REVIEW: DAS BOOT (2018) A NEW (WOKE) LOW

Run Time: 8 Hours
Rated: TV-MA
What To Expect: Scowling feminists kicking ass and taking names, on land

They rebooted Das Boot, maybe somewhat quietly.  Funded partly Sky TV, it is a big-budget TV series (the original also got an extended run as a TV series, I recommend finding that extended version instead of watching this.) that is currently running in Germany.  Das Boot (2018) has to be seen to be believed, insofar as just how bald-faced it is as little else other than extremist propaganda.  It’s a new low in woke bullshit.

In the original series/movie, we rarely left ‘the boat’, there were some scenes at the start on land before departure, or another scene here or there (such as the Captain boarding another Kriegsmarine vessel to receive some orders and supplies).  In this series, perhaps 30% of the show takes place on a U-Boat.  Maybe 40%.  Astonishingly, in this show about a U-Boat, the majority of it follows French feminists skulking around Paris, kicking ass, taking names and winning the war, in scenes that have little if anything to do with the War in the Atlantic.

To be clear, this is not a reboot, but a loose ‘sequel’, with the two central characters being a female French resistance member and the Captain of the boat.  And even though they’re in the narrative and  visual minority, the scenes at sea are a complete departure from historical reality.  The crew of the boat are ill-disciplined and even mutinous.  New recruits are violently beaten for trivial throwaway comments, and the Captain is questioned and disrespected.  In all of WW2 recorded history, there is not one instance of a mutiny on a German U-Boat, and such crews were generally very close and disciplined, even more than special forces in some sense.  Yet this show, clearly spitefully, depicts them as cowardly, inept and ill-organized thugs.

And in Europe, where most of this takes place, the cringe is off the charts.  One scene depicts the capture of a feminist communist.  Upon interrogation, she is beaten up, but shakes off full force punches to the face from a powerful man, throwing up a ‘badass defiant’ glare back at him, as the camera zooms in on her communist tattoo in an endearing manner.

In this show, about a U-Boat, but focusing squarely on feminists in France, they couldn’t even get that part right and instead deferred to insane propaganda.  In the French Resistance in WW2, around 10% of its members were female.  Even less were fighters – of  1,000+ honored by Charles de Gaulle in the Order of Liberation, only six were female.  And yet in this show, we have a bunch of scowling feminists (because to smile is weak, y’see, gotta be a butch try-hard badass) calling the shots.  Just what the fuck any of this has to do with the War in the Atlantic is anyone’s guess.

My guess is that it’s spiteful sabotage, to take a 20th century classic about the toils of war and male sacrifice, in an arena with obscene attrition rates, and use it to essentially troll.  Kind of like Battlefield V, a game that re-wrote history and claimed that WW2’s outcome was decided by scowling feminists (my new favorite term!).

I’m going to give this tripe one point, for some nice visual effects and the use of a real WW2 German submarine.  But that’s it.  Don’t waste your time and watch Greyhound (2020) instead.