Masters of the Air--coming to Apple TV

Mtns2Skies said:
Okay wtf is up with the air to air rockets? I did my best researching trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but no. At that point in the war there were no rockets. Who thinks of this stuff?
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The germans did in fact have UNGUIDED air to air rockets. Not guided as seemingly portrayed in Ep3.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Werfer-Granate 21 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

These were the most common air to air rockets used during WW2.
 
DavidWhite said:
The germans did in fact have UNGUIDED air to air rockets. Not guided as seemingly portrayed in Ep3.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Werfer-Granate 21 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

These were the most common air to air rockets used during WW2.
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The book also notes their use.

I’m finding the story of this series to be a little disappointing. The CGI doesn’t bother me though.

IMO not even close to Band of Brothers.
 
Bacho said:
IMO not even close to Band of Brothers.
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Though I’m defending this show in this thread, you’re absolutely right that it’s nothing approaching Band of Brothers, not by any measure. But we both have to admit that Band of Brothers is a pretty high bar to clear!
 
Maybe the producers are saving their real aircraft budget for after the introduction of P-51 escort capability. With approx 150 airworthy mustangs in the USA, there is no excuse for not putting together a squadron. Many owners would gladly participate for the price of gas.
 
Hmmmmm.

"Guys, should we take on the liability of hiring a bunch of guys with 80 year old airplanes and send up crews to do a few weeks of aerial cinematography, then splice that footage in with our CGI bomber squadrons and dogfights... or just CGI the whole thing?"

"You're fired."
 
Well, In spite of warnings from all of you, I signed up for Apple to watch this show. For the most part it's pretty boring punctuated with brief moments of excitement, so I guess they got that realistic. The airplane sequences have been the best part and that's not saying much. If anyone is upset over the flying sequences not being realistic enough, don't worry the flying is all over by about episode 4, at which point the show transitions from "masters of the air base" to "masters of the POW camp".

After the last episode, where they teased D-Day, I was really looking forward to this one.....and then what they showed last week was it. That was the whole of D-Day. About 7 seconds. The rest of it was mostly the red-tails, which they did no justice to. It was blatantly tacked on because someone thought the show was too white. The B17 sequences haven't been too bad for the most part, but the P-51's were terrible. It looked like RC planes. One of the guys got shot down and his buddy screamed "nooooooooooo", ala Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith. I just about shut it off.

I guess I just need to read the book. This is the most disappointed I've ever been in a movie/TV show. I'm surprised Hanks & Spielburg let it get released in this state.

I guess I'll watch the last episode next week because I've suffered through this far. I hope "Napoleon" and "Greyhound" (speaking of Hanks) are better, but at this point I'm no longer holding my breath.

@masloki I should've listened to you...
 
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masloki said:
Greyhound is better. Ted Lasso. The Morning Show. Severance. Earth at Night in Color.
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Greyhound was OK. Ted Lasso is, in my humble opinion, probably the best TV series ever made. I don't watch reruns, and I'm on my third pass through Ted Lasso. Severance was just a bit too obtuse for me.
 
Mikey52 said:
I thought Greyhounds was very good.
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Same here.

I'm really disappointed to hear that MotA is this bad. I haven't signed up to watch it but had high hopes based on Band of Brothers and (to a lesser degree) Pacific. I listened to the two autobiographies that Pacific was based on and they actually intertwined the stories fairly well, so figured there would be a decent showing with MotA. Well, dang.
 
Wow. Just finished "Greyhound". That's the best movie I've seen in years. Don't know if I've ever seen a movie that intense all the way through.

More on topic, if anyone wants to see some really incredible (real) B17 action, get a copy of "The Cold Blue".
 
Jim K said:
Wow. Just finished "Greyhound". That's the best movie I've seen in years. Don't know if I've ever seen a movie that intense all the way through.

More on topic, if anyone wants to see some really incredible (real) B17 action, get a copy of "The Cold Blue".
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history Channel’s The Air War in HD is excellent as well. Rob Lowe and Casey Affleck narration.
 
