It’s a have-it-both-ways strategy designed to provide the familiar underwater thrills of its ancestor as well as more traditional wartime espionage on terra firma.
#DASBOOT SONAR SERIES#
Betz’s series (based on Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s original novel Das Boot as well as its sequel Die Festung) opts for a far more expansive perspective, splitting its 1942 action between events inside brand-new sub U-612 and those in La Rochelle.
Petersen’s film derives its power from its cramped, limited purview, and the pressurized atmosphere that mounts inside the sub. Set almost entirely inside that vessel, it’s an extended exercise in confined, claustrophobic suspense, leaving larger political questions for its periphery as it maintains rigorous focus on its milieu and the men (led by Jürgen Prochnow’s Captain) forced to endure a harrowing ordeal. Petersen’s epic-available in versions that range from 2.5 to 5 hours, with a 3.5-hour director’s cut largely considered its definitive iteration-concerned Nazi Germany submarine U-96, which in 1941 departs occupied La Rochelle, France, and heads into oceanic danger. Such is unfortunately the case with Das Boot, a new eight-part Hulu series (an international acquisition produced by Bavaria Fiction, Sky Deutschland and Sonar Entertainment that was first broadcast overseas late last year) that premieres on June 17, and picks up where Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 submarine classic Das Boot left off.
They’re handsome facsimiles, going through their motions with precision and care but incapable of leaving a lasting mark-much less living up to the esteemed legacy of their predecessors. Even when these continuations are made with considerable skill and effort, they all too often fall short of justifying their fundamental existence.
We live in an age of sequels, prequels, reboots and spinoffs, far too many of which are superfluous works created solely because established intellectual properties are easier to sell to audiences than original ideas.
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