Octopus Overlords

Masters of the Air. Bomber crews WW2. https://www.unilad.co.uk/film-and-tv/ba ... e=facebook

Oh! Cool.

Cool. I hope they stick closer the Band of Brothers approach than the unnecessary drama they added to The Pacific.

I would actually love a Band of Brothers take on the operation to bomb the heavy water production plant in Norway. There was a Norwegian miniseries that I ended up buying that was very good, but we could certainly use more tellings of the story as I feel it's one of the more interesting operations of war.

I heard this was in the works some time back, and I hope it's up to the BoB/Pac standard.

But one real issue is the human cost of war. American bomber crews were of course heroic and very much at risk, but this was also a very different war. Nearly all of the victims of US and British bombing campaigns were civilians. To tell the story of the strategic air war in Europe is to confront moral questions that aren't easily resolved. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying.

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:33 pm But one real issue is the human cost of war. American bomber crews were of course heroic and very much at risk, but this was also a very different war. Nearly all of the victims of US and British bombing campaigns were civilians. To tell the story of the strategic air war in Europe is to confront moral questions that aren't easily resolved. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying.

...as were the victims of the bombing of Chongqing by the Japanese and the German Blitz in London. WWII included civilian massacres aplenty, the genocide of the Holocaust, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war. It was the nature of the beast, and factored heavily into why it was the largest and deadliest conflict in human history.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2019 11:52 pm

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:33 pm But one real issue is the human cost of war. American bomber crews were of course heroic and very much at risk, but this was also a very different war. Nearly all of the victims of US and British bombing campaigns were civilians. To tell the story of the strategic air war in Europe is to confront moral questions that aren't easily resolved. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying.

...as were the victims of the bombing of Chongqing by the Japanese and the German Blitz in London. WWII included civilian massacres aplenty, the genocide of the Holocaust, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war. It was the nature of the beast, and factored heavily into why it was the largest and deadliest conflict in human history.

And I've never seen a heroic miniseries made about Luftwaffe or Japanese bomber pilots.

Band of Brothers and even The Pacific could be easily gritty-patriotic because they dealt with war against armed enemies. If this new series focuses *only* on bomber crews fighting interceptors/flak/exhaustion and ignores the human cost of the bombing campaigns, it will be a disservice to history.

It's a very different situation from the earlier shows.

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2019 10:12 am And I've never seen a heroic miniseries made about Luftwaffe or Japanese bomber pilots.

Band of Brothers and even The Pacific could be easily gritty-patriotic because they dealt with war against armed enemies. If this new series focuses *only* on bomber crews fighting interceptors/flak/exhaustion and ignores the human cost of the bombing campaigns, it will be a disservice to history.

It's a very different situation from the earlier shows.

We don't know if that's where the focus will be. So unless Michael Bay takes over production of the series, I'm willing to give Spielberg and Hanks the benefit of the doubt and reserve judgement until seeing it for myself. YMMV.

Like BoB it is based on a book- Masters of the Air am thinking it won't stray significantly from the book which:
The riveting history of the American Eighth Air Force in World War Two, the story of the young men who flew the bombers that helped bring Nazi Germany to its knees, brilliantly told by historian Donald Miller and soon to be a major HBO series.

Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes you on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people.

Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force band, which toured US air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers.

The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America—white America, anyway. The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men. The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.

Masters of the Air is a story of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed.

Drawn from recent interviews, oral histories, and American, British, German, and other archives, Masters of the Air is an authoritative, deeply moving account of the world’s first and only bomber war.

I've seen the first three episodes now and am really liking it.
I will have to pick up a copy of the book it based on.

Naturally, a show like this is going to be very CGI heavy but I've always had little trouble seeing beyond that as long as it's not too terribly awful and the CG in this works fine for me.

Austin Butler, the lead very much reminds me of "Real Genius" era Val Kilmer. I looked over his IMDB page and though he has a pretty long list of credits, this is the first thing I've seen him in.

So far I'm enjoying this more than The Pacific. I have read the two books The Pacific was based on but, for whatever reason, The Pacific never really got its hooks into me like Band of Brothers did.

With episodes dropping weekly I now have to wait until next Friday to see episode 4.
I have high hopes for this series so the wait is going to be tough.

Brian wrote: ↑Fri Feb 02, 2024 3:40 pm So far I'm enjoying this more than The Pacific. I have read the two books The Pacific was based on but, for whatever reason, The Pacific never really got its hooks into me like Band of Brothers did.

Slightly off-topic, but was all of the interpersonal drama that was in The Pacific from the books, or was it added to the script? That was the thing that really stuck out to me. Band of Brothers was a true story, and they followed the history almost to a T (I've read the book and I've read commentaries on it.) The Pacific felt more like a 'based on a true story' film with them taking a lot more liberties to add romance, etc. That's what really held it back for me.

I'd have to go back and rewatch the show as well as reread the books to better answer that but there was quite a bit in the books. It's been a while so I can't narrow it down any more than that.
I do remember some specifics from the book(s) that made it into the show.
Specifically, the soldier on Okinawa (played by Rami Malek) tossing stones into the skull cavity of a dead Japanese.

I think The Pacific suffered from the blending of two narratives (Helmet For My Pillow & With The Old Breed). Following a single narrative for BoB makes for easier storytelling in a TV episodic format.

Getting further off topic, I'd like to see the story of Roscoe Blunt made into a series. I recommend his book, Foot Soldier for a good read on a single soldier's perspective including his eventual capture by an SS Panzer crew.

Brian wrote: ↑Fri Feb 02, 2024 3:40 pm I've seen the first three episodes now and am really liking it.

Ditto. Wife and I started last night and blew threw 3 in a row.

Brian wrote: ↑Sun Feb 04, 2024 5:14 pm I think The Pacific suffered from the blending of two narratives (Helmet For My Pillow & With The Old Breed). Following a single narrative for BoB makes for easier storytelling in a TV episodic format.

This also made The Pacific more ambitious than Band of Brothers. It attempted to deal with home-front issues and moral complexities that the mostly fighting focus of BoB was mostly happy to ignore.