I don't think it's as bad as so many of you are making it out to be.
Arguably not the most awesome movie ever...and yeah some of the CGI and other stuff missed the mark, but some of it was quite good I thought. The red-tails thing really felt out of place..... a whole story about a bomb group based in London..... then cut, here's a fighter group based in Italy.... just feels forced and nearly unrelated.
Still, definitely worth a watch in my opinion
 
I thought it was strange to see a P51 missing half of the left wing and rolling right as it dives almost straight down
 
Brad W said:
I don't think it's as bad as so many of you are making it out to be.
Arguably not the most awesome movie ever...and yeah some of the CGI and other stuff missed the mark, but some of it was quite good I thought. The red-tails thing really felt out of place..... a whole story about a bomb group based in London..... then cut, here's a fighter group based in Italy.... just feels forced and nearly unrelated.
Still, definitely worth a watch in my opinion
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I wouldn't say it's bad. Just aggressively mediocre. I've certainly enjoyed parts. Part of my problem (and I'm guessing most) is my hopes were so high. I also expected more airplanes in a show about airplanes. There's like 10 minutes of air combat total in the show. I didn't time it, but I think there's as much bicycle riding on screen as flying. Bicycles are cheaper than CGI though I guess.
 
I'm enjoying it. It's too much material and too important a subject for 9 episodes, though. Maybe because it's an Apple production and not HBO?

Another good Apple TV show is For All Mankind. Good alternative history about the space race.
 
Jim K said:
That's fair. I'll amend my statement. I expected more people flying airplanes in a show about people who flew airplanes.
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How many battles do you need to see to understand what they were like? No need to repeat what's already been shown unless there is something new to add.

Was Band of Brothers about the rifles and grenades?
 
I've been enjoying it. Sure it's not as good as others - but there's some entertainment value. So all of this has got me hunting down some of the great mini series and I started rewatching Band of Brothers. Definitely a great. So I'm sitting here, right now - building a massive presentation for a bunch of execs for a Friday BAM - watching Episode 5, when who pulls up in a jeep but none other than Jimmy Fallon! What a cool cameo he got to do!
 
Just finished episode 5 and have been avoiding this thread to prevent spoilage.

Haven’t read the book, but the story’s been good enough to keep me watching. Drama’s good enough to keep my wife involved. She’s asked me a couple times if “was that what is was like when you were flying OIF/OEF?*”

That usually leads to deeper conversations. Using that as the fail/success criteria, I’d say the series is successful.

*Note: without giving anything away, those conversations are more about the emotions individual aviators in a crew served platform experience flying combat sorties and how things are/aren’t the same now as then.
 
Brad W said:
I don't think it's as bad as so many of you are making it out to be.
Arguably not the most awesome movie ever...and yeah some of the CGI and other stuff missed the mark, but some of it was quite good I thought. The red-tails thing really felt out of place..... a whole story about a bomb group based in London..... then cut, here's a fighter group based in Italy.... just feels forced and nearly unrelated.
Still, definitely worth a watch in my opinion
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To be fair, they added new characters all the time since so many died or became pows

I think that’s one reason why the show seems disjointed. Might have been wise to delve deeper into many fewer characters. The lady spy character arc was ridiculous too.

I say watch it since there’s little new aviation content but expect it to be roughly one half or one third a saving private Ryan or BoB
 
Re: frequent turnover.
The book talks about a replacement who arrived late one afternoon. He had supper in the mess, but didn’t meet many people. The next day, he flew a mission and was killed.

They thereafter referred to him as “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

Chilling.
 
OneCharlieTango said:
Re: frequent turnover.
The book talks about a replacement who arrived late one afternoon. He had supper in the mess, but didn’t meet many people. The next day, he flew a mission and was killed.

They thereafter referred to him as “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

Chilling.
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The books that the 'Pacific' series was based on referenced similar scenarios a few times. Guy shows up in fresh dungarees and less than 24 hours later they find him face down in the coral field with a gun that was never fired. What was interesting was following the mindset of the ones that survived - at some points they felt sorry for those guys, then later they would be jealous of them, and back and forth multiple times throughout their campaign(s).

'Chilling' is a good word to describe it.
 
IMO they saved the best episode for last. My dad took part in the POW march West from Stalag Luft III so it was quite emotional for me.
 
I think the problem is while in Band of Brothers there is a lot of scope for action scenes, what can you show for bombers flying in a formation? How many shots of a gunner shooting at something can you do before it’s repetitive?

They could have done more for the red tails. Might have led to more interesting stories. But it was only one episode.
 
SebIp said:
I think the problem is while in Band of Brothers there is a lot of scope for action scenes, what can you show for bombers flying in a formation? How many shots of a gunner shooting at something can you do before it’s repetitive?
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The old "Twelve O'Clock High" TV series might be a good illustration. Most (but not all) of the episodes involved combat missions, but the main plot points were usually some member of a crew with a problem. Pilots lacking courage, bombardiers lacking confidence, gunners on the run from the law back home, family issues with other officers, woman trouble, etc. The series had several episodes set in POW camps, others set with main characters on leave, etc. Looking *just* at missions would really end up to be repetitive.

