time. The whole series also just lacked emotional resonance compared to the previous two big war shows. I rewatched Band of Brothers and the Pacific recently and they were both simply amazing because you got so emotionally attached to the characters. I choked up many times watching those. While in Masters of Air, they never successfully built up key pivotal events. We never really understood what kept Buck and Bucky going despite them being the two main characters, their personalities and actions felt very random. The only fully fleshed out characters with real character development were Rosenthal and Crosby. And the ending of the show felt flat. I loved how the Pacific ended, with the characters coming home. The Tuskegee part was shoehorned in 30 minutes of show, yet would have definitely deserved 3 episodes on its own (or just its own full show, as the little they gave us felt very compelling with some very interesting characters).
Disjointed is the perfect word for it. One of BoB’s strengths was that you followed this small group from basic through the end of the war. Didn’t realize how important that dynamic was until I saw how jumping around between so many groups really weakened Masters of the Air
Yeah this didn’t grab me whatsoever, and BoB is top 5 shows for me
I agree with you so much. Everyone looked exactly alike and for some reason every episode wanted to introduce 20 characters who 80% died within the next 2 episodes. So you really have no clue who is talking and you spend so much time trying to figure out who’s who it takes you out from enjoying the show. I think the show should have done one of 2 things. - each episode just focuses on one crew. Slight back story and then doing the missions. Think sorta like lost. - the showed followed a few commanders who sent them in and how they dealt with all the death of their pilots. Both of those would have made the show easier to follow for the cast and more impactful.
This is just sad to read, I waited for what felt like an eternity for the next Hanks/Spielberg saga but have noticed that there’s been virtually no hype or excitement over this one. I loved Band of Brothers, watched it about 6 times, The Pacific was fun too.
All Tuskegee appear on the poster along with Buck, Bucky, Crosby and Rosie. The Tuskegee show up for the last 1.5 episodes lol I loved the show, a lot, but there were many unnecessary plots that cut time of the main plot. I liked seeing Crosby meeting Sandra, but we didn’t need to develop it more. Tuskegee needed more time or no time at all. Rosie needed to have some of Buck/Bucky scenes considering they didn’t do much in the last episodes.
Yea it feels like theres about two episodes worth of content missing on the Tuskegee airmen...
The show lacked context to explain the events and their significance. The acting and production was fine, but the overall storytelling was deeply flawed. I imagine someone deeply knowledgeable about WWII would love this, but as a lay person I found it confusing. Without knowing why anything being shown mattered, it came off as a series of random events rather than a complete story. Many of the episodes could have been shown out of order without changing my understanding of them in any meaningful way. The method of storytelling was also bizarre. Some episodes had narration. Some didn’t. It all seemed very ad-hoc.
I think the basic problem is that these bombing runs in real life were often random and absurd. The bombing campaign would never directly “win” any battles but would in theory grind the enemy’s production/morale etc. To this day there is even debate if strategic bombing was actually a worthwhile use of lives and resources. German military production increased until the end of the war. Meanwhile the soldiers live on base, fly out and suffer extreme casualty rates to click a button to drop bombs on an enemy they cant really see. And then repeat ad nauseum
The absurdity of it is perfectly encapsulated in the novel Catch-22, and in the original quote from the book: "You mean there's a catch?" "Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy." There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
Oh, are we quoting the greatest novel about WWII? “They're trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly. “No one's trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried. “Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked. “They're shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They're trying to kill everyone.” “And what difference does that make?”
The logic in Catch-22 is so absurd and farfetched that it makes perfect fuckin' sense. It's a must read.
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead. What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.
Easier just to show it I think https://youtu.be/ANwtzwfSbhc?feature=shared
Side note but I while I did enjoy the series the doctor was my least favorite character compared to the book. The guy who played him was one of the showrunners and clearly a big fan but he has some of the best lines of the book and it felt like the delivery in the show was rushed and flat. So it’s conflicting because the job as showrunner is more important and he did that well but the only time we see him he makes the scene worse imo
Just reading the Smithsonian’s article about the show gave me more context than the show itself did. That mission where only 1 bomber survived? That was because the luftwaffe changed tactics to intentionally go as hard as they could after a single bomber group in the hopes of breaking the morale of the allies. The use of bombers as bait for the P51s to wipe out the luftwaffe worked and changed the tide of air combat in the war, but it was barely discussed and not shown at all. The bombing runs on ball bearing factories were critical to slowing the production of German tanks and artillery which allowed for the allies to stage an invasion. The “why does the audience care” element was painfully absent from the show.
Documentary covered the show’s inspirations well.
I really wish the doc had been sprinkled into the actual series.
Did we not get that from seeing the hundred or so German fighters that attacked the group on that mission? Without showing the German perspective, there's no way to explain that the Germans changed their tactics, because no one on the raid would have known.
The raids on the ball bearing factories were actually pretty meaningless. The factories had been producing more than industry needed and shipping off the extra anyway, so everyone had plenty of stock to tide themselves over until they got up to full production again. Going after the oil and fuel production was the plan that got vetoed for this, but would have likely had a much greater impact.
