View Full Version : TV Generation Kill - from the makers of The Wire
New HBO mini-series by the creators of The Wire, based on first 40 days of the Iraq War.
Premieres in the US Sunday night, looking forward to seeing how they construct stories in this setting given three marines actually involved have been hired as consultants to ensure authenticity... one is actually playing himself.
Absolutely loved The Wire, so I have pretty high expectations... anyone else interested in this?
New HBO mini-series by the creators of The Wire, based on first 40 days of the Iraq War.
Premieres in the US Sunday night, looking forward to seeing how they construct stories in this setting given three marines actually involved have been hired as consultants to ensure authenticity... one is actually playing himself.
Absolutely loved The Wire, so I have pretty high expectations... anyone else interested in this?
F it! you beat me to it.
Only other thing to say- will be out monday.
Hope it is not a patriotic puff piece... certainly don't expect that due to who made it, but you never know.
mr_cellotape
13 Jul 2008, 10:55
Thanks for the reminder :thumbsu:
mr_cellotape
17 Jul 2008, 05:22
First ep gets a big :thumbsu: from me. The production value/look is great. Some interesting actors in the mix (great to see Jason Ransome aka Ziggy from the Wire again). Plenty of good dialogue. Can't wait for the next part.
lol how did I know Ziggy would tear this up.
That opening sequence was brilliant and I can see that redneck guy being an interesting sidelight.
"Two guys kill hundreds of thousands. That rules!"
"...that redneck guy....."
Which one? Most of them are rednecks to me.
Did any of you watch Over There? The characters were similar to GK but the operational aspects were fantastic.
I hope the US Army and Marines are not full of smartarses who are full of attitude and think with their little heads all the time.
"...that redneck guy....."
Which one? Most of them are rednecks to me.
Did any of you watch Over There? The characters were similar to GK but the operational aspects were fantastic.
I hope the US Army and Marines are not full of smartarses who are full of attitude and think with their little heads all the time.
The one with the hair lip.
You'd expect the early episodes to be full of smart assing. I'd say Sitting around waiting for battle to begin would be like that.
mr_cellotape
9 Aug 2008, 12:15
Who's still watching this? Just caught up with the recent ep. (4) and I'm loving this show. The look into some elements of warfare that I hadn't even considered - how missions and assignments are handed down, the ineptitude of command (in true Wire-style) - have been really interesting. And scary.
I'm really liking most of the characterisation, too. Lt. Fick is awesome, Godfather is one hell of a piece of work (probably the most interesting character, though I really don't like him), and Ray is a complete champ.
Can't wait to see how this finishes up.
This is very good. 4 episodes in also, definitely sucked me in.
My new favourite show.
Its amazing how accurate it is.
Invigoration
28 Aug 2008, 02:29
Highly impressive show, I am really disappointed it is only the 7 episodes.
I will definitely be buying Evan Wrights book on the back of this.
I absolutely love Cpt. Ray Person, especially when he gets all amped up on the Ripped Fuel :)
mr_cellotape
28 Aug 2008, 06:47
Minor spoilers...
Bloody good final episode. Lots of great scenes (reporter running from the sniper, and the 'real' recon mission) and lines ('you are really desperate, Brad'), and the final scene with the Johnny Cash tune and the guys watching Lilley's movie was really well done.
Yeah that last episode was very touching.
Was an amazing little series really.
Invigoration
29 Aug 2008, 03:33
Minor spoilers...
Bloody good final episode. Lots of great scenes (reporter running from the sniper, and the 'real' recon mission) and lines ('you are really desperate, Brad'), and the final scene with the Johnny Cash tune and the guys watching Lilley's movie was really well done.
Haha, 'Scribe' running from the sniper was hilarious.
The final scene was a pretty intriguing scene I thought, it made a big statement about the guys I think.
Trombley the absolute nutter loved it though...
I can't help but wonder how Captain America feels watching this?
B-Bomber
5 Jan 2009, 01:18
Just finished watching this -- Absolutely loved it! It evoked the full range of emotions and could be quite powerful at times. I like shows that make me really feel strongly.
There was some great one liners, and I only found out after I watched it that Rudy Reyes actually played himself which I thought was really cool. I loved the little details, especially when the BBC radio could be heard which usually turned to the cricket -- in the first episode I swear the English commentator says Glenn McGrath (got a real kick out of that haha).