Band of Brothers did have the advantage of having largeish set of core characters who were together and survived the entire war. To stick close to history, Masters of the Air couldn't...the casualty rate was tremendous. The Munster mission highlighted this. The 100th sent out 13 B-17s. Only one came back, piloted by a rookie who asked, "Are they all this rough?" I've seen practically every flying movie ever made. Masters of the Air was, bar none, the best depiction of what it was probably like to fly unescorted daylight bomber missions over Germany. You can quibble about some of the details, but the actual experience of death and destruction and the outright horror really came out in the series.

The final episode had a nice, understated tribute to this. Buck returns from the POW camp and opens his footlocker. He takes out a $5 bill at looks at it. It's a "Short Snorter"; a predecessor to today's challenge coins where all one's buddies sign their names on the bill. Buck looks at it for a moment, and tucks it into his pocket without comment. All the men who'd signed his short snorter were probably dead.

I did like a lot of the subtle fine detail in the series. Blue heated flying suits just visible under leather B-3 jackets, Bucky being issued a later B-10 jacket after returning from the POW camp, the realistic sets and aircraft interiors, the fact that by the end of the movie you saw very few B-17s painted OD. One of my favorites is at the end of the last episode. The war is over, the Group is taxiing out to return to the States. Look carefully...NONE of the aircraft has any machine guns. Not in the turrets, not in the waist, not in the tail, not in the nose. They're not carrying that 85-pounds-per gun on a long flight home. The filmmakers could have easily used footage taken/generated for earlier scenes, but they didn't.

Certainly not at the level of Band of Brothers, but I enjoyed it.

Ron Wanttaja
 
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Just finished the last episode. Meh. Overall I give the series a C+. Not bad but could have been truly great. The Bloody 100th documentary afterwards was pretty good. Watched Greyhound as well. Not sure why I took so long to watch that. Excellent movie.
 
I’d agree with a C+/B-. But it’s 1000x better done than the John Wilkes Booth “Manhunt” series. For anyone with any sensitivity to historical inaccuracy or anachronistic dialog, “Manhunt” is unwatchable.

Maybe the issue is Apple+ originals. Are any of them good? I bought it for Masters of the Air and have only watched a few other things, none of which have been very good.
 
Jim K said:
I guess I'll watch the last episode next week because I've suffered through this far. I hope "Napoleon" and "Greyhound" (speaking of Hanks) are better, but at this point I'm no longer holding my breath.
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"Napoleon" should've been titled "Josephine"
 
Finally watched episode 9 last night; it was pretty good. It was basically what I was expecting from the series.

I'm thinking about re-watching the whole thing now that I understand who's who. If I skip all the boring and stupid parts, it should only take an hour or two.
 
Jim K said:
If I skip all the boring and stupid parts, it should only take an hour or two.
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All Apple TV shows are like that. They stretch out what should be "movie" length stories into several excruciating episodes.
 
Larry in TN said:
Have you tried For All Mankind…
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I tried it and couldn’t finish episode 1. I don’t get the fascination with entirely re-writing history to guess what may have happened had the Soviets had not just put a man on the moon, but did so before the US.
 
OneCharlieTango said:
I’d agree with a C+/B-. But it’s 1000x better done than the John Wilkes Booth “Manhunt” series. For anyone with any sensitivity to historical inaccuracy or anachronistic dialog, “Manhunt” is unwatchable.

Maybe the issue is Apple+ originals. Are any of them good? I bought it for Masters of the Air and have only watched a few other things, none of which have been very good.
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"Greyhound" is pretty good, and the reason we got Apple+ in the first place. Differs from the book, but one has to expect that, especially with a movie based on a Forester book. "The African Queen," "Sink the Bismarck," "Sailor of the King," etc.

Did miss the part where the captain compares sexual orgasm with taking his shoes off after wearing them for 72 hours straight.....

Ron Wanttaja
 
donjohnston said:
IMO, Ted Lasso is one of the best television series of all time.
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Meh. I liked Season 1 alright. It jumped the shark early in Season 2 IMHO. Someone told me Season 3 was better, so I watched one or two of those. Didn't like it at all. Somewhere along the line it became self-conscious and, dare I say, preachy.
 
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