User Reviews

austin butler with his smug elvis face during every scene is just so hard to watch. everyone else was ok. the storyline is confusingand the action scenes so fast, you dont get anything that happens and thrm they land. repeat.

The battles are riveting and the stories are real. It's hard to believe that these pilots went into the air with no heat, no cabin pressure, oxygen masks and barely any protection against flak with a low survivability rate. The only minor critique I had was the main cast of supermodel dudes constantly mugging for the camera who know how good looking they are. Probably only thing the brought down the realism.

Masters of the Air is a good short military series from Apple TV+. A kind of version of Band of Brothers about pilots. But here the cast is much more modest, and the story with the drama is simpler. But against the background of how in recent years they have been filming about the war, and even more so the Second World War, Masters of the Air has almost no competitors. A good simple story based on historical facts. The action scenes are not bad, CGI looks at a solid level. The story is somewhat protracted. But I liked that the final story was already shown on earth and in Germany, which is in agony. The topic with concentration camps was partially covered (worthy of respect) and Russians were not shown as pigs (surprisingly). Masters of the Air is a good series for its audience, but it is extremely small. I think Apple will not release similar projects on its platform soon.

Chock full of historical detail, this is the capstone series to the exploration of WWII by Spielberg and Hanks (the others being Band of Brothers and The Pacific). It's an incredible drama with nail-biting action that once again demonstrates why the Americans who fought in WWII were the Greatest Generation, for not only their bravery, but their morality.

I was a bit disappointed with this series as it could have had so much potential. The cinematography was a hit or miss, ofcourse the planes up in the air were wonderfully depicted but the rest was kind of flat. The script and actors were one dimensional not worked out well, which made you not care for them as much whether they survive the war or not. The squad leaders tried so hard, but they looked like teenage kids with moustaches sticked on and were told to act tough, if that was intended, then they did a good job. It didn't had that authentic comradery as in other shows like Band of Brothers. The show was too Hollywood coded with alot of cliches and wasn't heartfelt.

Band of Brothers it sure aint. The excessive aggrandisement, emulating movies with such things as extravagant intros and very long credits in some cases accounting for 10% of the show's run time is just off-putting. There is something about the show that just does not "click". It never feels like 1943 and the feelings displayed by the characters just seems like an act or unnatural. Seems more like a midday melodrama than a show depicting a unit at war in WW2.

It amazes me that Apple TV makes such atrocious television shows. Predictable, boring, badly acted, badly scripted, ridiculous side plots what an embarrassment for everyone involved.

This is by far the worst of the 3. 2 story lines get dropped out of nowhere. The Red Tails are shoehorned in. And HOW DO YOU HAVE PERFECT HAIR IN A POW CAMP?!?! Don't waste your time.

'Masters of the Air' feels like a pastoral throwback with modern blockbuster production values and tense, terrifying, explosive action. My only gripe is it feels a bit light on character development, but this a good effort from all involved.

Giving it a 6 for Band of brothers and The pacific's sake. Otherwise it is generally disappointing in terms of character depth,sense of urgency and nuances in the core struggle, which makes the show pale terribly in comparison to its two way superior predecesors.

Serie magnífica sobre la segunda guerra mundial y el 100th grupo de bombarderos de la octava fuerza aérea. Muy intensa, con mucha atención al detalle, aunque tiene algunos errores, pero te hace sentir lo que era subirse a un B-17 en 1943 e intentar bombardear Alemania. Los últimos episodios pasan muy rápido para llegar al final de la guerra y se nota, y se desplaza más a los prisioneros de guerra que al bombardeo en sí. Muy recomendada si te gustan, como a mí, los aviones y el combate aéreo.

Definitely worth the watch til the end. After a couple episodes I almost gave up because it was getting repetitive. But, hang in there, it gets better and better all the way to the end imo. Just amazing what those young men were able to endure and accomplish.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg were behind the WWII shows Band of Brothers and The Pacific. They created this new series that looks at American bombers flying missions to destroy targets in German-occupied Europe. As expected, there's an enormous cast of young men, led by Callum Turner and Austin Butler. Sadly, so many characters mean that none of them get much focus. As a result, there's little real concern about the men and sometimes a question of who they are. The only exception would be the few who parachute behind enemy lines, but that's a small part of the story. The group scenes are often energetic, but cluttered without much narrative drive. What does stand out is the combat footage. Every episode revolves around a mission and the expected calamities, injuries and deaths that occur. The footage is often riveting, esp. with the speed of the aerial encounters. However, when this experience happens every episode, it loses some of the impact. Ultimately the whole thing becomes rather flat, lacking much depth in the characters and one blazing battle after another. (Review based on 6 of 9 one-hour eps)

When will we stop getting these war based productions that keep revolving around the same kind of characters... It all feels just silly at this point and Austin Butler cannot stop posing and making faces instead of building the character

Takes time to become relevant, but by third episode it becomes a devastating view of the sacrifice of war on all of us.