Reporter was probably my favorite character as I found myself trying to imagine being him -- seeing that I'm no millitary man by any stretch (does cadets as a kid count? haha).
I DLed it some months ago when it first came out. There are top notch torrents out there. I say this because the only criticism of the show I have is the amount that happens in each ep. I've had to watch it 3-4 times to figure out who everyone is. They do it so real they use 3 names for every one, and there are so many characters, and plot lines. The lead role is know by Brad, Colbert, Iceman, Hitman 2 Actual, the Sergeant and team leader 1.
bit_pattern
16 Jan 2009, 02:55
Anyone caught this yet?
Apparently it's a super realistic take on modern warfare, if David Simon's and Ed Burn's past efforts are anything to go by it should be a cracker of a series :thumbsu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Kill_(TV_series)
'It looks more real than anything I've ever seen'
Generation Kill, the new TV series from the makers of the critically adored show The Wire, swaps the streets of Baltimore for the battlefields of Iraq. It might take a bit of effort to watch, but the result is extraordinary television. By Sam Wollaston
Audio: Sam Wollaston speaks to Ed Burns about war, The Wire, and his new miniseries Generation Kill (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/audio/2009/jan/14/ed-burns-generation-kill)
'It's horrible, but at the time you don't feel nothing," Rudy Reyes tells me. It feels strange to be discussing killing another human being so casually, stranger still to be doing so in a smart London hotel. "At the time you are engaging and security means that you must use extreme violence. You can never assume security, you can only establish it, so we establish it by killing all threats.
"I had to kill up very close, as close as you and I are right now, seeing their fear and horror in their eyes, knowing that's the last thing they're going to see." How many people has Reyes killed, I wonder? "You know, a lot," he says, with just a tinge of regret.
Reyes, a likable and extremely buff Texan of Mexican extraction, plays Sgt Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes - himself - in Generation Kill, an extraordinary TV mini-series from HBO which will be broadcast in Britain (on FX) next week. Based on the book by Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright, who spent the beginning of the current Iraq (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq) conflict embedded with a unit of marines, it takes the viewer along for the invasion, by Humvee. The programme is up close and personal - very close and very personal - with the marines of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, or 1st Recon, one of whom is Reyes.
mKnzREWQb24
The team behind Generation Kill is David Simon and Ed Burns, creators of The Wire (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/wire), the Baltimore cop show that is rarely mentioned without the word "gritty" and has caused a critical swoonathon, sometimes even called the best television (http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/television) ever. Burns - Vietnam veteran, teacher, policeman turned writer of the best television ever - is with me too, to talk about the new project. As so much of Generation Kill is about the taking of human life, I wonder if he too has killed, in Vietnam, perhaps.
"I did."
Hell, I'm the only person around here who hasn't killed someone. And did the experience affect Burns? "Erm ... killing is almost fair. It's what warfare actually should be, in the sense that they're shooting at you, you're shooting at them. Where it breaks down, and becomes a different type of thing is when the enemy is a bomb, or an IED [an improvised explosive device, often used as roadside bombs], or a mine, and you're stepping on it, or it's blowing you up, and you can't retaliate. When that starts to happen then the anger in the unit starts to build, and God help anybody who steps in front of that anger."
Most of the killing you see in Generation Kill - and you see a lot - is the first kind, the almost fair sort, because this is about the first 21 days of the war, the invasion in 2003, not the years of mess that have followed. That's not to say there isn't anger about the place, but it sometimes has to be self-generated, at least to start with. One of the characters, Cpl Josh Ray Person, puts it nicely: "The marine corps is like America's little pit bull. They beat us, starve us, and once in a while they let us out to attack somebody."
Person, played by James Ransone (the equally out-of-control Ziggy in series two of The Wire), a terrifying little nut who is permanently off his head on some horrible stimulant drink called Ripped Fuel, has all the best lines. As the Humvees rumble north over the border from Kuwait, Person, charged up to the eyeballs, spews out his theories about gays, South Park and why Saddam Hussein's ill-thought-through "pussy policy" is the real reason for the conflict. And he has a complaint: "How come we can't invade a cool country with, like, chicks in bikinis?"
This is what Generation Kill is really, a bunch of guys doing their jobs, albeit in an extraordinary workplace. That and the family-like bond they form. Reyes talks about this, and the one fear he had - letting down his team. "They count on me because I come from a background with no stability and no family, and this is the best family I ever had and I wouldn't do anything to endanger them."
