Honest Movie Review: Masters of the Air

Let me preface this review with some background on myself. I was in high school when Saving Private Ryan came out, I always considered that ground zero for the Tom Hanks WW2 history collection. I saw it in theaters no fewer than 8 times. As my knowledge of WW2 history progressed yes I started finding the flaws in the movie however small they were. I say this simply because I must come to understand that most people who will read this will not pick things apart to the degree I normally do, I do believe the name is stitch nazi, rivet counter, etc... So I will attempt to stay in the realm of the "normal person"

In 2003 Band of Brothers emerged from the Hanks Spielberg duo. It was unlike anything I had ever seen and like everyone else who watched it immediately fell in love. You could to know the characters and watch them all as they develop. They are all easy to tell apart and that allows the watcher to really become invested in the character as individuals. Yes us history nerds will always have problems the historical inaccuracies. For instance Albert Blythe did not die in England, he actually went on to a storied military career. Easy Company was not the first to take Berchetsgarden (but they all believed they were). Norman Dyke was no coward, in fact he had held an important cross roads in Normandy against determined enemy. As you read the various books by just about every member of Easy Company you begin to piece together a more complete picture. Stephen Ambrose tended to portray a very "romanticized" image of the men he chronicled. That all being said Band of Brother truly changed my life, and many other around me. 

The Pacific: If Band of Brothers was over romanticized, The Pacifc was just straight up brutal and somewhat confusing when it came to the characters. Still to this day when I re-watch it I still dont know who half the characters are in the end when they tell you what happened to them after the war. I believe this is the result of using three books instead of one to form the basis of the story line. (We will examine those later)

Greyhound: Yes it counts, it is Tom Hanks solo project (and yes there is a sequel in the works). It has to be mentioned here all though it is not considered part of the "collection" as neither is Saving Private Ryan. Again for the history nerd yes three errors drove me nuts; quickly U-Boats did not call and harass their targets on the radio, that would be a one way ticket to the bottom. The U-boats did not paint giant "Boat Nose Art" on their subs. And finally for those of you who are REALLY nerdy, the radar directed 40mm gun mounts did not appear until the very end of the war. Greyhound essential amounts to a manual on US Navy anti submarine operations, but I am totally fine with that. 

Now with that out of the way to the work at hand:

Masters of the Air:

We were teased with this release for ever! We were teased with it for decades in fact. So before the wheels even got off of the ground the expectation meter is unfortunately already pegged. Lets break down the pieces individually in hopes of avoid a tangled cluster. 

Cast:

In a simple notion, the actors were great, and for the first time I feel as though the men and women who answered the call and went overseas are finally portrayed as the age they in fact were. Kids! just kids, 17-22, actors who have starred in these movie since back to the days of John Wayne would all be ancient by military standard. A then 56 year old Brad Pitt wouldn't even be able to get up on a Sherman tank let alone still be in the field at that point. A 63 year old Tom Hanks could be almost believable as a Navy Reserve ships captain who spent years in the reserve as a Lt. Cmdr. Of course he didn't look 63 either. Rafferty Law plays an 18 year old mechanic in Master of the Air and he was 25 at the time of filming, but he looks every bit of 18. The higher ranking officers appear to be no more than 30 which is perfect. Austin Butler and Callum Turner look every bit their age which would be early to mid 20s. 

I give full marks for the actors appearing to be the correct age for the statuses in the Army and rank I cant stress this enough.

The series does suffer from a constant shuffling of characters and a person you may want to see more of is gone almost instantly. That was life in the 8th Air Force. Men came and went at an alarming rate. Try to remember that the 8th Air Force suffered more casualties than the entire US Marine Corps. The rapid introduction and loss of characters highlights the conditions with in this theater of war. 

The Aircraft: 

The other top billed actor in this series is the aircraft itself, the iconic B-17 Flying Fortress. This is where the series begins to unravel for me, and I am happy to know that many share my opinion. Now there are only just a handful of flying B-17s in the world and not enough (and too expensive) to risk flying in a large formation, not to mention impossible to get all in one place. It seems to me that the CGI work done on this series was done by two different companies. Some scenes looked amazing! One seems comes to mind where the top turret is in the foreground and swings around to fire at two aircraft closing from the 1 o'clock high position, the gun hammers away at two specks that go streaking by. But just as amazing as that was for me then we are "treated" to a CGI B-17 flying along with the propellers moving so slow you can see the blades and with so many holes in it you could drive a truck clean through the cabin. Now yes I know the 17 could and did absorb some insane damage but come on! No engine on planet earth would run with half of it missing. That aside it almost looked like someone cut and pasted the same damage all over the plane with Photoshop. Other things that tweaked my gears were shots where there would be thousands of aircraft flying in 100s of directions in such proximity that you could hop from one to the other without falling to your death. These scenes tended to remind me of Star Wars later generation movies that were just way too much of everything. 

