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I like how they knew it was D-Day because the Nazis were mad... like Nazis aren't just mad for fun.
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Mar 9, 2024 00:50
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Did they go to Nazi Costco to find the evilest looking Germans imaginable? This show really should have picked one or two storylines to stick with because it just cannot gracefully jump between one scene to the next. Pedantic me noticed a lot of really bad ADR this ep where it wasn't even close to matching the footage. Also lol that D Day was a thirty second flashback that is immediately followed by a 2-month time jump. Remember how at the end of the last episode when Rosie renews his commission that they said "we need to kill the Luftwaffe using bombers as bait"? Well it seems they defeated the Luftwaffe between episodes. The Toulon attack looked like a War Thunder match. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 00:59
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The way storylines were dropped makes me feel this was scripted for viewings to tv executives.
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Mar 9, 2024 02:08
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It drives me nuts the rockets looked like they were guided.
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Mar 9, 2024 03:07
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twistedmentat posted:It drives me nuts the rockets looked like they were guided. Yeah, especially considering the rockets were slightly better than bombs. You get like an extra few seconds of powered flight before it goes ballistic.
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Mar 9, 2024 03:47
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I dont get it why introduce a new set of characters, operating in a different theatre of the war in the 2nd to last episode? This is nonsense and a complete waste.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:01
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This was definitely the weakest episode. The show has been kind of petering out in the last few, but here it just zooms through a LOT of historical events because they need to wrap this poo poo up in one more hour.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:34
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Just LOL that we have a three day timeskip because dude was asleep
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Mar 9, 2024 05:35
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BigglesSWE posted:I’d love to see more stuff about this as well. There’s so many faucets of that night war. One of my favourite examples is how the British would hijack German intercom channels and have people fluent in German give the German night fighters confusing and misleading orders. Once the Germans caught on, they (the Germans) switched to only female radio operators. The British were fully aware they was going to happen and female radio operators ready the next day. I read the novel of a British Churchill tank commander who got fooled by a German fake radio comms pretending to be his company commander ordering him to retreat from an attack. He could actually see the German radio van doing it and was furious he couldn’t do anything about it. The US had/had several planes in Europe ready to do the same thing to the Russian forces should WW3 start, and I think did it to the Iraq forces more recently.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:56
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Cojawfee posted:Yeah, especially considering the rockets were slightly better than bombs. You get like an extra few seconds of powered flight before it goes ballistic. The AA rockets used by the Germans also had that look. Its like they didn't bother to actually look at what a WW2 rocket was like. I don't get why showing Crosby's hookup with the resistance is important. Its not like she's in a position to help the prisoners or something. With the Tuskegee Airmen, it almost feels like they had ideas for other shows and though they'd cram them in here.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:23
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The sections about the Tuskegee airmen felt like clips from a completely different show just inserted in. Even the fighter sequences didn’t seem to be as “realistic” as the bomber scenes from past episodes. Like the one pilot got shot down about 300 feet in the air and managed to bail out and pull his shoot in time; all while German troops converge on his position before he even lands. Just dumb as hell.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:26
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I absolutely cannot fathom why, based on what it looks like will be the final episode "wrap up" of all the storylines, they didn't have the Tuskagee Airmen in the show from the beginning or at least early so everything could come together. But then this whole show has been a series of,"Why didn't they do <x> instead?" where the episodes and scenes I've enjoyed have been in spite of the overall weakness of the show itself. Last week's episode ending with,"That's the mission now, we're bait to draw out the Luftwaffe and crush them" and this week's episode being,"Yeah the Luftwaffe are basically a spent force now and no longer a relevant threat" is kind of insane to me, there's at least one episode you could get out of demonstrating that. It's fascinating to armchair quarterback and think of how this show might have worked. Show them training! Make Rosie and Crosby the central characters early on or, if you're insisting on the Bucks, put the Bucks into the POW camp earlier. Introduce the Tuskagee Airmen earlier, demonstrate why so many of the POWs reacted with gratitude for the fighter support they'd been given by them during missions etc. Actually, you know, show them flying missions instead of taking off and then the wait later to see how many returned etc. After next week is done gonna take the weekend and binge back through Band of Brothers, just to remember how good a show in this setting can actually be.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:26
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Yea, I think if they just stuck to bombers and then POWs it would of been fine. Again, its like they couldn't decide on what the show was going to be about half way through.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:30