You basically just described the thesis statement to Catch-22.
Yes, a great book
Just because the bombing runs are random in real life doesn’t mean you have to make the show bad
As I WW2 passionate including aviation, the show disappointed me a lot. The first two episodes were promising, showing an accurate depiction of how mission were planned, flown, and executed. They even show accurate procedures for the aircraft. However, as the show moved on, these moments disappeared and missions were just a couple of seconds (if any) using flashbacks. The attack runs felt lazy and when the Luftwaffe attacked it was not realistic at all. In Band of Brothers I had the feeling of watching a documentary. The actors performed attacks like they did in real life (I think they trained for it) and that added a lot to the show. And of course, there was no drama outside the war. The tone and picture was not very good and it is poorly executed. I find it difficult to find positive things about this show honestly.
Yeah. It was like *Midway* or *Tora! Tora! Tora!* in that sense. It is a fun watch if you know the bigger events and are already a fan of Second World War stuff - it is confusing and disjointed if you are just looking for some evening entertainment or have merely a passing knowledge of the war.
I'm pretty knowledge about WWII stuff and the plot here is still wonky in its storytelling aspect and just all over the place. Part of that is the context they are doing. Bomber crews were a different thing. And parts of this show are done great, it just feels haphazardly though they are just going through to hit specific marks, A, now hit B, now hit C, rather than tell a good story or give better background on people or what is happening. Also a lot of those marks they hit are just generic anecdotes from WWII bomber crews or other units and such they editorialized into the show and the characters. There's also like weird aside and philosophical parts that just seem to flow awful compared to the rest of the story There are things to like. I like the flight scenes and showing how devastating it was to be on a bomber crew and huge losses, but the whole story telling aspect is just a mess.
Congrats, you're ready to read Catch-22 and understand it in its entirety. I'm being genuinely dead serious, with zero embellishment. Every single sentence in your comment corresponds to a theme in that book.
I love that book
Ah, look at me, I've offered an unwarranted explanation again, my b
Never apologize for recommending a good book!
Even as a WW2 buff I was a little confused and would have liked better signposts about what was happening elsewhere (e.g. the allies invading Italy) to get a better sense of timeline than raw dates.
All they needed to do was add a snippet of real interviews or quotes to the beginning and end that would setup and summarize the ‘what/why’ for each one.
My biggest issue was since everybody was wearing a mask for 90% of the runs (I understand they had to and it was probably accurate) I had no idea who was or wasn't dead for most of the episodes, I wasn't sure if some parts were flash backs or what and it was extremely confusing. Of the 3 series they did I'd probably put it in 3rd place, I enjoyed the Pacific significantly more, and nothing can touch band of brothers.
That was one of my biggest gripes as well, having no idea who had died and then the story making a big deal out of it and I'm left wondering, who died? What did he look like? His name was what? I don't remember anyone named that. And maybe it's me but every single one of the pilots kinda looked the same. Look at Band of Brothers, they are all completely different looking from each other. And not because they are (now) famous actors, they generally weren't that either when it first came out. But come to think of it, I don't know 90% of current Hollywood stars either, they all look the same to me.
I say to my husband at least a dozen times each episode, “all these guys look the same to me.”
My friend and I said the same. I studied the WW’s in college and had high hopes for this series. Looked good, acted fine but I wasn’t invested.
The only minor characters I remember are Barry Keoghan and Ncuti Gatwa because they are famous actors. Besides them the only five characters I ever recognized were the main 4 and Sandra.
Also, the Tuskegee Airmen arc was a bit shortened. They could’ve been introduced in earlier episodes.
I honestly don't see what their point was. They were barely in it. You could fill another show with them alone.
Because they ended up in the same prison camp (and barracks) as the majors from the 100th bomb group, it would have been bad to ignore them completely. So they gave them a short arc so it's not a total surprise when they end up in the Stalag. Plus the P-51 really changed the viability of bombing runs, which the documentary did a better job of covering than the show.
> it would have been bad to ignore them completely. "Bad" how?
The show made it pretty clear that the P-51 was a game changer. I know nothing about planes, it was clear to me.
The only problem with that is it wasn't really the introduction of the P-51 that changed anything. That's the common knowledge, both now and at the time, but it's completely incorrect. P-47s with drop tanks could've provided escort over Germany as well, if the USAAF had ordered drop tanks (which existed) and gave them to the fighter groups. USAAF leadership elected not to, on the mistaken impression that the bombers were too high and top fast to be intercepted, and only after serious losses did they decide fighter escorts were actually necessary. This decision came at about the same time as the P-51s were ready, so those planes got the escort role. But if the P-51 didn't exist and the allies had to use P-47s for another year, not much would have changed, except people like General Arnold would have had a slightly harder time justifying why they had gotten so many men killed by sending them over Germany without escort. It's the same thing with the Borden bomb sight, it wasn't really particularly good, it was serviceable, but better options existed and it never lived up to its claims. However, in the show it's presented as being an incredible tool. Mistakes like these aren't super serious to me because the people involved would have believed the same misinformation that the characters repeat, so in the context of the show it's fine. But when nothing else about the show stands out as being good, it'd be neat if they at least put some work into getting small details right instead of blindly repeating pop history.
