The full length trailer for Jeb Stuart‘s (The Fugitive, Die Hard) The Liberator has been released, and it’s not quite like anything we’ve ever seen before. The World War II series uses Trioscope animation technology, which fuses CGI with live action in an apparently cost-effective way. It’s reminiscent of Rotoscope animation, popularized by Richard Linklater in the 2000s with Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.
But this project is something else entirely, and we’ll see if the visuals remain interesting over the course of several episodes.
You can check out the trailer and Netflix’s synopsis, touching on the true story the series depicts, below. The Liberator premieres on Veterans Day, November 11.
On September 9th 1943, over three thousand naval vessels and 150,000 troops began Operation Avalanche, the Allied invasion of Italy… In an attempt to achieve tactical surprise, the allies forgo naval and air bombardment. But the invasion surprised no one and was met by fierce German resistance. By the second day the Allies had committed all of their reinforcements and by the end of the fourth day the operation teetered on the brink of failure. The German Army, sensing an American defeat, rushed over 40,000 reinforcements to Salerno to drive the allies into the sea. Faced with potential annihilation the Allied high command considered the unthinkable. Evacuation. In the midst of this debate a commander of a National Guard regiment from Oklahoma made this announcement: “Now’s not the time to leave. Now’s the time for some hard fighting.” This is the story of those men. Men known as the Thunderbirds.