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I will say though that I loved Crosby insisting that he was okay but his words are just babbled gibberish.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:33
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I am almost positive that half-assed poo poo was included solely to head off criticism of the show having an all-white cast, and without the show's creators really caring about the black aviators' stories at all otherwise
Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 06:51
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I was that tired about twice in my whole military career and nobody gave me any good drugs. Not even once. Nobody gets the good drugs anymore these days! On a third and more notable occasion I started laughing and then couldn’t stop. I started laughing at my own laughter, then at people pointing out the absurdity of my continued mirth, then at them calling everyone else around over to the box to check up on this insane idiot and ask if they thought I was having a mental breakdown. This went on for about 2.5 hours straight without a break and by the end I was laughing at my inability to breath until I finally just wound down like a battery.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:54
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The racism conversation with the Nazi interrogator was genuinely kind of offensive and I would have almost rather they just not bothered if that's how they chose to handle it You're not going to fool me into thinking there's any kind of heartfelt emotion or meaning behind anything you have to say about these guys, writers, they were such an afterthought that they're barely even in this episode and the show will be over next week, so why are they even here? This is part of a larger problem I have with the show, which is that it just doesn't feel like there's any passion behind it. It feels like a show that was made with a checklist, get this thing out of the way, fit this in there, mark that off the list. Move on to the next thing. We have shown air combat, done, now we don't need any more action scenes, skip 'em and just tell the viewer what they would have seen. Escape and evasion sequence, check, resolve that plot offscreen. POW camp sequence, check. Normandy invasion, check, we made sure it appeared onscreen for a few seconds, mark it off and skip ahead a few days. Do the thing, resolve the thing, move on. Get it over with so we can finish the drat show and go do something else. Nothing about this show makes me feel like there were people involved who particularly wanted to be telling any of these stories. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 07:09
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still lolling that they did this but for d day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR_Dx0PIvwc&t=44s
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Mar 9, 2024 07:38
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I felt the interrogation scene was pretty clearly meant to parallel Egan's interrogation a few weeks back. Except this time there's no ambiguity with how much the Nazis know about individual pilots because the focus is more on the racism and how the interrogator is obviously making poo poo up. And then have a heroic "America is the best country because we try to be better" statement from a Tuskegee pilot, of course. Eau de MacGowan posted:still lolling that they did this but for d day: If you want D-Day you need to watch the other parts of the Band of Brothers Cinematic Universe. It's like Marvel, I can't wait for the crossover team up movie where Dick Winters, James Francis Ryan, Eugene Sledge and Buck Cleven team up to fight Ultron Hitler. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 07:58
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Major Major Major posted:The sections about the Tuskegee airmen felt like clips from a completely different show just inserted in. Even the fighter sequences didn’t seem to be as “realistic” as the bomber scenes from past episodes. Like the one pilot got shot down about 300 feet in the air and managed to bail out and pull his shoot in time; all while German troops converge on his position before he even lands. Just dumb as hell. I think i remember seeing somewhere the hard deck for a fighter bailout in 1945 was about 1000 feet, the chutes probably had a 200-300 foot drop from pull to full canopy..
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Mar 9, 2024 08:20
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Arc Hammer posted:I felt the interrogation scene was pretty clearly meant to parallel Egan's interrogation a few weeks back. Except this time there's no ambiguity with how much the Nazis know about individual pilots because the focus is more on the racism and how the interrogator is obviously making poo poo up. I for one appreciated Stalag Luft - anyone whose not aware of it would assume the Nazi's would use torture and be evil about it, but the guy's a nice guy who just asks questions, has information already and doesn't pressure them much. (Note they did do some things like make the cells very hot and cold to make individuals miserable). The interrogator's knew a lot about the Pilot's already, they didn't need to make it up. Eg- they could work out the squadron because the fake ID all the crews had, had been taken the same day with the same civilian clothes, so you know they were all from that same squadron. Also skipping the scene I expected of the Black pilots suffering racism directly (and I liked the bombers POW's saying welcome we loved you guys for protecting us) which was nice - we've seen that enough in other movies. I do think they needed a scene of some bomber crews seeing the red tails and being relived about it and some action shots of them doing it. I did think spending multiple scenes in the POW camp on "how to kill a German with a piece of wood and table fork" was unnecessary, but must have been much cheaper to film. And I can't see how you can do a naval pacific war level - just keep it on the Guadalcanal campaign which goes from losing/losing/draw/win with Cruisers, DD's, PT boats (hell, dedicate one episode to a future US President) , carriers, battleships (including the pulling out the hat win of Washington at night) and finally winning with DD's again. Then make the point at the end this is the first campaign after 6 months of losing and there's another 3 years to go...