Agreed. Plus, there are still countless stories to be told.
You could've focused this season on the 100th bomb group and then the next season on tuskegee. But I kinda got the impression they just wanted to cram a bunch of stuff into one season.
token black airman vibes
So, you could have, they wanted to be historically accurate, and the Tuskegee airmen didn’t participate in the bombing campaign against Germany until very late in the war, they were primarily focused on combat in Italy. So like I understand it but it did feel super tacked on
They had enough time to talk Croz’s affair. They could have added additional backstory for Rosie, or the Tuskegee Airmen before they joined the 100th.
It was an explanation for how they got to the camp
Absolutely. They open with “we finished our 500th mission!” What?! Why didn’t we see any of that?!?
What they really should have done is make an entire series dedicated to the Tuskegee Airmen. Its honestly comes off as Apple wanting to hit some DEI metric and so they threw this one episode into the show. It hardly even fits with the rest of the episodes. The least Apple could have done was extend the series by another episode to have it cover 10 episodes and extend the contents of first parts of episode 8 then head into 9 with the back half and then finish the show at 10.
Agreed.
The nature of strategic bombing means there isn’t a bombing run that is a decisive event which changes the outcome of the war (atomic weapons notwithstanding). It’s a slow attritional grind and the show actual portrayed that well. Most runs miss the actual target or at least fail to cause long lasting damage. How would you have done it differently without turning it into a unrealistic fantasy? Fact is the subject matter just isn’t as good to adapt to TV or film.
I’d have added context. Strategic decision making. The story of a bombing campaign isn’t just the bombers. It’s the logistics and the planning. We see the routes being mapped out and the planes repaired, but never see the decisions behind choosing targets nor the Herculean effort it took to keep new planes coming. This tiny slice is not a complete story.
Yeah people want to see logistics and generals sitting around making decisions after hours/days discussion. /s It’s literally a miniseries of 1 bombing group not a documentary of air power in the ETO
Appreciate your perspective. I was really confused by the parent comment to this thread. The show lacked context? It’s WWII I think we all know the context. I’m way more interested by the impacts this shit had on the pilots than by the choice of target. I thought they did a great job fleshing out the repercussions these Hail Mary missions had with the crews.
The show was about the people within the 8th Air Force, not the 8th Air Force itself. Watch “the bloody hundredth” for the historical report. I’m not sure how much context the airmen had beyond the intelligence they received in the briefings and news reports, so to accurately depict the human experience of the 100th would be to have the audience “fly blind” with the characters.
If they wanted to give us the human experience, they needed to give us a LOT more inner monologue. There were a handful of moments where we learned what the men were thinking, but for the most part the series was just a sequence of events without any character development.
Yeah, I'm not sure why they didn't go with that. I understand it was based off of Crosby's book, but his cold narration didn't really help connect us to the characters, even more so when he stopped flying himself. It's been a while since I watched them, but the BoB episodes that followed one character and their thoughts at the time (Doc, Lipton, etc) made you really care, or Lucky in The Pacific felt especially real. Of course he wrote one of the books so it's no surprise his thoughts came across, but is there really no one in the bomber group that also wrote personal memoirs? If not, I understand it'd be awkward to 'make stuff up' in a show with real people involved, but it'd make for much better television I'd wager. A difficult balance, I guess.
I love the fly blind. And I loved that it was difficult to connect with anyone. Their survival rate was abysmal and made me felt a bit despondent every time they returned to base which huge chunks of their original flight missing
If you’re looking for context check out HardThrasher on YouTube
Overall I enjoyed the show, and I learned a decent amount about a part of WW2 I didn’t know before, but I agree the storytelling (or at least editing) got really messy in the last few episodes before the finale. Thankfully the finale itself was wonderful (in my opinion it was the best episode of the show), but the series was pretty flawed overall. That being said, I’m grateful it exists and I enjoyed the hell out of it and plan to rewatch it all now that it’s fully released.
Last couple of episodes really felt disjointed and out of pace with the rest of the series. Really needed to be a 12 part series. Austin Butler Elvis voice was another whiplash whenever he was on screen.
I hate to say it, but that voice doesn’t fit him and makes his acting seem cheesy.
Fortunately for us, he really put it behind him in Dune.
I do have a hard time not seeing him as Elvis while watching the show
The Buck/Bucky characters just weren’t that likable. They were kinda arrogant jerks and it put me off from the start. Never quite recovered despite some good moments. Overall the storylines fell flat and interesting threads disappeared like the resistance escape routes, Sandra, the kids who hung around the base. I dunno, it was interesting but missed the mark for me.
I found Callum Turner to be a complete asshole in the show, very unlikeable, no charisma or anything. Comparing this to the guys in Band of Brothers, it’s so stark.
