Generation Kill

Ended last night, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anybody else watch it?

i'm going to watch the last episode tomorrow

liked it so far

  beneboi said:

Ended last night, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anybody else watch it?

i was a little disappointed by the final episode, but i did love the show. by far the damn best and most realistic iraq war live action thing ever put to film.

are they makign another series or is that it? if its finished then i'm gonna watch it all over the weekend

This series actually made me miss the Marine Corps... especially the humour.

now that its all done, i can say that as a whole generation kill was good, but not great. i liked it and thought it was interesting, but it was lacking in certain respects that i can't quite put my finger on yet. i think it might have been the way it just kinda meandered about, not really going anywhere. i realize that it was all a part of the overall point, that in their minds they were doing just that - meandering about with no seeming purpose in mind, never allowed to live up to their training/potential - but i felt it could have had stronger, more defined stories episode to episode. none of the characters really experienced anything. they saw things happening around them, but we didn't actually witness any of the characters going through things.

the only character that i felt had any real resonance was the dude who was always talking about "the white man" and his struggle with the fact that he felt indifferent to all the horrible things he was doing. his philosophizing on race/culture/conflict/etc. were the only bits of true character we really saw. to me, him and "captain america" (the guy who was obviously suffering a stress breakdown) were the only real characters that were experiencing anything, everyone else just blended together. i mentioned before in another thread that i thought it was because they all looked alike, but now i realize that's only part of it. most of them were just place holders. "he's the guy that drives the car, he's the guy that relays the orders, he's the guy who shoots the 50 cal., he's the guy we give lines to when everybody else has already said something, etc." none of them had any real, distinct personalities and on top of that, nothing was happening to them to make their characters progress at all. all of the shit talking, slagging off lines were totally interchangeable between characters and for many people, those were the only kinds of lines they got.

so in the end it was more like just plopping a camera down in the middle of a platoon and recording it. its interesting to a certain extent, but not necessarily engaging. it was an interesting portrait of the group dynamic of war and the disconnect between the different factions of the effort and of course it once again reinforced how fucked up the whole thing is, but i wish the characters were treated more like real people rather than just faceless soldiers that like to slag each other off all the time.

for anybody who liked this series, you should definitely check out "over there". it was a short-lived series on FX that was one of the first to portray the latest iraq war in gritty detail. to me, it did successfully what "generation kill" was trying to do in portraying the conflicting emotions soldiers experience, the disconnect between command and field and most importantly, the fact that all these soldiers have lives back at home that are chugging along without them. great series that never got any attention at the time because i think the wound was still too fresh and nobody really wanted to acknowledge the fact that the war was going on.

hey cats, everything you found "lacking" in the series, is actually spot on, and more realistic in regards to what *most* Marines over there experience. It's not wholly emotional and life-changing, it really is a non-directional meanderaing of non-connected events and experiences. I'm glad they didn't "emo" it up for the sake of the series, and left things in a more real tone.

i agree. i don't think they should have really emo'd it up or anything, just maybe toned down alot of the meaningless back and forth banter and given a little more actual character. i understand that its realistic, but what's realistic doesn't always work on film. i mean, it worked don't get me wrong, and i liked it, but to me that was the reason it would be considered like, an 8 as opposed to a 10 or something.

i can understand the points youre making cats, but the show 'over there' imo is the exact wrong way to do a war show like this.

over there sucked balls, this series was pretty great IMO, and all the changes cats suggested or wanted to see would have ruined the show for me.

so this series was somewhat similar to jarhead? (i've never seen it, just going from what i had heard)

i guess in theme it is similar to jarhead somewhat but not really

  Awepittance said:

i can understand the points youre making cats, but the show 'over there' imo is the exact wrong way to do a war show like this.

what didn't you like about it (besides the awful theme music...god was that ever horrendous)?

to me, they both had a lot of the same qualities, no biased agenda trying to convince you war is wrong/right, lots of sitting around waiting, lots of missions of questionable intent, lots of disconnect between the people on the ground and the people on the radio giving orders. the only difference is that when the people in 'over there' were waiting around doing nothing, they were saying a little more to each other than "you're a fucking racist redneck bastard and your mom sucks donkeys for quarters, har har har". in real life i'm sure that's all soldiers actually say to each other all day long and everybody just connects on a very surface, detached level, but still, that doesn't mean i want to take time out of my day to watch them doing it. i don't want them to sit around and talk about deep shit all day either, but i don't think that was the case in 'over there'. there was a balance between everything. they talked about their experiences together, people they knew in common, a few things from back home, personal differences, conflicting ideals, etc...it wasn't all war lamenting all the time. it seemed like they were real people with real histories together and apart. in 'gen. kill', it seemed like they all sprang into existence 5 mins before the camera started rolling and knew nothing about anything but what was happening right in front of them...which wasn't very much. imo, part of what makes these people who they are and part of what shapes their experience in iraq has to do with what they've left behind in order to be there. if you don't touch on that, you're not really telling the story, you're just showing me what happened. like if i'm just watching a guy walk down the street from my office window and he drops a box he's carrying, that's not a story, its just a series of actions, but if i know what's inside the box, what purpose it serves, what it means to him, where he's going with it, why it sucks that he dropped it, etc. then it starts to become a story.

