Battle 360

Stumbled upon this series by coincidence; Had been reading up on the Battle of Santa Cruz and what the hey, gave the episode on it a try via the marvel of YouTube. It's hypnotic viewing with a compelling lead character in the WW2 era U.S.S. Enterprise, easily the greatest warship to prowl the seven seas. What's interesting and somewhat different is the high-octane barrage of busy action scenes visualized by computer animators who had seen "Return of the King". If you've ever wondered what it might have looked like to see 100 plane wave attacks from every possible angle here you go, with one of the most interesting aspects being the depiction of the anti-aircraft efforts flung into the air, something that still photos & grainy archival films from the era never make clear. Like, wow.

Brings the harrowing nature of this form of combat to home, though all of the hyperactivity succeeds at the expense of subtlety. No shot in the series lasts for more than a second, with animation effects adding flourishes to the stream of layered visual information which never lets up. And after watching a couple three episodes one gets familiar with certain sequences used as stock footage (a cost saving measure for the then expensive GCI renderings). Every last moment is also orchestrated with booming music, giving WW2 a techno metal beat between outbursts of "Victory at Sea" type strings.

I guess all this is a good thing however, since here for once is a living color version of WW2 that viewers raised in the electronic/digital age can watch both as a pop culture entertainment and historical document. The final ingredient being something to remind the attention deficit oriented viewers that the events, places & actions depicted were real, a job honorably seen through by the inclusion of veterans adding their color commentary, reflecting on what it was like to be there. It's engaging viewing, not sure how much memory retention of the facts presented will take place but that's why you hit the web after to read up a bit more. Or maybe even go find a book? Hey, you never know.

The episode about Guadacanel has a couple of errors. First of all, Saburo Sakai, the Japanese fighter ace was wounded; however, in his book Samurai, he stated that he was attacking a group of F4F Wildcats. However, he saw them bundle close together and when he came closer and closer to the formation, he saw that they were TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. The bombers tighten their formation so their ball turrets could throw up a wall of fire. Becauase he was going so fast, Saburo had to go right through the formation instead of evading it. The end result was he was wounded as stated in the show.

Before the encountering the torpedo planes, Sakai did shoot down a Dauntless, and he engage in a dogfight with an F4F Wildcat piloted by James Pug Sutherland for several minutes before shooting him down. These facts were not shown in the show. There was nothing mention in Sakai's book about shooting another F4F Wildcat. The pilot who was shot up by Sakai look a lot younger than those other guys that were telling their stories.

In the espisode about the Battle of Santa Cruz, they stated that Lt. Stanley Swede Vejtasa shot down 5 Val dive bombers and 2 Kate torpedo planes. Actually, he shot down 2 Val dive bombers and 5 Kate torpedo planes. I don't know why they can't get their facts straight. It makes you wonder how much they are distorting the facts in the war stories.

I'm just judging from the first episode, "Call to Duty," which covers such subjects as the building of the USS Enterprise and the beginning of World War II in the Pacific, up Doolittle's raid on Japan early in 1942.

I doubt that the remaining episodes will be much different in their presentation, but I intend to watch them because some of the incidents, all seen from the perspective of the ship, are given short shrift in other documentaries. After all, how often do you hear about a raid on Kwajalein by Enterprise's torpedo bombers and dive bombers? It wasn't glamorous, the damage was not strategic, and it was over with quickly and without drama. And there is no combat footage of the raid. Here, it's given fairly extensive treatment -- about five minutes' worth.

Structurally, it blends CGIs, newsreel footage, and several talking heads, including some participants. It's a healthy mixture. Of course, choices had to be made and the overall picture of the Pacific war is neglected in favor of the career of the Enterprise. The newsreel footage doesn't always match the events being described. A description of Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack is accompanied by color film of the battle for Midway. But that's niggling. The CGI's are impressive, given the period and the budget. And the viewer will learn some details about the ships and airplanes, as well as what it feels like to pull out of a seventy-degree dive at one thousand feet.

What almost ruins an otherwise fine documentary are the editing and the tone of the narration. Maybe the director and the editor were on mushrooms. I don't think a single shot lacks camera motion or lasts longer than two seconds. The camera zig zags, and sometimes the image switches rapidly from positive to negative and back again. Often one irrelevant image (say, a compass) is superimposed on footage of men loading a gun. Except for the computer's reconstructions, every frame seems to be speckled with drifting snow.

It's not just distracting, and it's not just irritating. It's insulting. The ultimate effect is that of a child's video game with constant action, and loud bangs on the sound track, or maybe a TV commercial for a male enhancement product.

The narration, although largely accurate in its historical aspects, is likewise aimed at high schoolers, or so it seems. "The pilots now had a chance to indulge their taste for revenge". "They slammed into the zeros." One expects that from a war-time flag waver but not from a serious treatment of a serious subject sixty or seventy years after the fact. I can't wait for the last episode when our football team tears down the opponent's goal posts.

The "Battlefield" series, also available on YouTube, has its own weaknesses but it's not offensive. A larger question is, if the media increasingly treat the audience like impatient ten-year olds, how should the viewers be expected to respond?

The CGI isn't up to current standards, and they tend to flip and re-use many shots, but given that it's a History Channel production, and therefore doesn't have an HBO-sized budget, this is a very interesting and fun show.

The CGI is good and more than adequate to the task (although a scene of the carrier Akagi taking a direct hit on a Japanese plane on the flight-deck shows the plane engulfed in flames but not blown to smithereens). My only real criticism is that the narration skips a lot of detail.

Those of us who have read a lot on the Battle of Midway know Soryu was sunk a little after Kaga and Akagi, but that knowledge seems to be assumed by the writers -- of course, these first episodes focus almost entirely on USS Enterprise, CV-6, and not the battle as a whole, so maybe a "Battle 360" just on Midway would clear that up. That kind of omission is forgivable for viewers who know this stuff and just like to see things blow up (like me), but for neophytes, it may be confusing.

A documentary series on one of the most famous ships in history - the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6). The Enterprise fought in almost every major naval battle in the Pacific theatre of WW2, escaping serious damage on many occasions, often by the narrowest of margins. Through CGI and film footage, we see the Enterprise's action-filled WW2 history.

Superb documentary series. Captures well USS Enterprise's legendary WW2 career: its close escapes and glories, its massive contribution to the Allied victory over Japan and its damage and losses. Good use of historic film footage as well as CGI.

Stirring, action-filled series.