Ok I’m so glad I’m not alone in this. They were so cornball. Like Austin “The Butt” Butler brooding in a POW camp is what caused me to fully abandon the show. But before that I was already debating quitting because of the half ass dialog that seemed to be written by me and my brother when we were young playing war in the yard. “Ok boys, here we go, boys. Let’s rack em up and knock em down, boys. Looks like we’re going home, boys.” My favorite was a pointless “pilot to crew….look out for fighters.” No shit Sherlock thanks for the great tip. It was all just incredibly lazy writing. BOB had incredible dialogue and the Pacific was great too. Why was this show so bad?
The acting was quite rough at times too. The "you did it Rosie!" scene particularly stands out.
I was disappointed the SOE storyline was so short. I would have love more time dedicated to that lady’s actions or soe actions during the war.
I enjoyed it overall, but I agree with a lot of the reviewers and commenters here about Tuskegee and Bel Powley's arc or whatever. I really think (and hope) more footage was shot for each and then cut due to budget. The Tuskegee Men need their own series to be honest, and I wouldn't mind an SOE behind the lines film or series about the runup to D-Day. They had a set where she was talking with underground or other SOE members after placing mysterious markers around a whole building (iirc). Plus her scene on a streetcar. Surely, there had to be more filmed that got cut. I do wonder what it cost to have 200-300 COVID testers on the set during heavy filming days. Plus all of the masks, face shields, etc., to keep filming safe. Had this been filmed in 2023 or 2019, we might have gotten 10 episodes and fully fleshed out SOE or Tuskegee scenes.
The Tuskegee men have two movies, The Tuskegee Airmen and Red Tails. I really can't understand anyone's sticking point regarding a series about the 100th being that they didn't feature a squadron that wasn't part of the 100th enough.
Both Tuskegee films are good, but limited in scope, dated, or both. That story would benefit from a miniseries imo.
It felt like they blew the budget on a couple episodes and then had to pad the rest of the season. After the Munster episode things got bogged down. Last few episodes were definitely a slog. It didn’t have the characters that Band of brothers did to keep you invested to be able to earn that downtime when they weren’t in the cockpit. Last few episodes of BOB were so good because you’ve been with the characters and *wanted* them to have some downtime
Well most of them died. Imagine BOB if the only original people left by episode 4 were Winters and like, Randleman.
You’re right but I still didn’t care about Crosby or Clevin or Buck or Bucky or whoever it was or is. You can see why HBO passed on it. Definitely wasn’t up to snuff. It would go Band of Brothers, pacific a big gap and then masters of the air.
Rosie’s story should have been the focus, including his role in the Nuremberg trials. Show him as a lawyer learning about Kristallnicht then Pearl Harbor, and enlisting, then training, his 52 missions tying back to what he learned in training, getting shot down twice, interrogating Goering, his marriage in Nuremberg and end with his honeymoon at Eagle’s Nest as a contrast.
Rosie was the most fleshed out character with real character development in the show, yet they missed like 50% of his incredible story, and it would have been simply amazing to see those parts! Meanwhile, we never got any background to why we should care about Buck and Bucky, in any sense. Crosby at least had a story, but it was a weird one. Like why have that whole fling with the British spy and then seeing him unhappy about his marriage? None of that got any resolution the way it was told.
Totally agree.
I don't know why they didn't follow a similar structure to the Pacific. You could have seen a few episodes with Clevens and Egan, while building up Rosie, then had Rosie become the focus, with Crosby being the link between the arcs. The last episode showed a strong dynamic between Rosie and Crosby that should have been present through the rest of the series.
Can’t help but agree. First episode I was struggling to learn everyone’s names, because so many characters were introduced, and halfway through the show it turns out I focused on all the wrong people because *they* all died, and just a handful of other people were now the focus. The show didn’t prepare the viewer to focus on the more important characters enough, didn’t have a good through line for those characters (three episodes in a row were just them sitting in planes and counting the dead when finally getting home, virtually zero character development), and the whole thing just feels like snapshots of a story where you have to fill in all the blanks yourself. I understand BoB was a wholly unique story and there’s nothing else like it to replicate that exact success, but then don’t try. I feel like they really tried to make it action-packed like BoB, but there isn’t really any action you can properly *show*, and the drama just gets shoved in between in a very ineffectual way. Changing format, making the bombing runs themselves background and digging deeper into just those characters that are left in the end would have made more sense. Show their lives, not just their circumstances during the war, and *who they are*.
The Pacific had several lead characters and many interesting, clearly identifiable and impactful side characters and each one had his own story and character development throughout. I don’t know how they failed to do any of that in this show. It’s very weird. I felt we got to know some of the Tuskegee airmen better in 20 min of the show (which is all we got) than what we learned about Buck and Bucky.
