Is the Band of Brothers successor Masters of the Air worth it?

Bright blue sky, shiny steel and contrails that spread across the horizon like powdered sugar. If it weren’t for the danger of death, the picture could almost be described as pretty. In the new series Masters of the Air we sit with young Americans in the cockpit of B-17 bombers over World War II Europe. We look down on destroyed cities or straight into the muzzle flashes of fighter planes. And we fall with them into the depths. They are horrifyingly intense scenes that tear the world apart. Such dogfights have never been seen in series form.

Tom Hanks & Steven Spielberg let Masters of the Air fly

After Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air is the third war series from producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. All are based on true events. The trio illuminates Facets of the Second World War from the American perspective. In Band of Brothers (2001) we follow a paratrooper company from D-Day to victory in Europe.

In the darker series The Pacific (2010), several Marines experience the brutalization of war in the merciless fight against Japanese troops. The first series celebrated the solidarity of the Easy company. The second addressed the question of how war, as a devastating physical and psychological experience, changes people.

Masters of the Air is again looking for the traces of Band of Brothers. Co-creator John Orloff was the author of the classic series, while his colleague John Shiban co-wrote Breaking Bad. The scripts are moving Ideals of professionalism, loyalty and solidarity in the most adverse situations in the center. The friendship of the two main characters Gale Cleven (Austin Butler) and John Egan (Callum Turner) is exemplary of this. The young men of the US Air Force’s 100th Bomber Group attack military installations, industry and other targets in Nazi-occupied Europe.

You shouldn’t imagine the acrobatic trajectories from Top Gun: Maverick, but rather lumbering cruisers at 7,000 meters above sea level. The B-17 bombers are staged as diva-like “fortresses in the sky”. If you’re lucky, you’ll reach your destination without the engine stalling along the way. Then the dangerous part begins. Anti-aircraft shells as far as the eye can see, agile Messerschmitt fighters that swoop into the sky like ants on a carcass.

Austin Butler and Callum Turner form the calming center of the series

Ex-Elvis Austin Butler impresses as an aloof go-getter who stays away from his friend’s excesses and dreams of his fiancée. Sometimes you can see it in his eyes World-weariness of a Terrence Malick hero.

Callum Turner plays the war adventurer with a dashing Clark Gable memorial beard. They form the haven of calm in an ensemble that is constantly changing. However, that is how they are written. At the end you hardly know more about the quiet Cleven and the cheeky Egan than at the beginning.

Things are different for the series’ secret heroes: navigator Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle) and pilot Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal (Nate Mann). Both go through an amazing development, comparable to Damian Lewis’ main character Major Winters in Band of Brothers.

Other members of the ensemble receive too little attention. The so-called Tuskegee Airmen (including Ncuti Gatwa and Branden Cook) are the first black pilots in the segregated US military. As independent characters, however, they remain hardly tangible. While Band of Brothers took an entire episode to show the war from the perspective of a single medic, Masters of the Air sometimes gets lost in his ensemble. You can tell that the series has one fewer episode available than its two predecessors.

Flying fortresses become death traps

The dogfights in Masters of the Air are the outstanding component. On the one hand, this is due to the impressive visual effects. Added to this is the intense perspective, staged by directors like Cary Joji Fukunaga (James Bond 007 – No Time to Die).

Most of the time we and the crew are stuck in a claustrophobic, narrow steel giant that is under siege. Or crashes. Then the view goes to the burning wing, then the fear, the pulse and the screaming increase as the crew members try to save themselves from the stumbling monster with a parachute.

Masters of the Air looks similar to Band of Brothers Answers to the question of how young men can repeatedly expose themselves to this danger – and how they deal with the wounds that their bombs tear into the lives of others.

In these moments, the series easily matches the qualities of its predecessors, which is also due to the wealth of historical detail. Accuracy was one of the virtues of Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and it’s also present in the new series, based on a nonfiction book by Donald L. Miller.

Masters of the Air offers old-fashioned entertainment in a good way. This doesn’t mean the topic so much as the approach: a straightforward narrative against a huge backdrop. There are no contrived twists, no forced cliffhangers, almost no jumps in time. There is trust in stories that people write during war – and the incredibly complex effects. And this trust is usually rewarded.

The 9-episode season served as the basis for this series check. Masters of the Air launches today on Apple TV+. A new episode follows every Friday.