It’s been 25 years since Band of Brothers premiered on HBO, helping to usher in a new era of prestige television. The World War II-set miniseries reinvented what could be accomplished on the small screen, and it still stands today as a monumental achievement. It’s still relevant today, despite its subject matter now being over 80 years removed from the modern day, argues star Neal McDonough. Collider’s Meredith Loftus caught up with McDonough at Televerse, a Television Academy festival celebrating all things television, over the weekend.
Based on the non-fiction bestseller by Stephen E. Ambroseand produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, Band of Brothers chronicled the exploits of Easy Company, a unit of the 101st Airborne Division, which saw heavy action in Europe during the last years of World War II. The series would achieve universal acclaim and is still considered one of the greatest TV series of all time. The steely-eyed McDonough had a starring role on the series as Lynn “Buck” Compton, a lieutenant in Easy Company who would go on to become a noted prosecutor after the war’s end. He thinks that Band of Brothers‘ continued relevance is due to the window it gives to the world of the 1940s:
“It really talks about the Greatest Generation. Those guys didn’t complain about anything. Those guys…you know, talk about [Compton], jumping out of an airplane, losing his leg bag, having to find food, having to take weapons off dead bodies, having to figure out whatever it took to help us win the war, and that’s what those guys did.”
McDonough came to know Compton, who lived to see the production of Band of Brothers, and found that he “wouldn’t complain about anything.” Now, he finds that “we all complain so much,” and that we’ve become entitled without facing the struggles of the past. Generally, McDonough believes Americans, as a people, should heed the words of John F. Kennedy (a WWII veteran himself), given in his 1961 inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Where Can Neal McDonough Be Seen Next?
McDonough can currently be seen on the Paramount+ series Tulsa King, where he plays crooked businessman Cal Thresher alongside Sylvester Stallone; Season 4 wrapped production earlier this year. He can also currently be seen in the horror thriller Twistedalongside Djimon Hounsou and Lauren LaVera, and this fall, he’ll star as Jimmy Stewart‘s father in the biopic Jimmy.
Band of Brothers is now streaming on HBO Max. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