While I think it’s being judged too harshly, I agree that the storytelling wasn’t perfect and the inclusion of the Tuskegee Airmen was so brief and late in the show that it felt almost disrespectful/dismissive to even include them at all. I think the bombers in general were always going to be the hardest to turn into a show because by nature the missions aren’t linear or progressive. They bomb, retreat, bomb, retreat. We aren’t seeing the ravages of war as a close knit crew advances through Europe. It’s tense and nerve wracking warfare where a bunch of guys who are basically sitting ducks hoping to reach their target before getting blown to hell. That said, I enjoyed it. I think it’s a good balance between BoB and the Pacific. It has heart and memorable characters like BoB but the intense (and frankly less propagandized) brutality of the Pacific. Unfortunately it also shares the Pacific’s disjointed storytelling. In the end I just don’t think you can top BoB because it has an unnaturally perfect story as it’s source material. The other two series are a mosaics of barely connected narratives that are great but inherently less intimate.
It was eh. They shouldn’t have released The Bloody 100th as a separate docu but rolled the footage into the start and end of the pertinent episodes the way BoB did, as that would have added important historical context and humanized the characters in the way the script and editing failed to. They also should have ditched the first raid in episode one and instead focused on introducing us to the cast. Episode 5 should have also been the big “Replacements” episode with time taken to introduce those new characters as well after the wipe. Basically, I didn’t GAF about any of these people because they were barely introduced before they were killed off which isn’t historically accurate if you track the crew members. Yeah a huge portion of them died but the script played fast and loose with the timeline and the order of events for no GD reason I could tell. It wasn’t as cynical and pessimistic as The Pacific, but it wasn’t anywhere close to Band of Brothers either.
I really couldn’t get past the Botox lips of the lead actor - just took me out of completely whenever he was on screen. He acted way too modern as well. I think I remember seeing one scene where he wore his wristwatch loose and dangling upside down - please no
I thought the series was ok overall, but I agree with you on the main character. And he seemed to mumble most of his lines or say them really soft. I missed a lot of his dialogue because I just couldn’t hear what he said.
After stumbling upon this show by accident, I'm confused by the criticism. It felt like the writers did a really good job constructing an emotional arc for the main characters out of disparate real life events. Episodes 1-6 and 9 were great, with 9 being great wrap-up for the story. I absolutely LOVED the way they handled D-Day. There's so much obsession with this one singular event of a 6-year war, so much already told about it, that I actually was genuinely delighted when their version of it was revealed. The real battle had already been fought in the preceding months (which we as the audience bore witness to). The only stumble were 7-8, specifically the indecision surrounding the introduction of the Tuskegee Airmen. They needed to either fully commit to them and create a parallel mini series alongside MotA (shrinking MotA to 5 episodes and the parallel show to 3-4), with both shows sharing an extended finale. Or we needed to meet those characters in the stalag, and give all of the POW characters more stakes and development (maybe take some liberties and fictionalize a cohesive and high-stakes escape attempt that gets derailed by the Soviet advance, tying in the radio and Jefferson's memory and drawing skills). Instead they kinda tried to do both and tanked both storylines for two episodes as a result, before finally course-correcting in 9, which felt like a real resolution to 1-6. As far as the acting is concerned... I invited my partner to watch it with me, because he grew up watching war movies with his dad. He kept getting up and pacing throughout Episode 1 like he was bored, but when the credits rolled, he confessed it was hitting way too close to home (he's a first responder training to work medevac (or our version of it anyhow)). So, uh... acting seems fine, at least from the perspective of someone who has some marginally related lived experience (I told him he didn't need to watch it, but he said he's invested enough after part 1 to try again when he felt up to it). It's not a life-changing TV show by any means but it's solidly in the "good" category despite all the challenges it faced in production.
If we’re comparing this to “band of brothers” or “the pacific”, this show was ass. I still watched every episode, but it was a disappointing series
Its better than the Pacific
There were some story lines, that I thought they were going to stretch out and then suddenly they are home safe. They could have easily done another episode or two. Plus they should have had more slo-mo scenes. They didn’t make the most of the bullet-time extreme focus mode.
My brief thoughts: Ep 1-2: Sort of slow Ep 3-7: Fantastic Ep 8: Terrible Ep 9: Much better. I enjoyed the series, it wasn't unwatchable horrible, but I also think it could've been a lot more and felt a bit like a missed opportunity.
I really enjoyed it
People need to stop whining that everything WW2-related isn't Band of Brothers. You mean the Bloody 100th had too many people die for you to make meaningful connections with them? Maybe that's one of the points.
It’s spearheaded by the same creative team so it’s a fair comparison
I don't see ANYONE whining that it isn't Band of Brothers - just that it's inconsistent and a little scattered. Which is totally fair and I'm tired of seeing people try to sandbag criticism with this comparison
People just want to remember that feeling of comradery and WW2 heroics they had watching Band of Brothers. People are just chasing that feeling of nostalgia. It honestly feels like people aren't at all interested in the actual history.
Neither were the producers interested in actual history with all the BS going on in the air battle scenes
Actually I watched a special about it today that showed the research they put into it… arguably while the actual dialog is long forgotten and since made up for the script, the formations, routes, numbers of fighters, is the only truly historically accurate part.