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Mar 9, 2024 08:23
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Comstar posted:
Yeah, it's a bit of a disservice. But they were probably a bit of a myth for anyone outside of the 15th bomber group. The Airforce wouldn't have been putting them on media tours.
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Mar 9, 2024 08:33
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Stegosnaurlax posted:I think i remember seeing somewhere the hard deck for a fighter bailout in 1945 was about 1000 feet, the chutes probably had a 200-300 foot drop from pull to full canopy.. I'm glad goons aren't in charge of adapting historical accounts into cinematic experiences.
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Mar 9, 2024 09:21
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Like everyone else, I am sincerely puzzled by some of the choices made by the production here. Skip black thursday, skip big week, 8 seconds of d-day, but rando british spy, etc all get a lot of screen time.
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Mar 9, 2024 09:36
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I wonder how much of this was down to there already being delays and them just wanting to put stuff on film just to have things to go in the show. Why did we need to see Westgate doing spy stuff at all? It seems to have nothing to do with the air war, at least directly. But they had that train setup for the two guys who escaped back to England, so just throw Westgate on that train and have a nazi check her papers all angry like. Then have her walk around a town and look at nazis at a cafe. Maybe this all leads to her getting some vital information for the bombers for the final episode, but I would rather have spent that time watching bombers take out German positions on D-Day. Or poo poo, if they are going to have the Tuskegee airman, show them doing something more than flying some P-40s for a bit, then P-51s for a bit and then crashing. I was kind of annoyed by goons making GBS threads on this show earlier on in the season because I figured it was probably building to something later. But it feels like we've already seen all the amazing things and now they are just wrapping up the war as quickly as they can. Hopefully Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks are done with WWII movies after this, because I can't even begin to imagine how lovely and low effort their next project would be. As far as the Tuskegee guys showing up at the camp, it seems to have been a mixture of reactions from some people saying "what are they doing here" and getting some bigoted jabs in but it seems like most people appreciated them because of what they had done for bombers.
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Mar 9, 2024 10:05
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Note: the Luftwaffe died on the way back to its home planet. I agree with a lot of what's been said, but for me the most baffling aspect of the show is the fact that the majority of the air combat scenes were crammed into the first four episodes. Even if everything else is cliched, you would expect that at the very least a big budget WWII air combat show would build to a couple of big action sequences in the latter part of its run. I read a couple of reviews that discussed the show's shortcomings but emphasised how tense and impressive the action is and it's obvious that they were just shown the first few episodes.
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Mar 9, 2024 10:09
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Jehde posted:I'm glad goons aren't in charge of adapting historical accounts into cinematic experiences. That wasn't typed with confidence, i was hoping someone would correct it
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Mar 9, 2024 10:12
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With how much time they spent trying to get that guy's tanks to drop, I'm surprised they didn't include 30 seconds on "Make sure you get above 1000 feet for your chute to open you're at 900 right now"
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Mar 9, 2024 10:14
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yeah echoing the above posts, 100% this season displays visible and explicit signs of being in development hell.
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Mar 9, 2024 10:30
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Cojawfee posted:I wonder how much of this was down to there already being delays and them just wanting to put stuff on film just to have things to go in the show. Why did we need to see Westgate doing spy stuff at all? I'm gonna be really cynical and say that this series was heavily reworked during one of the rounds of delays, and one of these late decisions was that the show needed to include a greater diversity of characters and viewpoints. But they've implemented these characters it in such a way that emphasizes their tokenism. Very frustrating, but pretty typical of the way that these committee driven productions end up going.
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Mar 9, 2024 10:35
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Talk about the D-Day timeskip made me remember how Dinklage‘s character was knocked out during that first big battle in GoT and it was this hilarious kinda reveal from what I remember, but it wasn’t played like that here at all, but could just about have worked if done right. We also rarely ever see the bombing aftermaths, I wonder if that’s also what made the show relatively affordable. Stuff like BoB couldn’t have been cheap but doing similar cause & effect stuff with a show like this sounds impossible. While i do agree that basically each storyline could’ve been its own show I also don’t regret watching it at all, the actors and everything are still pretty good.
