In order to truly get a feel for this series, one needs to see all seven of the episodes (each of which tops 60 min), preferably in as few sittings as possible. That's nearly eight hours of plot that boils down to this:
1. Bored soldiers shooting the breeze. 2. Endless briefings littered with military lingo followed by endless radio communication littered with military lingo. 3. Five minutes of (usually random and mission-unrelated) action. 4. Bored soldiers shooting the breeze.
I know the point of Generation Kill is to realistically depict what war really looks like when you're a 21st century Marine in a technologically vastly superior army, but does one really need 8 h of it to get the point? Each episode looks EXACTLY the same, and it gets old by the time you sit down to watch the 4th one.
We follow a group of Marines on their way to Baghdad, expecting a grand finale in the 7th episode. But it never occurs. The war is already over by the time they reach it, so they just get there, detonate one leftover bomb, and go home. Nice to see where gazillions of dollars and years of training went to. But kudos for showing the reality as is.
At the same time, realism is also what this series has got going for it (it's just that no one needs 8 h of the same old, same old). We see Marines going on the ever-changing and often pointless/contradictory/inconsequential missions in their Humvees, which any regular could have performed just as well, and which are usually more suited for tanks and LAVs. As one Marine remarks: "We are finely-tuned Ferraris in a demolition derby". Yet there's very little concrete combat shown in each episode. And that's my major gripe with it. Maybe HBO didn't want to spend millions of dollars on pyrotechnics, or maybe it didn't feel necessary to turn their series into a "Saving Pvt. Ryan"-style action. But it would have been nice to see more of what all those mission briefings and radio talk amounted to in each episode. As it stands, it feels anticlimactic. But I guess that was the idea: realism. Missions don't look like the D-Day or the "Call of Duty". They're routine and boring.
Also, there's almost no plot: the whole series feels more like a mess of little snapshots and events, or notes written in a diary, often jumping from one scene to another pretty haphazardly. But - I guess that was the idea.
There's also an overabundance of characters. It takes you a few episodes to link the names with the faces and remember just who's who exactly, since they all pretty much look the same and few stand out. But I guess that's army.
The in-between-mission juvenile antics and banal talk are often interspersed with faux-philosophizing about the war in general, with lines such as:
"If you kill people in peacetime, you end up in jail. But here you get a medal for it".
No sh#t, Captain Obvious.
And that's where the viewer boredom really starts to set in. Once again, there's nothing wrong with it per se, but when you stretch it out across all seven episodes and lace it with minimum action, it gets old. This would've made for a powerful two-part series, but then I guess it wouldn't have imparted what it's supposed to, and that's the fact that for these guys war was pretty boring. Not a novelty in and of itself, but realism can never get overrated.
On the other hand, I find the understated (and often absurd) humor to be a nice touch. For instance, although they're fighting in a desert, the Marines are issued forest camouflage. They can't get the command to send them batteries for their night vision goggles, so they trade pictures of their girlfriends with another platoon to get them. Etc, etc.
There's also an over-the-top, Sgt.-Hartman-from-the-"Full Metal Jacket"-like sergeant(?), who provides additional comic relief with his obsession about the grooming standard, unleashing streams of red-faced, heavy-accented fury upon soldiers if their mustache are longer than their lip edges or their shirts aren't tucked in.
Also, unlike in any other war movie, soldiers are shown as humans and not robots, who (surprise, surprise) need to empty their bladder or take a dump once in a while. Or jack off. The amount of times someone is shown taking a dump is almost ridiculous, but I like the realism and the underlying humor of it.
To wind up this run-on comment, I'd like to cite the Captain, who said: "I'm not afraid of the Iraqis - I'm more afraid of doing something that would displease the General."
And that sums up rather nicely what being in the army is all about.
So, a realistically-produced series that is often more than the sum of its parts. But that's not a bad place to be. With a Hollywood budget, this would've been epic. But then it would've been spoiled by cartoonish heroes and patriotic self-aggrandizement. So, come to think of it, it's just fine as is.
