Featured Image Credit: HBO
Topics: HBO, TV and Film
Jess Battison
Look, there’s no denying that some films and shows are just absolutely unrealistic. What do you mean the kids never realised it was their dad dressed as an old Irish nanny?
What do you mean those parents managed to board a plane before realising they’d left their kid at home for Christmas?
But there are some things which people praise for their accuracy and particularly, people are urged to watch a war drama which soldiers hail as the ‘most realistic military series of all time’.
Based on Evan Wright’s 2004 book about his time as an embedded reporter with the US Marine Corps' 1st Reconnaissance Battalion during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the miniseries aired on HBO in 2008.
Generation Kill is directed by Susanna White and Simon Cellan Jones and has an all-star cast including Alexander Skarsgård as Sergeant Brad 'Iceman' Colbert, Jon Huertas as Sergeant Tony 'Poke' Espera, James Ransone as Corporal Josh Ray Person, and Lee Tergesen as Wright.
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A former Marine - who served in the US Marine Corps for five years in an intelligence role and as a Recon Marine - hailed the show for getting things pretty spot on.
"I think Generation Kill and, more so, Jarhead did a pretty good job of representing what it’s like to be a junior enlisted (I’m including NCO’s) Marine," he wrote on Quora.
"Marines are d**ks. Every Marine thinks he/she’s the baddest motherf**ker around. Doesn’t matter if he/she’s Admin, Infantry, Recon or Marsoc.
"In the show they are under supplied and tasked with a mission that seems flawed. That is the life of a Marine. We get s**t gear and s**t tasks.
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"I spent the first two months in Afghanistan in a hole. No tent. No toilets. No nothing."
John Anderson, a former Intelligence Analyst at the US Marine Corps from 2003 to 2006, also admitted: "There were a lot of parts in Generation Kill that were very, very realistic.
"Uniforms, banter, petty politics, and lack of gear. The way the actors talked, they way they moved, they way they carried their kit… a lot of effort was put into that, and it showed."
But he did note some things were perhaps not as realistic: "You would be hard pressed to find that many incompetent officers in one unit, in one place and time.
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"Incompetent, a**hole officers exist… they just aren’t clustered like we see in the show."
Viewers have also been raving about the show, which has a solid 92 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.5/10 on IMDb.
Taking to X, one viewer said: "If you watch HBO's Generation Kill, the s**t that comes out of the mouths of those marines will have you spun.
"One of the most realistic portrayals of the US military and actual urban combat, the ineptitudes of field-grade officers and humorous cynicism of the enlisted and NCOs."
Generation Kill is streaming on Sky, Apple TV and Now TV.