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Mar 9, 2024 10:44
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The whole Tuskegee thing is frustrating because in a better show it could have worked quite well. Getting a look at how a raid pans out from the escorts' side of things could be a great complement to the bombers' perspective, and while you're at it you might as well use a unit with historical significance like the Tuskegee. The whole thing with using the bombers as bait for the Luftwaffe could have have been illustrated really well by following the perspective of some fighters as they pounce upon Luftwaffe interceptors at their airfields while a raid is ongoing. But instead of fighter pilots being awesome in the air we get fighter pilots being sad on the ground.
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Mar 9, 2024 11:00
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I suspect after the first 4 episodes they ran out of time and money for Much like the 8th Air Force did boom boom.
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Mar 9, 2024 13:17
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I thought Pacific sucked but this was even worse. Really bad writing, every episode with at least one ARE BOYS moment. The flying scenes looked fine in general but were kinda dumb under closer scrutiny (gunners ID'ing German planes down to the model from few kms away, Mustang escorts behaving completely unrealistically, etc.). Don't think I'll bother watching the last episode.
Terminally Bored fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 13:50
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Cojawfee posted:With how much time they spent trying to get that guy's tanks to drop, I'm surprised they didn't include 30 seconds on "Make sure you get above 1000 feet for your chute to open you're at 900 right now" They already had a math lesson during the tuskeegee mission briefing scene.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:17
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I still like the show and look forward to new episodes every week, but yeah, it’s clearly the weakest by far of the BoB/Pacific/MotA trilogy. It really feels like this show got hamstrung by COVID/development hell/budgets because it’s all over the place. Including the Tuskeegee Airmen in the last two episodes just feels random and does them a huge disservice to their stories and accomplishments IMO, especially when the only action you see of them is getting shot down. I feel like if this series just cut out a lot of the random plot lines (magic French resistance escape/Bing Crosby cheating on his wife with quirky Agent Carter etc.) and used that to focus on the dual plot lines of the 100th and Tuskeegee Airmen from the start, it would be a much stronger show. You get the perspective of the air war from both the bomber and fighter perspectives, and the two plot lines converging at Stalag Luft has a much bigger impact.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:21
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I generally think this kind of show benefits from having the ensemble in close proximity to one another. Which is to say it'd be a good idea to tell a story about the Tuskegee boys or the Hundred, rather than both -- certainly given the struggles this show has already demonstrated in terms of characterisation and focus, splitting the show even further would only exacerbate already existing problems.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:31
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The interrogation of the black pilots (in particular the one who talks about his hopes for America) and the way it handled the racism stuff felt really really weird, like 50's-era whitewash propaganda weird I first really started sniffing something off during Rosie's 3rd mission, where - in planes going at least 250 mph - minutes after all the other bombers are shot down you have all the bomber crew looking around. Searching for their planes. Which is how I imagined it being directed, like 'you don't see anything' Then you have all this wing debris and the like raining down all around them like they are going through a B17 parts rainstorm, and all those parts are somehow still maintaining the same forward momentum as a 4-engine bomber going at full tilt and the crew is showing no reaction to it whatsoever, because it was a terrible post decision It just kind of got stupider from there
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Mar 9, 2024 15:40
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It feels like they were still writing the script while filming because there's a definite shift after the Munster episode. Three episodes up to that point covered bombing missions that occurred over a single week in October 1943. After that it feels like they lost track of whatever plotline they wanted to roll with and so then started adding fifteen different plotlines to make it a show about the Air War at large, rather than the 100th Bomb Group's role in it. So you get stuff like the OSS Agents who dropped into France from bombers and Lysanders (neither of which is shown), or you get the POW experience with reference to the Great Escape (not shown but fair enough they were commonwealth escapees), or the Rüsselsheim Massacre (a year early and no B24s because no bombers exist in this show that aren't B17Fs) to show german civilian casualties from the firebombings, or the switch to Doolittle's Kill The Luftwaffe plan to clear the skies (not shown), or the allied escape routes (started and then resolved with an anticlimax), or the efforts of the Tuskeegee Airmen (in the second to last episode with a grand total of two flight scenes). I'm sure if the Military Channel wanted a docudrama covering the whole air war they'd love it but this switch from tight focus to broad canvas clearly strained a show that was already sagging under its own weight.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:48
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The 1995 Tuskegee Airmen movie is better in every way. It even has real airplanes throughout.
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Mar 9, 2024 17:06
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