It's all a bit too shiny. A bit too wholesome. The boys are all too pretty. It's like an ad for Wranglers or Budweiser or some cologne.

(No idea why a bunch of words that shouldn't be censored, are. Truly, they're regular, non-offensive words) Really 7.5, but I'll round up. 4 episodes in, it's a truly mixed experience. The expectations for this show were sky-high, and to be perfectly frank, it really comes nowhere near those lofty forecasts. First, the good. The Aesthetics - They built two B-17's from scratch for this series. I'm not an aviation enthusiast, but I still really appreciate the little things and accuracies regarding basically the entire look of the show. The insignias and uniforms and planes and everything is super accurate. Which meshes into the second point Historicity - These missions aren't really in the mainstream consciousness regarding WWII, and it's an important and often overlooked part of the war. There's certain unknown instances where artistic license is warranted, but overall they did painstaking research and it shows. Acting - Although many characters lack depth, overall the cast does a commendable job. Now the bad. Comprehension - Not sure how they could have gotten around this, but it's near impossible to tell what is going on exactly during the air battle scenes. They all look like generic dopplegangers anyway, but then you put their masks on, and especially if a plane goes down, you just have no idea to whom it happened. And even on the ground, the flow of time is not smooth. It all contributes to a rather muddled viewing experience. The characters - One of the things about Band of Brothers was the obvious said brotherhood. There's some closeness between the brothers Buck and Bucky, and Crosby is an engaging figure. But most of the characters you barely get introduced to before they have their masks obfuscating their faces, and then they get shot down. There's just no emotional investment whatsoever. It's almost puzzling how indifferent some of these scenes make you feel, as there's intense, historical dogfights going on. And the casualty rate for the 100th was atypically high, so there's going to be a lot of 'unimportant' (in terms of these characters we are following) people who die. But everyone is so one-dimensional, most are like StarTrek redshirts. The Script - I wish this wasn't so, but the script is flat and full of **** a lot of it is purely expository. Some general we hear about but have never seen thinks poorly of the squadron, as we hear not infrequently. But we have yet to see this figure. I don't know what it is about the 1940's, but it seems like one of the hardest decades of the 20th century to not fall into tropes and cliches. Of which both Buck and Bucky certainly are. Buck is wooden as wooden can be, and he just scowls and stares stoically all the time. Butler does a good enough job given the material, but man - that material is paper thin. And Bucky - I guess the character supposed to give us levity? He's a cliche womanizing pilot from the 1940's with a clark gable mustache (many have this who comes across as pure caricature. Honestly, I wish I knew the backstory on the historical figure more, because it just seems unlikely he would be a Major, given his **** CGI - It's not all bad, and mixed with the tangible, built B-17's, it often looks quite impressive. But not all the time, and sometimes it looks like a video game or (shudders) Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Particularly when they show CGI people, parachuters and the like.I frankly don't know if we will ever perfect CGI enough to where it doesn't look cheesy ot like a video game, and even though it's cheaper, it makes it look much cheaper as well.Overall, this series is certainly worth seeing. Especially if you are interested in WWII and liked BoB, The Pacific, and Saving Private Ryan. But it's far from perfect, and sometimes the flaws take a nosedive.

Nowhere near as good as the incredible Band of Brothers and excellent The Pacific. The characters are only briefly introduced and not given any depth so its hard to get fully invested in their stories, they are just here one minute gone the next with no time to learn about who they were. Also there is too much CGI and most of the battle scenes have the look of a computer game so there is no tension or excitement as its all fake. BoB really worked well as the characterisation was really strong and there were a lot of practical effect battles, Masters of the Air is all green screen or done in a computer so has none of that gritty realism of WW2. Its not bad and I will keep watching, but not a patch on BoB.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Incredible casting and such an interesting story. We are on the edge of our seat every episode!

Fine, but uncompelling, due to the lacklustre characters and seeing repeated bombing runs just isn't that interesting as a scenario.

There are few things better than a good World War II miniseries. The outstanding combat sequences give us an intriguing idea of how it felt to be in a B-17 bomber during a European bombing raid. I'm looking forward to seeing the characters develop. My only real complaint is that I can't binge-watch the series. I hate waiting an entire week.