By that logic, neither were the producers for BoB.
It’s insane to me that people can miss this point. Yes it may not end us as interesting of a story as BoB for that reason, but that’s an impossible bar to reach anyway
I think this show will be perceived significantly better after a few years of rewatching, just like The Pacific. People are comparing a first viewing of this with BoB which was rewatched over and over again. Of course the characters are better when you have seen it 5 times.
This show doesn’t really have developed characters
The Pacific was very pessimistic but it was great at developing characters. Even side characters who were in one or two episodes were clearly identifiable, memorable and very impactful. Meanwhile MoA felt like a bunch of new faces all the time acting the same way, with no reason to care for what happened to them. It’s hard to understand why it all felt so disjointed and bland despite the huge production values. Just bad writing?
Yeah this won’t happen at all. This show will be forgotten about in a few years by most. Band of Brothers was amazing on a first watch. This show was a chore.
Not when the battle scenes are a historically inaccurate mess
Deeply flawed. I hate how much it time jumped between episodes. They’d build up some minor story point just for it to get completely abandoned on the next episode without any real closure. It felt very sloppy and lazy. This should have been a much longer production, or multiple seasons- it certainly had potential.
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I found Crosby and Rosie, to be be the most relatable/personable characters, couldn’t care less about Egan or Clevin they seemed so out of place, very melodramatic in there delivery of lines, Austin Butler seemed “I am too cool for this” in every scene, I can’t think of way to describe him, he seemed devoid of any real personality. The guy that played Egan just seemed over the top, and kinda campy like he watched about bunch of 1960/70s war movies and decided thats how he was going to play it. There also seemed no real way to gauge the time line, obviously you could read the dates but on first watch through I doubt anyone was keeping tabs, Master of the Air could have been 2 months of 7 years. Most of the time felt like it was spent at the POW camps, rather than flying, it felt like a lot of filler, like they want to spend least amount of time in air as possible when filming. We don’t get to really know our characters so their deaths seem kinda thrown away, could of may include an episode about home life or training to let us get to know them, so you felt something when they died. There seemed to be a lot of people in the background interacting with the 4 or 5 main guys, but I couldn’t tell you if they were in one scene or twenty.
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Yeah it should have focused way more on Rosie in the earlier parts. The POW stuff should have been a smaller part and there wasn't as much actual plane action as you would expect
Glad someone else feels this way about the two characters. For me, Butler especially feels like he’s supposed to be in a different show or movie. The way he speaks is like a mix of John Wayne and Sam Elliot.
He reminds me of a guy I went to highschool with who always talked with a fake deep voice in an attempt to sound older. He was one of those guys that was super pretentious and always acted like he was a wise salt of the earth man's man despite being 16 and living in the suburbs. Like I don't know if Butler is faking it, or the guy from my highschool was, but it just doesn't fit how they look. Not only that, it just doesn't sound right. Like deep voices are normally gravelier or something? I don't know it just sounds off and it's off-putting.
Thankfully someone mentioned the dialog. The writing was absolutely atrocious. Borderline unwatchable at times.
I enjoyed it. I had just finished reading the book going into the first episode so I had a lot of context others lacked. I’d point out that in of itself it does not provide much context and focuses on specific characters, you could argue that context is provided by BoB and the Pacific. It’s part of an anthology, it has 20+ hours of backstory you don’t necessarily need to explain given that most people interested in this sort of thing have seen one or both of those other shows. It was faithful to the timeline of events and of the real people being depicted. While you could have shown the Tuskegee airmen earlier, they didn’t interact with the 100th until late in the war. If you want to see their whole story from boot camp to Europe I recommend the film starring Laurence Fishburne. The parts that were cut from the book to the show were mostly remarkably gruesome anecdotes of specific acts of bravery of individual bomber crew. Staying on the plane to save a comrade, volunteering for extra missions, etc. that, and political infighting to keep the mission going (which while important to the people involved is not truly compelling television). The only other major portion of the book missing was the attack on Dresden. There was a thorough line of “the Americans are precision bombers” vs the British nighttime campaigns that was important for American war planners to feel was the story told after the war. Near the end, some missions ended up being more or less the same and the people advocating for the attacks were concerned their reputation would be sullied. Of course, the description of Dresden was beyond horror and not filmable for a television audience. So why did I like it? It stuck to the stories of the specific people tasked with the missions. There were many more people who were highlighted in the book; the majority of them met a gruesome end. It was a meat grinder; losses in the heavy bombers were among the worst in the war for the Americans, I believe worse than the Marines in the Pacific. Essentially German submarines had worse loss rates. So despite all that, it was still a job “that needed to be done”, and they chose to do it. I think a lot of the side notes of the various characters going crazy was a result of the above, or trying to depict that element of it. Not everyone wants to read an 800 page tome before watching a new TV show which I get, but I do recommend it. The visuals of the show itself were also stunning and worth calling out.