the shows are different from each other in tone and content, but they're also like 2 sides of the same coin. 'gen. kill' tells the story of the adv. recon team that is rolling through iraq, not sure what they're supposed to be doing, but not really seeing any action, 'over there' tells the story of the reservists who were kinda tossed into the middle of the action, but also not sure what they're supposed to be doing, etc. i guess the difference in the characters is that the guys in 'gen. kill' were the guys that wanted to be there and the guys in 'over there' were the ones who were maybe counting on the fact that there wouldn't be a war and they'd just be able to get some money to pay for their college. i think if you look at them together, you get a pretty rounded view of things, but if you simply refer to one or the other on their own, they both lack things that the other makes up for. they're good companion pieces, i think. imo, 'over there' just had a little more meat to it over all.

but i'm interested in hearing what you didn't like about it. i've read some nitpicky comments on imdb like "they used a huey instead of a blackhawk, how stupid!" or "no way would a commanding officer yell at his troops like that, that's dumb" and a bunch of other things like that that don't really have anything to do with anything, but i've never encountered anybody that's actually seen it that possesses the capacity to talk about it intelligently.

(don't see how he's better than the other characters..)

but

he was badly done or acted i thought

  catsonearth said:

but i'm interested in hearing what you didn't like about it. i've read some nitpicky comments on imdb like "they used a huey instead of a blackhawk, how stupid!" or "no way would a commanding officer yell at his troops like that, that's dumb" and a bunch of other things like that that don't really have anything to do with anything, but i've never encountered anybody that's actually seen it that possesses the capacity to talk about it intelligently.

i just felt like a lot of other FX shows it suffered from the same problems. A forced edginess that comes off as crass as opposed to actually being edgy (like generation kill) as well as the need to over dramatize the situations and to overplay the emo aspect of the situation. I prefer a more stark realistic and ultimately pointless portrayal of the war. Its like why the Shield sucked and why the Wire ruled. A kind of similar concept but one is trying way too hard and the other is greatness in its subtlety. For a lot of the reasons you listed why Generation kill was lacking i think those aspects are what made me appreciate it the most. The way it didnt feel like it had a goal it was working towards and it was very ambient.

  Deep Fried Everything said:

so this series was somewhat similar to jarhead? (i've never seen it, just going from what i had heard)

imo it was much better, jarhead tried too hard to emphasize the 'there is nothing to do here in iraq, well never see any real combat' angel, they literally beat it into the ground where as the Generation Kill show just kind of unfolds and doesnt have a specific agenda.

  Awepittance said:

  catsonearth said:

but i'm interested in hearing what you didn't like about it. i've read some nitpicky comments on imdb like "they used a huey instead of a blackhawk, how stupid!" or "no way would a commanding officer yell at his troops like that, that's dumb" and a bunch of other things like that that don't really have anything to do with anything, but i've never encountered anybody that's actually seen it that possesses the capacity to talk about it intelligently.

 

i just felt like a lot of other FX shows it suffered from the same problems. A forced edginess that comes off as crass as opposed to actually being edgy (like generation kill) as well as the need to over dramatize the situations and to overplay the emo aspect of the situation. I prefer a more stark realistic and ultimately pointless portrayal of the war. Its like why the Shield sucked and why the Wire ruled. A kind of similar concept but one is trying way too hard and the other is greatness in its subtlety. For a lot of the reasons you listed why Generation kill was lacking i think those aspects are what made me appreciate it the most. The way it didnt feel like it had a goal it was working towards and it was very ambient.

i can see what you're saying about FX and trying too hard to be edgy, but i don't really see it as that. i think FX tries to push that idea in their marketing and advertising because it gets stupid people hyped up to watch something that's ultimately going to go over their heads, but its not necessarily something inherent to the shows. i shared your same stance on a lot of their edginess coming off as crass, especially on the shield, until i actually sat down, watched it and found that it was saying a lot more than i initially gave them credit for. while the machoness does get in the way sometimes, i think it exists moreso in the hype surrounding the show than in the show itself where there is a whole range of things being depicted.

