Masters of the Air

Masters of the Air quickly becomes mired in its own cliched sentimentalism.

Back slapping jokery characterisations are the norm. Airmen who are at the same time overconfident but somehow, inexplicably wise. Its unconvincing, as is the general sense of longing, for a rose coloured vision of a war time past, that never existed.

Growing up I knew a man who fought in WWII and for a time had the unfortunate job of cleaning the bombers after a mission. What he told me about what was left in a plane after a bad mission was simply horrific. In fact, a lot worse than what we see depicted here. Although, in fairness, this series does at least make an effort to demonstrate, to a degree, the awfulness of war.

That said, this series feels in most respects, more like a pitch for glory rather than the grisly, depressing reality of conflict and I, for one, find it rather inappropriate. Especially given the spread of very serious conflicts, in the world today.

On the upside the acting is of a high standard, if somewhat hamstrung by the at times cheesy, cliched characterisations and associated narrative.

The real stand out in this series goes to its special effects, which can only be described as "amazing". A heck of a lot of money has been spent here and it really shows.

In summary, if the treatment had been more down to earth, realistic and steered away from glorifying war, this series could have been been a more meaningful and compelling watch. As it stands, to this reviewer, it comes across as yet another pro military poster child. Something the current war torn world, could well do without.

Was really hoping for a factually accurate representation of Air Combat in WW2, but what I was presented with (and in fairness I'm only 2 episodes in, so it might improve) is a massive bunch of revisionist, pro-American, anti-English/British nonsense that spends more time portraying squadrons, for want of a better word, "fannying around" than actually flying.

The performance of most of the actors is terrible, especially the two main characters. Austin Butler seems to have forgotten he's not playing Elvis anymore and has the same mannerisms and woeful underacting. This is only beaten by Callum Turner's hideous overacting. The only one that puts in a semi-noteworthy performance is Barry Keoghan.

The plot then spends precisely zero time building the main characters up during training like Band of Brothers, or even their pre-military lives. As a result, I just have no emotional investment in any of them. I don't care about them.

Also, the writers have fallen into the trap of creating the main characters like they seem to with a lot of modern characters. That is, they've been written to be overly cool, confident, super accomplished, "Mary Sue's" that can do no wrong and win at everything they do. The writers have created people that they think the audience wants to see, but that just then makes them totally unrelatable. An example of this is where a fight starts in a pub with the British. The British pilot starts it, of course. The American pilots who, until this point, are portrayed as being overly confident, brash, and trying too hard to be cool, immediately switch personalites with the British who, until this point portrayed as, reserved, timid, and just in awe of the Americans in general. All of a sudden, the Americans become the ones that want to just mind their own business, are reserved and cool; while the portrayal of the RAF pilots are obnoxious, pompous, arrogant, and abrasive. Naturally, the American pilot utterly humiliates the British pilot by d...