2024-02-12 15:32:16
The bombing of Nazi submarine bunkers in Bremen, Germany, the raids on the Messerschmitt aircraft engine plant in Regensburg or the attack on the ball bearing factory in Schweinfurt were shown in the first episodes of The Lords of the Skies. The animated series tells the true fate of American airmen during the Second World War. It is broadcast by the Apple TV+ video library.
The novelty was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, the authors of the successful series of the same time Brotherhood of the Brave and The Pacific.
Vládcové nebes was created by adapting a book also published in Czech by historian Donald L. Miller. They focus on the 100th Bombardment Group, which was sent to England in the spring of 1943 to join the US 8th Air Force in the fight against the Germans. Since then, its members in Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers have carried out raids on Berlin, Hanover and Dresden. Many did not return. In total, the 8th Air Force lost over 26,000 men in the war.
The real-life heroes of Gale Cleven and John Egan, best friends nicknamed Buck and Bucky, are played by Austin Butler and Callum Turner. “I mainly felt a great responsibility. These were real heroes whose bravery knew no bounds,” says the thirty-two-year-old Butler, who recently drew attention to himself in the film playing the role of Elvis Presley.
He also spoke with the last few participants in air missions, of whom there are already around a hundred today. “What they talk about the most is how scared they were. You have to realize how young they were put under this incredible psychological pressure. I feel infinite gratitude to them because they make the world a safer place,” adds Austin Butler.
A year older colleague Callum Turner, who shone in the drama from almost the same time, The Boys in the Boat, directed by George Clooney, feels the same way. According to this actor, the miniseries shows both specific operations and the whole range of emotions experienced by the airmen.
Callum Turner as John Egan and Austin Butler as Gale Cleven. | Photo: Apple TV+
“When they took off, statistically speaking, they had a 23 percent chance of survival,” Turner mentions. “The series shows not only how unpredictable and bloody their missions were, but also how they dealt with grief and how it affected their mental and physical state,” he adds.
The miniseries features dozens of characters. One airman was played by the Irish actor Barry Keoghan, known from the films Saltburn or Fairies of Inisherin. He was already impressed by filming during the pandemic, when the crew in Great Britain shut down for ten months due to hygiene measures. When the actors on the set walked around the scenery of the 100th Bombardment Group Air Base, they came across period posters or newspaper prints, which created an even more authentic atmosphere, USA Today adds.
“On the set, everything was as realistic and detailed as if we were in a war. Jeeps were always going somewhere, extras were marching, even when the camera wasn’t rolling. You opened a drawer and there was someone’s love letter or instructions for the next mission. It really transported you back in time,” Keoghan recounts.
Apple has made four of the nine episodes available so far. Some were directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, signed under the Bond film No Time to Die or the first series of the Dark Case series. “Fukunaga knows how to convey an exhausting atmosphere in places where it can be around 45 degrees below zero. Those oppressive moments when the plane slowly flies through the air, hell rages around and the protagonists fight more with anxiety and nausea than with the enemy,” wrote critic Tomáš Stejskal about the series , according to which the adaptation seems all the more leathery on the ground. “So far, it has not been possible to properly approach the constellation of characters,” says the journalist.
The Americans, unlike the British, carried out raids during the war during the day, which is the theme of the series. Members of the US Eighth Air Force bombed, among other things, a chemical plant near Záluží u Mostu, carried out the last raid on Škodovka in Pilsen in April 1945, and dropped bombs on Prague during the raid on Dresden. Aircraft from the 100th Bombardment Group also fought dozens of German fighters in the Battle of Krušnohoří, the largest air clash over Czech territory.
The US 8th Air Force lost over 26,000 men in World War II. | Photo: Robert Viglasky
It is not yet clear whether any of these events will make it into the miniseries. Historian Miller mentions all the incidents in the book draft.
The series is executive created by John Shiban and John Orloff. But at the same time, it is a project of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who have been dealing with the Second World War since 1998. That’s when Spielberg made the Oscar-winning film Saving Private Ryan with Hanks in the lead role.
Three years later, they co-produced the miniseries Brotherhood of the Undaunted. The story of the US Army’s elite airborne division called Easy Company won a Golden Globe and seven TV Emmy Awards. And Spielberg’s father, who flew during the war, also praised him.
In 2010, Steven Spielberg and Hanks tried to follow up on the success of Brotherhood of the Undaunted with another miniseries Pacific, which was even awarded eight Emmys. “And dad liked her again. He just tells me: Why don’t you do something about pilots too?” said Steven Spielberg to the New York Times, who wanted to “remember the courage and sacrifice” of an entire generation in this way, so that it would not be forgotten. “In addition, we will get people to not only watch the series, but to start looking up the history of the Second World War on the Internet. And that was our main goal,” adds Spielberg.
His father died in 2020 at the age of 103, so he did not live to see the completion of Rulers of Heaven. Development was delayed due to, among other things, the high budget. The miniseries for 250 million dollars, which is about 5.7 billion crowns, was originally supposed to be financed by HBO, just like the Brotherhood of the Undaunted. It was eventually taken over by Apple.
Tom Hanks had a different motivation than Spielberg for another war project. “My father served as a mechanic in the Navy during the war, but he never said a single good word about him,” says the actor, who thus discovered the meaning of the Second World War himself, in the current podcast. “I was born in 1956. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I realized that all my teachers, all my parents’ friends divided their lives into three stages: before the war, after the war, and during it,” Hanks says.
According to him, at that time “practically every decent American enlisted, although of course even during the war there were people who repaired shoes or even stole”. And as soon as someone left for the front, he could only return wounded or in a coffin. “That time never ceases to fascinate me because the life of an entire generation stopped. Everyone in the world was just waiting to see if the war would end and if their lives would be able to continue again,” adds Tom Hanks.