personally, i loved the wire, but it was anything but subtle. more often than not, they beat you over the head with their parallels and drew all the connections for you. it made everything really obvious, which to me is one of the reasons so many people praise it as the best thing ever. for a lot of people that show blew their minds because they'd never really made all those connections before, so it was like they were finally seeing things clearly for the first time. i think you're interpreting the slower, less deliberate pace as subtlety and interpreting the shield/over there's pumped up, high tension dramatic pacing as lacking subtly, but to me that's just the delivery, not the content. to me, the shield sets up all the same connections and parallels that the wire set up, it just forces you as a viewer to go there yourself and analyze what it all means/says about our world whereas the wire had all that stuff built into it for you, spelled out very clearly. i'm not saying one is better than the other, they're both different means to the same end, but as far as all the brainy, intellectual stuff goes, i think the shield is actually more subtle than the wire in many respects.

a good tv series is like a good cheese or wine or crisps or something, the flavour is important

not the meta narratives or whatever

/drunk sorry

i guess it won't happen unless i directly ask so, catsonearth: why did you find the dude who was always talking about "the white man" to be a stronger character than the other characters?

  catsonearth said:

i'm sure that's all soldiers actually say to each other all day long

Never call a Marine a soldier, it's insulting. :tongue2:

  tauboo said:

i guess it won't happen unless i directly ask so, catsonearth: why did you find the dude who was always talking about "the white man" to be a stronger character than the other characters?

because he seemed like he had an existence before the first episode started. he had personal issues that he'd brought along with him that informed the way he experienced what was happening to him in iraq. he had a unique personality within the group in that he was always analyzing things, trying to figure out what it all meant, sometimes in a jokey way, sometimes in a serious way, but it was always a part of his personality no matter what situation he was in. i can relate to that character in a lot of ways, so maybe that's why i'm more drawn to him than the others, but i didn't really get much of anything from the others to go on.

let me just break it down the way i see it - the reporter was just kinda there, not saying much, not doing much, not contributing much to the story...everybody said he was the liberal pussy, but nothing he ever said/did showed us what he was really like at all, the driver (aka ziggy) was funny, but his character wasn't really utilized at all, he just ranted for the sake of hearing himself talk and usually it wasn't even something he actually had a real stance on, it was just banter that you could put into any character's mouth. again, fine for real life, and even fine for a character if you're going to give them something to work with, but doesn't add much to a story on its own. had they given him more to work with than just the driving banter, i would consider him to be the second "best" character. iceman would just always sit there, angsty and brooding, being detached while looking down his nose at everybody, but we don't really know why other than he just thought he was better than them which is basically like asking "why are we at war?" and someone responds with "because of the terrorists"...it may not be false, but its only the tip of the iceberg. i don't just want the tip, i want the whole damn thing (no homo). at the very least give me something to work with. the other non-white guy who lost his helmet was just the other non-white guy who lost his helmet, nothing more, nothing less. godfather was just the guy who had a funny voice and liked to philosophize on military tactics...nothing there. the old guy who yelled all the time was just the old guy who yelled all the time. the racist guy with no teeth was just the racist guy with no teeth and that's where his personality ended. there wasn't any real depth to any of the other characters.

that's just the way i see it anyway.

  Quote

Never call a Marine a soldier, it's insulting. tongue.png

could be worse...i could have called them "the army".

finally netflixed this and watched it through in a few sittings. and i liked it alot. godfathers last quote about the excitement of getting shot at stayed with me. i thought the marines were portrayed really well. more depth to them would have meant longer series or real focus on less marines. i think cats complaints are justified but for me it didnt takeaway my enjoyment, hes just going for perfection.

no one so far has mentioned that rudy played himself. the extras on the last disc are worth watching. when rudy first appeared on screen i felt like i knew him from somewhere. very familar.

considering watching the commentaries too

i'm glad i've given up drunken internet use

yeah well check out my dumbass comment near the top and i wasnt drunk

  Awepittance said:

  beneboi said:

Ended last night, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anybody else watch it?

 

i was a little disappointed by the final episode, but i did love the show. by far the damn best and most realistic iraq war live action thing ever put to film.

Same, the ending sucked major balls, spoilers... specially the fight with Rudy, it didn't happen in real life and that was just a story Rudy told Simon which ended up including it on the show 'cause he liked it so much apparently, for the viewer I've felt it was a mistake and made no sense what so ever.

i did wonder how the story started and ended whilst the writer wasnt there yet

i also didnt understand why twin1 baldy guy punched twin2 taller baldy guy. was it to do with the mine clearing at night?

i don't think the last episode sucked. most real stories do not have endings. the rudy/ray fight was however a weird one. i guess they were just showing that after wars the marines still have the anger(?) without the outlet