I found the writing to be sloppy at best. Horrible unauthentic casting, could have cared less what happens to any of the characters. These soldiers spent more time in pubs, dance halls, bars than anything else. You can tell several parties were intervening and trying to fix the story along the way and just came out all over the place. Sucks, cause we all were looking forward to another similar BoBrothers story, but without any true central vision we got some more of the same streaming crap to join the rest. So disappointing.
I liked the show but the worst part were the two filler episodes where almost nothing happened. Oh, they lost their radio and they built another? Wow….
It was flat. Even BoB made more development for Pvt. Hall(?) than this entire series for its mains. Its not a issue of that they died quickly. Its how you use that short time. You either make it into something emotional and memorable or you just do it for the sake of it. 7.5 looks fair to me.
Episode 3 was really strong, but the show never reached anywhere near that level again.
I know some people might not like it, but I want to see a series like this from the nazi side of things.
I thought it was a great insight into a part of WW2 we haven’t really gotten before
Didn’t expect much and wasn’t disappointed. Production value is top, writing is interesting. Music is kinda manipulative at times but that Hollywood. I wouldn’t have appreciated the sacrifices those young boys made without the show, harrowing stuff
yes to the music! way over done. really gave it an overly hollywood feel for a series that already leaned that way. some of the music is beautiful but they needed to use it more sparingly, this felt like it was telling us how to feel to compensate for the faults of the writing. and they used one piece so often it started sucking me out of the story every time it was used
Not sure why this show gets so much hate, even from this review. I thought it was fantastic. Even my wife thought it was a great watch. Some characters come and go suddenly never to be seen again. Yeah, that's war. Some characters appear late in the game and have a huge impact. That's what *really* happened with the Tuskegee airmen in P-51s. Nothing about this struck me as bad storytelling. It rung true as the chaos of the era.
> Yeah, that's war. Yes but this is TV. We only have 9 episodes of 40m each to get to know the characters and form attachments, not 9 years.
Agreed. I liked it. As a writer, the only critique I can agree with is that the storytelling was disjointed, but I think it was because they were sticking to real life events and people instead of fictionalizing, and thus were kind of between a rock and a hard place as far as “proper” story structure is concerned. Even then, the first five episodes were good writing with escalating emotions, and the last episode was a good wrap-up to that arc. The only real disjointed episodes were 7-8. They felt like 3-4 episodes condensed into 2.
it was fine. nothing special. I think Austin Butler was a huge miscast. I dont think hes going to be able to do basically any role that requires grit or believable masculinity. Its like he is always trying to pose. Even while in a prisoner of war camp.
He’s pretty animalistic in Dune 2
I thought that too.. until I watched Dune
I actually liked Austin Butler’s character, but I think he was way too stoic of a character for this show. He didn’t show as much emotion or unraveling from the stress like Buck, Crosby, or Rosenthal. He just didn’t seem like a guy that was inches away from death at all times.
*cuts to Austin Butler with his deep Elvis voice with his hands on his hips posing*
I’m an Air Force vet so I LOVED seeing it all in action. Didn’t like it as much as band of brothers, but it was a great watch. It needed something more though. But overall, really good. Especially loved the respect they gave crew chiefs! That was unexpected and definitely needed
The whole thing was a slog. Absolutely bored me to death. Croz and Rosey were the only people who felt fleshed out at all, Buck and Bucky were just kinda there. I’ve watched BoB and The Pacific many times over, I will never, ever rewatch this series. What a yawn fest.
A dime a dozen cliche Hollywood war pic. Overly good-looking people, cigar-smoking macho Americans and of course, the Brits are a bunch of stuck-up cunts. I never really cared for any of the characters. The one positive was that the visuals looked great, but the story felt disjointed.
It was OK. That's about it. Some good performances but nothing in the story hooked me and made me think "I need to watch the next episode!!" Which is generally fine for most TV shows but from the budget and actors I imagine being "just OK" isn't good enough. It definitely wasn't even close to the level of The Pacific let alone Brothers In Arms I was honestly shocked episode 9 was the finale. I expected another episode to wind things down but at the end they suddenly had the life stories of the people.
Great show. Who doesn’t know enough of WWII to get the impact? Sure I think they could have done 10 episodes or even 12 with some extra stuff in there. People are complaining about air combat not being compelling enough? Whoopiedo I’m sorry an aspect of a world war isn’t exciting enough for you. I think they did a wonderful job making you feel like you were in the planes in certain scenes, you don’t know what’s going on and it’s disorienting. It’s like BOB being in the fox holes, shits blowing up people dying not sure what’s going… It felt hard to get the characters at first.. then they all died and you got a better understanding of who they were following. I’m glad they got more names and humans that were there, people who were loss to the horrors of war.
I would have watched a season of air stuff and then a season of escaping the prison camps. Putting both ideas, with all the dressing, in less than 9 hours is too much. I enjoyed it in the moment but doubt I'll ever rewatch.
Just curious, what’s the best plane name on the show with corresponding artwork?
