I may fail in penning a dishy biography. Despite such an ineptitude, my aptitude takes wings on an incredibly captivating epic second World War drama, jointly produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spiewlberg.
The former being celebrated with two Academy Awards while the latter received three Oscars. Masters of the Air based on the book with the same name by historian Donald L. Miller takes the air war of the World War II over Europe to the life civility and comity of the very same team which brought “Band of Brothers”as well as that of “The Pacific” into the limelight, fuelled by the charisma and professionalism of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
With the transcendental and exalted cast which is star-spangled and stellar Hollywood nobility and majesty, Masters of the Air-the ornate and unblemished series is at last on the screen. Masters of the Air, despite its making being so long is presumably a bright and upright pedigree, treasured in the stables of Hanks and Spielberg; it predominantly lives up to the whims and fancies of the audience whilst boasting on the window of opportunities with which it is offered to set some specific calibres and standards in its very own right.
Due to a wave of causes, Masters of the Air becomes distinctively different from its predecessors. The utter most significant difference lies with its approach with an area where the 2024 series exclusively delve into a chunk of World War II which has not been taken into perusal by its antecedents.
Sense of realism
Whilst Europe and the Pacific Islands being the centre stage of Band of Brothers and the Pacific respectively, leaving its characters within North Africa, Masters of the Air swells its new enclave at the end of the episode three.
An airline pilot shares that the amount of impression that Masters of the Air generates in him is phenomenal; the show brings out a subject that is slightly beyond the comprehension of the general public and gives them an authentic sense of realism and actuality, involved in aerial warfare; the show follows the 100th bomb group of the American men, as hazardous, shaky and touchy aerial missions are shouldered by them.
Being modern does not seem to be an intention of Masters of the Air.It assiduously and simultaneously tries to withstand it. However, it snappily paves the way for an aspect of perpetuity which becomes apt and applicable for its mission.
Film critic Rebecca Nicholson, pens, “The cast list is so large that the credits are stuffed. With shots of actors, we don’t even meet until far, far into the series (Ncuti Gatwa and Bel Powley, for example) but at the heart of all is the inseparable duo of Maj John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) and Maj Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler)”.
A certain person who calls himself a historian with a series of research done on the air strikes of the time of the World War II comments that his great grandfather’s hands-on experiences during the second world war might be more or less a simple classification of the scenes involved in the Masters of the War.
Grim chapters
He notes that the show has been able to grasp and capture the breadth and width of the most grim and eerie chapters in the history of human civilization. As per some impartial critics, the show emphasis not only on the aspect of imps, fright and horror of the war but also focuses its concern on empathy, sympathy, decorum and decency of a world which was not to be dissuaded in its pursuit of democracy and freedom.
The factual and archival legitimacy of Masters of the Air is its crispness of a new behind-the-scenes featurette which showcases how flying scenes involved with B-17 were executed. Whilst narrating and relating the audacious and intrepid exploits of the 100th Bomb Group during the World War II, Masters of the Air follows a selected cohort of airmen who are both on the ground and air where a considerable amount of time is spent in the belly of a B-17 flying fortress.
A comment made by a skilled aviator of Masters of the Air states that civilizations routinely elucidate Air war as stainless and pristine as relatively compared to the mud and blood on the ground. However, the same comment remarks that the Eighth solitarily recorded more combat deaths and casualties than that of the entire Marine corps within the Pacific theatre.
The same commenter shares “Flying in tight formations in the worst weather imaginable, enduring -40˚C to -50˚C temperatures in unpressurized aircraft and fighting off waves of German fighters, the crews of the B-17s were sitting ducks. Many who weren’t killed fell to mental breakdowns”. The Bloody Hundredth, as they were known, had to experience extensive losses; Masters of the Air is not stubborn to glorify war.
Short of realism
Aerial shots within the show have significantly been focussed. However, they are mostly vulnerable for criticism over the fact that they are a bit short of realism, despite being better than the films of the calibre of Midway.
Some critics are of the view that the directors could have made more of the 100th making their command over the Atlantic. It doesn’t have the elements of such an extraordinary trip but seems to be a short trip on a ferry.
As noted by some real life flyers who have watched the stuff on TV, the formation of B-17s is said to be lacking the integral elements involved with realism as it is being compared with that of the actual pilots. The use of a replica cockpit on a gimbal on the volume was the strategy with many of the scenes that are surrounded by flying. Masters of the Air is worth watching.
