Review of the series “Lords of the Air”

The mini-series Masters of the Air has started streaming on Apple TV+ – a production project by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, completing the military-historical trilogy begun by Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific. (2010). The scale, but not the humanity of the show impressed Yulia Shagelman.

When Steven Spielberg finished directing Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan (1998), they realized there was still a lot of World War II history they wanted to tell. And both became producers of the series “Band of Brothers” about American paratroopers who went from training camp through the Normandy landings and many battles to the very end of the war. The show, which aired on HBO at the dawn of television’s new golden age, became a huge success and is still included on numerous lists of the best TV series of all time.

The tougher, bloodier and less romantically patriotic sequel “The Pacific Ocean” about the Marines was no longer such a success with viewers. Perhaps for this reason, and also because of the incredible budgets for television – the amount invested in “Masters of the Air” eventually grew to almost $300 million – HBO abandoned the third part of this saga, and it was picked up by Apple TV+.

His heroes were the American pilots of the B-17 “flying fortresses”, based in England and from there making combat sorties over occupied European countries, and then Germany, to bomb Nazi military targets. The last circumstance is especially emphasized by the authors: while the British Air Force flew at night and carried out carpet bombing, the Americans adhered to the tactics of “precision bombing” in daylight. This led to huge losses, due to which the 100th Bomber Group, whose works and days are shown in the series, was nicknamed the “Bloody Hundred”: from 1943 to 1945, 77% of its personnel died or were captured.

The air battles in “The Lords of…” are reproduced with a completely cinematic, rather than television, scale and with the most meticulous attention to detail. All rivets, flaps, levers and fuselages are carefully reconstructed, and if some four pixels fly in the far left corner of the screen, then by bringing them closer, you can be sure that this is exactly the Junkers who participated in this particular battle, with the correct tail number and a scratch on the wing. At the same time, directors and cameramen manage to create the effect of presence – as if the audience, along with the pilots, are inside the plane, which is being fired upon both from the ground and from the air.

Alas, the pilots, gunners, bombardiers, and so on in the overall picture received much less attention. Their individuality disappears into a sea of ​​uniform leather jackets, caps, helmets and oxygen masks. Perhaps this fully reflects the reality of military service, as well as the fact that characters die in batches before we have time to remember their names. But what could be a strong dramatic device in a feature film, in a series that requires ten hours of attention from the viewer, makes it difficult to establish an emotional connection with the characters and notice what is happening to them, and not to the war machines they control.

This is all the more offensive because the new male generation of “British communal” actors is playing here, almost in full force and the cream of young Hollywood. Several performers can still be singled out, although they were given more types than three-dimensional characters, despite the fact that each of them had a historical prototype. For example, Major Gail “Buck” Cliven (Austin Butler) is a reserved and silent excellent combat training student, while his best friend, also a Major, John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) is a drinker, rowdy and joker. and Lt. Curtis Biddick (Barry Keoghan). And if Bucky nevertheless changes over the course of nine episodes under the influence of military hardships, then the other two remain within the given framework.

The navigator Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle) is endowed with a little more complexity of character – perhaps the most suitable to be called the main character (he is the voice-over of the series). He is immediately remembered due to the air sickness that torments him in the first episodes, and then emotional experiences will be added to this. Somewhere in the middle of the story, after the rotation, Major Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal (Nate Mann) appears – the same ace at the helm as Buck and Bucky, but also endowed with post-traumatic disorder, as well as his personal account with the Nazis. However, “The Lords…” tries so hard to fit all the characters into the allotted time, and there are more than three hundred of them, that individual lines turn out to be completely dotted. Like, say, the division of black “Tuskegee Airmen” who for some reason appear in the last episodes, although the creators of the show have basically nothing to say about them. The authors’ sincere admiration for their heroes is felt in every frame. But the first thing on their minds is still airplanes.