The World Wars Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 4, 2014
Let's face it: History and its sibling channel H2 often labor under a near impossible standard that other niche content centered cable outings don't.
After all, unless either of these stations went to something akin to a 24 hour a day
news format, the "biggies" in history have probably
already been covered by one (or both) of these outlets. And there's probably nothing bigger than either World War I or World War II, at least insofar
as 20th century history is concerned. And so History has frequently relied on gimmicky abstractions or approaches to infuse its latest "documentary"
covering much the same subject or subjects as the network has done countless previous times. That may set some viewers' teeth on edge right off
the bat when they see the cover of
The World Wars, for instead of pictures of actual historical figures there are pictures of actors portraying
those men. Is this going to be another quasi-fictional miniseries traipsing through a supposed actual historical milieu? While it can't be denied that
there are indeed "reenactments" galore here (not to mention outright flights of the writers' fancies), the good news is that
The World Wars
sticks mostly to the facts and indeed even gets into some of the fascinatingly picayune material that resides in the backgrounds of both of these
epochal battles. The series' central conceit is that we mistakenly view the two 20th century world wars as separate incidents, when in fact they're
inextricably bound together, a long lasting duel that in the words of Winston Churchill approaches the modern era's version of a 30 years' war. The
series therefore tends to concentrate on some of the titanic figures that were involved in both conflicts, drawing broad strokes across several decades
while focusing in on foibles and tricks of fate that ended up defining an entire century.
The World Wars starts with a riveting if just slightly comical sequence that sees the horrors of trench warfare in World War I playing out
with
the devastating effects of sudden bombardments of gas. A hapless soldier can't get his gas mask to seal properly because of his ungainly
mustache.
It may take a moment for the pieces to fall completely into place, but it soon becomes clear that the man is a young Adolf Hitler and that his
trademark middle of the lip mustache style was made for apparently rational reasons (at least according to this version of events). This is the sort
of
approach that
The World Wars continues to take throughout this and the subsequent episodes, focusing more on the individuals within the
epochal events rather than the events themselves.
Those events are of course covered, albeit in more of a shorthand, CliffsNotes kind of way, where something like the assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand gets covered in a few seconds, while George S. Patton's fascination for the emerging technologies of World War I get whole segments.
This structural artifice actually pays consistent dividends, offering interesting insights into various characters who helped to shape the two major
conflicts of the century. Some of the items covered, like Churchill's devastating World War I decision to try to move troops through Gallipoli, will
be
well known to most viewers. Others, like Germany's decision to send the exiled Vladimir Lenin back to Russia to stir up trouble there and hopefully
get that nation out of World War I (which indeed is what happened), will be somewhat lesser well known.
A rather starry assemblage of talking heads is on display throughout the coverage of both wars, including such notables as Michael Beschloss,
Douglas Brinkley, Leon Panetta, Dick Cheney and John McCain. Sometimes their comments are basically merely descriptive, but at times they can
provide interesting personal insight into various events, as when McCain recounts his father simply running inside, packing his things, and taking
off to the recruitment center when a neighbor came by to tell them about Pearl Harbor.
Interestingly, things tend to fall into more of a conventional chronological narrative as things wend toward World War II. There are still interesting
sidebars dealing with the various characters on display, and how their interrelationships through the years colored events decades later (MacArthur
and Patton are an especially compelling pair in this regard), but overall there's more of an epic sweep to the storytelling in the World War II
sequences than in the World War I. The overall series is quite engagingly written, with good narration provided by Jeremy Renner. The actors
chosen to portray these iconic figures bear at least a passing resemblance to the real people, even if their voices don't always match (wouldn't it
have been more authentic to have Hitler speaking German, with English subtitles, rather than in fake sounding German accented English?).
Still, for those who have come to look askance at new History projects due to the network's preponderance of apocalyptically themed shows and
series cluttered with CGI bells and whistles,
The World Wars is surprisingly straightforward and rather nicely informative. There may
indeed not be much actual new content here, but it's presented in an engaging way, and the broad brushstrokes that make up the bulk of this
enterprise actually end up providing some surprisingly substantial detail.
The World Wars Blu-ray, Video Quality
The World Wars is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of History and Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The bulk of
this outing is "new" material, i.e., shot expressly for the series, though there is occasional stock footage, newsreels, and what looks to me like brief
snippets from some epic film production detailing an aerial attack of an island (this pops up largely in the Midway sequence, but it does not look like
anything from
Midway, and the closing credits offered no clues as to
where it was sourced). The contemporary footage looks very good, although almost all of the reenactments are hobbled by almost comically low
lighting—was everything pre-1946 slathered in deep shadows and murky contrast? Contemporary talking heads sequences look great, and even the
reenactments provide great fine detail in close-ups (look at the ribbing on Hitler's swastika armband in screenshot 14 for a good example). As with
most History outings, some of the CGI is very soft looking. Back in the days of DVDs and the early years of Blu-ray, I regularly took History to task for
releasing nonanamorphic product. Now that they've gone anamorphic, they need to learn to deal with archival footage better (I know, I know, some
people are
never satisfied). This documentary is
filled with anamorphically stretched archival content that looks pretty silly at times (see screenshot 16). There are some brief moments of banding,
but otherwise this is a solid and sharp looking
release.
The World Wars Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
I was frankly primed to hate
The World Wars as soon as I saw the actors on the cover, thinking I was in for yet another gimmicky attempt by
History to "tart up" the past with a bunch of hokey bells and whistles. While there is indeed gimmickry here, it's put mostly to good use, and the
documentary is consistently engaging and, even better, informative. There are a number of nice tidbits about the various major characters who played
important roles in both World Wars, and the documentary's sweeping view of these supposedly separate battles as merely two chapters in one story
provides some fascinating interconnections. Technical merits here are generally very strong, the supplementary material is quite good, and
The
World Wars comes
Highly recommended.