The internal scenes of the aircraft were in my opinion excellent. The equipment, uniforms, all excellent. Some people noticed a distinct lack of wind in the aircraft with busted out windows but I missed that. The detail items such as dress uniforms were from what I saw perfect. 

The sets were amazing, in particular the airfield (barracks, offices and the amazing operations room set). The prisoner of war camp was also outstanding as well, given that we are all accustomed to The Great Escape and Hogans Heroes, it is good to see the camp closer to the way they would have actually been. I wish they had gone in to greater detail with the prison story as that was a big part of the 8th Air Force experience for tens of thousands of airmen. 

The Story:

This is where Masters of the Air and I part ways. For the first three episodes we are lead to believe that this will be a pretty straight forward detail of the "Bloody" 100th its missions and men. The first sign of trouble I get is when there seems to be an off sense of timing. The pace quickens from slow and methodical to a so fast you can't digest what happening. Buck Cleven goes from one mission to ten in the blink of an eye, then he just doesn't come back one day. The planes take off and 6 seconds later they are over the target being pounded by flak that the German wish they had. We had addressed the characters coming in and going earlier, that's just the way it was.

The segments regarding "Rosie" Rosenthall were perfect for what the story is trying to achieve, the experiences of a pilot fresh from the states. Being sent to the "Flak Farm", his amazing skill at flying, being shot down, making it back, rising through the ranks and experiencing the horrors of war. The scene where he sees the concentration camp remains was perfect, and yes done so many times but it was part of his experience. The entire series could have started and ended right here. 

I appreciate the Harry Crosby character which gives a detailed look at those poor guys who had to stay behind sweating out every mission for days on end, laboring without glory over every detail of the plan, and then being destroyed when a friend doesn't come back, that in of itself must have been its own special version of hell. 

One issue I have in particular is what I call lost story lines. The two guys crash and are aided by the underground, the last thing you see is them pulling into a train station full of German and then nothing. They come back at one point for a few seconds several episodes later almost as a matter of fact. You could have run three story arcs together here. Pilots flying missions and the squadrons working, guys who were on the run trying to get home, and then finally those who had been captured already. 

There is a story arc also involving a young woman who was a member of the SOE. So what the hell happened to her? We see her on a bus, dodging the Gestapo and then meeting other spies and then nothing. Again another great topic, one that has been "done" a lot, but not at home in a series about the 8th Air Force. Highest regards to the actress Bel Powley, I loved her plucky spirit and she made me feel what Crosby must have been feeling. 

We then come to the matter of the Tuskegee Airmen, I still can only guess that politics played a roll in this segment. The entire thing seems shoe-horned in there and forced to make sense. We have had several cinematic visits to the story of the Tuskegee Airmen at this point, and none of those were very good. I feel that a topic as important as this does not need to be squeezed into a series it had largely nothing to do with. Sadly with two other movies about it already I am afraid it will never get the attention it truly deserves, I am also afraid that give the general populations complete ignorance on most historical subjects it will lead everyone to believe that all P-51 pilots were African American. There is a fair bit of Anglo-bashing going on in this series which I will let pass simply because again it was the experience of the American airmen, not the British which is in study here. We all know that the British airmen experienced hardship and terror at a leave no one today could fathom. 

Masters of the Air is cursed, as was the Pacific, they were cursed by coming up to bat behind Band of Brothers. A situation similar to coming up to the plate after the lead off hitter slams a towering home run. Anything you do will look less impressive even if it is a home run also. Masters of the Air seems to be plagued by too much input, or too many cooks in the kitchen. Movies about World War Two must be willing to separate themselves from today's "woke" mindset. It was a different time, and to write and produce films about this era through that lens damages the authenticity of the story. Which is a betrayal to those who were actually there. If I had any advise to give to the producers of this film (we all know who they are) I would say great effort boys and thank you, but stay in your swim lane and tell the story.

My official rating 6/10