His background, he says, is typical of the men he went to war with. Dad left, mum shacked up with someone else, there were more kids, and Reyes was more or less forgotten. So he found a new family with the marines. When he left the corps a couple of years ago, he got depressed. Is that common? "Very common, bro, very, very common. It's a natural part of mourning. It's mourning the loss of your unit, and your team, and your family, and your identity. Mourning the loss of yourself. I was hurting, bro. I'd never had a family before. I'd never had what I had in the marine corps."
This show came along at the right time for Reyes. He was originally hired - along with a couple of the other guys who were there with him - to train the actors, make sure they got everything right, that it was all authentic. Then he got a part, playing himself, reliving it all.
There are an awful lot of characters in Generation Kill, and to begin with I had no idea who was who, or what was going on. This is something people who have watched The Wire may identify with. "Yes, there are quite a few characters," says Burns. "I don't see that as a problem. HBO were worried about it - how are they going to figure out who is who, stuff like that. But that comes with just sitting up and watching the show. If you want a show that you sprawl back in the couch and sort of let wash over you then this is probably not the show."
Sit-up TV, that's what Burns (and David Simon) do. "You want the person leaning in to the punch so it requires them to try to figure something out," he says.
It may appear arrogant, to make television with such a vast cast of characters that unfolds so randomly, chaotically even, with no narrative signposts, no help for the viewer and a lot of jargon and military acronyms. It's almost as if they're sticking a finger up at the viewer, saying, "Hey, this isn't about you, or entertainment, it's for the people it's about - the marines - and it's about being authentic." The same could also be said about The Wire, whose viewing figures didn't live up to the glowing reviews. But, as with The Wire, a bit of effort pays massive dividends.
I had to do more than sit up, even more than lean in to the punch: I actually needed to watch episode one of Generation Kill twice, and only in the second sitting did I really start to get a grip of who was who and what was going on (even, and most proudly, figuring out that "oscar mike" means on the move). By then I was snared, involved, and by the second episode it was clear that this was very good television, an astounding portrait of modern warfare, and of an extreme job.
Aficionados of The Wire will see many parallels. It's about race, and class, and the workplace (though the street corner has been traded for the inside of a Humvee). It's about the disconnect between levels of command and is much more sympathetic to the worker than to higher levels of management, in this case the officers and their often ludicrous decisions. It isn't sanitised, or cliched. Neither is it heroic (as, say Steven Spielberg's second world war epic Band of Brothers is, though it will inevitably draw comparisons). Most of all it is about people - a bunch of guys. At times you admire them, other times they appal you. Often they're very, very funny.
It amuses and shocks, confuses and thrills. But it doesn't preach. "I think it's something you can look at and find what you want to see," says Burns. "So if you are very pro-war, and you see the military as incapable of doing wrong, and the heroics of these guys, then it's very easy to see who they are. If you are more conflicted, there is an opportunity [to see] that conflict - you know, this is not what we signed up for. So I think it serves both sides, because neither side is honest with themselves ... I mean, I don't give a **** to tell you the truth. I know where I stand on it." Burns is as anti the war as he is admiring of the men who went to fight it.
I wonder if it will appeal only to men, as it is entirely about men. But he talks about the emergence of a feminine side in combat. "Because of the fear and the fact that you're walking with the possibility of injury and death, the feminine side comes out. So it takes these professional robots almost and turns them into human beings. So one man is caring for another man's foot and stuff like that, you know, they help each other, and that's the complexity of human nature."
And what about that authenticity? It looks more real than anything I've seen. But what do I know? I've never even killed anyone. Reyes, who dismisses almost every other portrayal of war on screen, big or small, as cartoonish, can help out here. "My brother, of course I'm a little bit biased, but it's better than almost anything that's been done before, because of the honesty and integrity of it. No good guy, no bad guys: ambiguity. Frank and sometimes vile dialogue, because this is what you gotta do when you're in the freakin' battlefield, and you are in the muck and the mire, the gore, the horror, the hatred. You are using hatred energy against each other, because it summons this power, and you have to summon it or maybe you don't make it".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/14/generation-kill-the-wire
Search function dropkick.
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=464066
mr_cellotape
16 Jan 2009, 16:08
Finger on the pulse there, BP.
red+black
8 Sep 2009, 00:30
I'm old school so I'm going to buy it. The AUD is approaching 86c so I'm looking for stuff to purchase.
Big fan of David Simon and I saw The Hurt Locker recently so this will probably be right up my alley.