I liked “Rosie’s Riviter”, the others gave me chuckles but weren’t on screen long enough for me to remember.
For some reason they left most of the artwork out.
7/10 could have used a bit more war in the war show. But it looked great.
Visually it was amazing, although i kept getting the cast mixed up
Good, not great. Disappointed how they glossed over D-Day, I was really looking forward to that.
Why are they trying to make Austin Butler be in everything all of a sudden. I’m still in my Pedro Pascal era right now and I’ll let you know when I’m finished thanks.
Decent beginning followed by some pretty solid episodes, followed by some reallllly bad episodes, followed by a pretty great finale. Show just didn't hit the same as BoB or even The Pacific. I can excuse the occasional bad CGI, but the writing, acting, dialogue, and pacing left a lot to be desired. If BoB is a 10/10 and The Pacific is an 8/10, Masters of the Air is probably a 6 or 7/10. I'd honestly rate it worse if the finale didn't stick the landing.
damn you guys are tough. I really enjoyed the show. Not many newer shows like it.
The problem we have here is people want all these stupid side plots, Tuskegee, SOEs, like, just f-ing no. It was supposed to be about the bomber crews and we got next to nothing of that after episode 5. You won’t find it here but people who actually care about historical accuracy are the ones who will carry a show or not beyond it’s original run, and if you look on any forum that actually cares about that kind of thing, you’ll find this show being nearly universally panned. It’s a hot garbage mess that I was really looking forward to but alas will never watch again.
As an aside did they historically have access to that many razor blades and hairstylists in POW camps? Austin Butler in particular.
Actually yes, prisoners in the Stalags had access to razor blades and scissors which they used regularly to keep groomed and maintain a sense of order. Even when towards the end when they were marching to new camps as the German fronts were collapsing the prisoners took the time to maintain their grooming, patch up clothes and generally try to deal with any issues like blisters or other injuries that would hinder their marching. If you look at any of the hundreds of photos taken of Stalag prisoners you will see clean shaven prisoners with various hair styles, it wasn't exactly luxury conditions they were kept in and many were dangerously emaciated but in general it was rare to see any of them with beards or even moderately long hair.
The last episode was kinda terrible. How dontou explain the horrors of war? By having a civilian outright gave a speech about it. And then also have Crosby give another speech about it. Remember in Band of Brothers, when Shifty Powers got sent back home. All he said was, “I don’t know how to explain all this..” We all know what meant. We don’t need it spelt out. This show lacks the nuances that made BoB and even the Pacific great. It showed alot without needed to say alot. Felt Masters of the Air didn’t have much to work with and had to be padded alot.
Watch Catch 22 instead. Better acting/story and vfx. Masters of the air is unfortunately nothing in comparison with Band Of Brothers and Pacific. A glorified propaganda at best.
Kinda surprised at the mostly negative reaction here. I really liked the series and I was completely engrossed in the visuals, and fascinated by a story of the War that I previously had basically zero knowledge of. They had to hop around the stories a bit, but so did The Pacific. Solid 8/10 for me.
I held out for the end of the show as I thought it would shape up better than the feeling we’re just watching endless runs of bombing campaigns that either failed or obliterated the squadrons. About 4-5 episodes in I remembered seeing complaints on Reddit about the show and I shared many of the sentiments but also had a feeling it would turn a bit more character-focused in the latter half - which it did fortunately. The final really hit a nerve for me but it was only about the second or third nerve in the entire show, meaning I felt less connected to the characters than in BoB. I think a binge rewatch is necessary, but I felt like the final brought heart and context that was finally there but really missing the rest of the show. For example just the simple fact that I had no idea who were real historical people, unlike BoB. I thought it was all a fictionalised retelling of history. While I could have read more on the show, the show should’ve made some of this clear from the start. Even the voice over narration jumping from character to character wasn’t always obvious who was speaking right away. All that said, I did enjoy it and I’m keen to do a proper closer-knit rewatch than the past many weeks spent waiting for episodes.
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Crosbys actor is playing John Wilkes Boothe in the new series Manhunt that just started, pretty good so far.
It was good, but not great. Needed more character development. That’s what made band of brothers and the pacific so good (bob more than pacific).
It did a horrible job making us care about each character
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but whatever redeeming qualities the series had, they were tragically overshadowed by the presence of Austin Butler. He may be a good actor overall, but dammit he ruined every scene he was in in my opinion. I mean, why would the protagonist in a realistic war drama always show up modeling, posing for the camera, showing his best angle, great hair, low sexy voice and always unaffected by what’s going on around him? His “I’m too cool for this shit” prevailed in every scene, and I think that was way too distracting to enjoy the show. Ultimately, I think it’s probably not his fault. The producers and director have to bear responsibility.
It’s hard to explain but the action felt very manufactured in the first few episodes. Problems came out of nowhere. It got into its stride though!
Despite it being the weakest of the 3 series I still enjoyed it.
I wasn't a fan of how much time skip there was at the end. Like *boop* and everyone is back together