1. Bored soldiers shooting the breeze. 2. Endless briefings littered with military lingo followed by endless radio communication littered with military lingo. 3. Five minutes of (usually random and mission-unrelated) action. 4. Bored soldiers shooting the breeze.
I know the point of Generation Kill is to realistically depict what war really looks like when you're a 21st century Marine in a technologically vastly superior army, but does one really need 8 h of it to get the point? Each episode looks EXACTLY the same, and it gets old by the time you sit down to watch the 4th one.
We follow a group of Marines on their way to Baghdad, expecting a grand finale in the 7th episode. But it never occurs. The war is already over by the time they reach it, so they just get there, detonate one leftover bomb, and go home. Nice to see where gazillions of dollars and years of training went to. But kudos for showing the reality as is.
At the same time, realism is also what this series has got going for it (it's just that no one needs 8 h of the same old, same old). We see Marines going on the ever-changing and often pointless/contradictory/inconsequential missions in their Humvees, which any regular could have performed just as well, and which are usually more suited for tanks and LAVs. As one Marine remarks: "We are finely-tuned Ferraris in a demolition derby". Yet there's very little concrete combat shown in each episode. And that's my major gripe with it. Maybe HBO didn't want to spend millions of dollars on pyrotechnics, or maybe it didn't feel necessary to turn their series into a "Saving Pvt. Ryan"-style action. But it would have been nice to see more of what all those mission briefings and radio talk amounted to in each episode. As it stands, it feels anticlimactic. But I guess that was the idea: realism. Missions don't look like the D-Day or the "Call of Duty". They're routine and boring.
Also, there's almost no plot: the whole series feels more like a mess of little snapshots and events, or notes written in a diary, often jumping from one scene to another pretty haphazardly. But - I guess that was the idea.
There's also an overabundance of characters. It takes you a few episodes to link the names with the faces and remember just who's who exactly, since they all pretty much look the same and few stand out. But I guess that's army.
The in-between-mission juvenile antics and banal talk are often interspersed with faux-philosophizing about the war in general, with lines such as:
"If you kill people in peacetime, you end up in jail. But here you get a medal for it".
No sh#t, Captain Obvious.
And that's where the viewer boredom really starts to set in. Once again, there's nothing wrong with it per se, but when you stretch it out across all seven episodes and lace it with minimum action, it gets old. This would've made for a powerful two-part series, but then I guess it wouldn't have imparted what it's supposed to, and that's the fact that for these guys war was pretty boring. Not a novelty in and of itself, but realism can never get overrated.
On the other hand, I find the understated (and often absurd) humor to be a nice touch. For instance, although they're fighting in a desert, the Marines are issued forest camouflage. They can't get the command to send them batteries for their night vision goggles, so they trade pictures of their girlfriends with another platoon to get them. Etc, etc.
There's also an over-the-top, Sgt.-Hartman-from-the-"Full Metal Jacket"-like sergeant(?), who provides additional comic relief with his obsession about the grooming standard, unleashing streams of red-faced, heavy-accented fury upon soldiers if their mustache are longer than their lip edges or their shirts aren't tucked in.
Also, unlike in any other war movie, soldiers are shown as humans and not robots, who (surprise, surprise) need to empty their bladder or take a dump once in a while. Or jack off. The amount of times someone is shown taking a dump is almost ridiculous, but I like the realism and the underlying humor of it.
To wind up this run-on comment, I'd like to cite the Captain, who said: "I'm not afraid of the Iraqis - I'm more afraid of doing something that would displease the General."
And that sums up rather nicely what being in the army is all about.
So, a realistically-produced series that is often more than the sum of its parts. But that's not a bad place to be. With a Hollywood budget, this would've been epic. But then it would've been spoiled by cartoonish heroes and patriotic self-aggrandizement. So, come to think of it, it's just fine as is.