Yeah its worth a purchase if you are looking to buy. It was a good series, but a couple of the really really chessey over acted stereotype characters irked me every episode (captain america & the staff sergent ... and the "godfather" too, cmon pleeeaaase). But for all I know their roles may have been 100% deliberate, doesn't stop me from having an opinion though.
Yeah its worth a purchase if you are looking to buy. It was a good series, but a couple of the really really chessey over acted stereotype characters irked me every episode (captain america & the staff sergent ... and the "godfather" too, cmon pleeeaaase). But for all I know their roles may have been 100% deliberate, doesn't stop me from having an opinion though.
Have a read of the article the series is based on. Evan Wright was the journo embedded with the Reconn team and I think the characters are based on the real people in the reconn team..
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5938873/the_killer_elite/
page 4
" Colbert and Person mostly pass the time monitoring the sins committed by a Recon officer they nickname Captain America. Colbert and other Marines in the unit accuse Captain America of leading the men on wild-goose chases, disguised as legitimate missions. Captain America is a likable enough guy. If he corners you, he'll talk your ear off about all the wild times he had in college, working as a bodyguard for rock bands such as U2, Depeche Mode and Duran Duran. His men feel he uses these stories as a pathetic attempt to impress them, and besides, half of them have never heard of Duran Duran.
Before First Recon's campaign is over, Captain America will lose control of his unit and be investigated for leading his men into committing war crimes against enemy prisoners of war...."
I already knew all of that, does not change one thing. This is a TV show, not a re-staged historical documentary.
Freo Big Fella
18 Oct 2009, 16:55
I-uaTOgNWcs
:D
Just finished it last night - outstanding as per HBO's usual standard.
Am hoping to get my hands on a copy of John Adams next, but can't seem to find it anywhere.
Am hoping to get my hands on a copy of John Adams next, but can't seem to find it anywhere.
Find it on the interweb, or find it on DVD?
Seriously good show, I actually enjoyed it more than Generation Kill.
Freo Big Fella
18 Oct 2009, 21:22
Find it on the interweb, or find it on DVD?
Seriously good show, I actually enjoyed it more than Generation Kill.
DVD - I always tend to like watching big budget series like this with a proper TV and sound setup rather than a computer screen.
Invigoration
18 Oct 2009, 21:59
I-uaTOgNWcs
:D
Just finished it last night - outstanding as per HBO's usual standard.
Am hoping to get my hands on a copy of John Adams next, but can't seem to find it anywhere.
It is on Ebay brah.
I've been meaning to get it myself, I've heard good things. I noticed I posted last year about getting the book, well I did and it was great as I expected :thumbsu:
The book gives you a chance to come to terms with who everyone is and what their place is etc, it can be a bit confounding when you first watch the series with the huge array of different characters that are all thrown at you at once.
HigginsHawk
20 Oct 2009, 12:32
Just finished watching this on DVD, great series. Reminds quite a bit of Jarhead on the humour side.
Some good extras on the DVD if you have only downloaded it.
Skaarsgard (? sp) is outstanding as Brad, virtually unrecognisable as Eric from True Blood.
B-Bomber
30 Aug 2010, 15:27
I just picked up the DVDs from Big W! Have already seen it but looking forward to rewatching in the comfort of the lounge :thumbsu:
Quite cheap too around $20.
red+black
30 Aug 2010, 17:41
I bought the blu-ray DVD set earlier this year. Problem is, I don't have a blu-ray player :(
rocker_oz33
30 Aug 2010, 19:27
^^you better get yourself a blu ray:) ^^l should have this,l love the wire but l am off war show/movies at the moment I'll put it on the do get list.
Groggyk
22 Feb 2011, 20:51
Thought I'd give this a bump.
Just discovered this show, gotta say it's ****ing brilliant.
Anybody else getting on it?
Now screening on ABC2 Tuesdays at 10.
Glebehawk
23 Feb 2011, 05:25
yep been re-watching it on ABC2 - bloody great series.
ABC2 actually showing some decent product now, they've got the wire playing too.
Crash Davis
23 Feb 2011, 16:10
Thought I'd give this a bump.
Just discovered this show, gotta say it's ****ing brilliant.
Anybody else getting on it?
Now screening on ABC2 Tuesdays at 10.
likewise.
how's last nights ep, driving around in the tank and they see a head on the road "you'de better drive around that" only to drive straight across the body lying alongside it.