The novel The Wave dates from 1981 and is popular teaching material, especially in Germany, due to its theme. The story about the seemingly controlled rise of authoritarian rule in this country has already been filmed twice. The excellent thriller with Jürgen Vogel from 2008 is on TV today. But do you remember the Netflix series with almost the same name?
The plot of the film: This is what The Wave is about
The wave takes place in an anonymous small German town: At the local high school, the popular history teacher Rainer Wenger (Jürgen Vogel) wants to spice up a project week on the subject of autocracy. He therefore sets up a social experiment.
Constantine film
The wave
Wenger introduces a stricter teaching tone and uniform teaching clothing, has the students march together and indoctrinates them with an anti-anarchist ideology. Critical voices are excluded. Actually, Wenger just wants to show how easily a movement like National Socialism could prevail today. But the experiment slips away.
The Netflix series We are the Wave failed
Four years ago, the series We Are the Wave was released on Netflix, loosely based on the Novel The Wave by Morton Rhue * and the first film adaptation from 2008. Director Dennis Gansel was once again involved in the production.
We are the wave – S01 Trailer (German) HD
But the differences between the film and the Netflix series are huge: in the original, a history teacher uses authoritarian methods to teach his students about the dangers of fascism. In We Are the Wave, a young offender creates a protest group that can be assigned to the left-wing extremist spectrum.
And the reviews also varied widely: The film gets a 6.8 on Moviepilot. At 4.6 points, the series is even below the 5 mark. In our review we wrote in 2019: “We are the wave is as clumsy as a Facebook comment column”.
Streaming or TV: When and where is Die Welle running?
One shows Die Welle today at 8:15 p.m. There is no repeat, but you can stream the film on Netflix. Just like the new edition of the series, although we recommend the film.
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