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In one episode of the new World War II epic Masters of the Air, a character collapses from exhaustion and sleeps through the events of D-Day, which were so memorably dramatized in Saving Private Ryan. In another, we realize that several characters are being held in the same POW camp that was the subject of the classic Sixties film The Great Escape, and that our heroes had no idea the escape was happening until well after the fact.
That iconic parts of twofamous WWII movies happen between scenes of Masters of the Air isn’t a problem in and of itself. Steven Spielberg, who reteams as producer with Tom Hanks for a follow-up to Band of Brothers and The Pacific (this time for Apple TV+ instead of HBO), already made Private Ryan, after all. But it’s emblematic of a larger issue with the new project, where key story points and character arcs keep occurring offscreen.
Adapted by Band veteran John Orloff from the book by Donald L. Miller, Masters tells the story of the 100th Bomb Group, a unit of soldiers who performed bombing raids over Germany. Their planes are called B-17 Flying Fortresses, even though they seem awfully vulnerable on missions that are considered successful if half of the crews return alive. (Once, only a single plane makes it back.)
Early on, one pilot complains that a friend didn’t warn him about how horrifying each flight would be. “I didn’t know what to say,” the friend admits. “You’ve seen it now.” But the first pilot replies, “I don’t know what I saw.” This is a consistent problem with Masters. We can tell what’s happening, since the aerial battles are gorgeous (albeit blatantly CGI-generated at times), but not always to whom it’s happening. Band sometimes ran into trouble distinguishing between a bunch of pasty guys wearing the same uniform. To that, Masters adds oxygen masks and flight caps — authentic gear that nonetheless takes away a lot of power from the combat sequences, because it’s impossible to keep track of who just got wounded, or even which plane we’re currently seeing.
It’s a running gag that best pals Gale Cleven (Austin Butler) and John Egan (Callum Turner) are nicknamed Buck and Bucky, respectively. But in general, the soldiers are so interchangeable that they may as well all be called Bucky. Even when we can see their faces and hair, they’re defined by one character trait, maybe two. Buck is easygoing and wants to get back to the girlfriend he left behind. Curt (Barry Keoghan) is … from New York? Rosie (Nate Mann) becomes the central character for a while, but only after being introduced in a rush, and being a complete blank outside of being overly dedicated to the job. Crosby (Anthony Boyle) suffers from airsickness and low self-esteem, and doubles as our narrator,yet we understand him no more deeply than the others. Bucky is the most compelling, largely because of the big Adam Driver energy Turner is giving as the kind of swaggering alpha male America doesn’t make as much these days.Butler, a bigger star than these Hanks/Spielberg productions have had in the past, is aiming for some kind of vintage Hollywood leading man stoicism without quite getting there. (Buck seems like a good hang, but an underwhelming male lead.) And Keoghan feels like the most plausibly Forties guy of the bunch, but doesn’t get nearly enough to do.
Where Band perhaps had too many characters, it was still telling a contained story about a single company of paratroopers. As Masters continues, the story has to split its focus between the 100th’s missions, downed crew members trying to evade capture in France, various friends winding up in that Great Escape Stalag together, someone doing intelligence work with the French underground, and more. The penultimate episode introduces the Tuskegee Airmen, a hallowed group of Black fighter pilots (one played by new Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa, barely given any dialogue, much less a character to play), who were fighting battles in a completely different part of the continent from the 100th. It’s admirable in theory that these previously all-white productions are trying to be more inclusive in whose stories are told. But the Tuskegee pilots are brought in so late — and are so tangential — that it plays as tokenism. By trying to tell so many different stories at once, Masters does a disservice to almost all of them. When people make big decisions, we’re often left guessing as to why. And when some of them don’t survive a mission, it doesn’t sting that much because we barely knew them.
Parts of it are absolutely stunning to look at, and parts are emotionally effective — pure, uncut, “my, it’s getting dusty in here,” Dad TV. So this is less a misfire than a disappointment. Band has become an annual viewing tradition for many. The Pacific is too harrowing to invite that kind of repeat viewing, but once is all you need to appreciate how powerfully its story is told. Masters of the Air ultimately lacks the adventurous spirit of the former and the emotional gravity of the latter. Unlike the precision bombardiers of the 100th, it only occasionally hits its target.
The first two episodes of Masters of the Air begin streaming January 26 on Apple TV+, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen all nine.
