World War II with Tom Hanks is an immersive documentary series featuring the Oscar-winning history buff.History Channel
While Tom Hanks‘ fans wait for him to return with a sequel to Greyhound, one of the most successful streaming films of the last decade, they have something to lend a hand bide their time. Hanks’ love for World War II is well known and has spanned decades. In 1998, Hanks famously starred in Steven Spielberg‘s landmark epic Saving Private Ryan, beginning a original partnership that continues to this day. The duo has worked on three spectacular television shows that continue in the same spirit and tradition of Saving Private Ryan, telling grand stories about bravery and brotherhood in different arenas of World War II.
Band of Brothers followed a group of soldiers on the ground; The Pacific involved naval warfare, while Masters of the Air explored how the war was fought in the sky. Hanks’ latest WWII offering is an epic, immersive documentary series titled World War II with Tom Hanks. It premiered on the History Channel with three episodes on Memorial Day, and will run for 20 episodes through June and July. The series utilizes state-of-the-art digital backdrops, transporting Hanks directly into war zones. The first episode revisits Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, the second episode follows the Nazis’ continued Westward march, and the third episode tells the story of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s massive surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. The upcoming fourth episode, which will air alongside the fifth episode on June 1, will revisit the horrors of the Pearl Harbor attack.
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
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I’m watching one kind of film and then reveals I’m watching another entirely.
BSomething overwhelming — comical, sorrowful, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once.
CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I’m watching.
DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do.
ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity.
BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart.
CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back.
DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you’re still alive to watch it happen.
EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different.
BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride.
CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence.
DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I’m living it in real time, no cuts to safety.
ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — undetectable, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face.
BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most.
CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect.
DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance.
EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
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?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it.
BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess.
CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after.
DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I’m still thinking about it days later.
EBleakness — an candid refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
AA gleaming current city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation.
BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person.
CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades.
DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap.
EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface.
BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you’re watching.
DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them.
ESilence and restraint — what’s left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone shrewd and resourceful who makes increasingly perilous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary.
CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other.
DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing.
EA tranquil, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
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.
AI love a leisurely build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end.
CEpic runtime doesn’t scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours.
DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout.
EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
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?
AUnsettled — like I’ve just seen something I can’t fully explain but can’t stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto.
CHumbled — like I’ve been in the presence of something genuinely vital and overwhelming.
DExhilarated — like I’ve just seen cinema doing something it’s never quite done before.
EHaunted — like a icy, tranquil dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
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 comical, 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 vital 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 basic 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 recent kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we employ 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 candid in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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Here’s Where You Can Access Tom Hanks’ Epic New Series
World War II with Tom Hanks will air recent episodes on the History Channel on Wednesdays, and will be available to stream the next day on the History Channel app or History.com. It can also be accessed via digital streaming platforms that carry the channel, such as Philo, DIRECTV, and Sling. In the United Kingdom, the series can be accessed on Sky History. In total, the show will be accessible in 200 countries and in 40 languages. Reflecting on his fascination with World War II in a recent interview with Time magazine, Hanks said, “We’re not talking about Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or the Star Wars universe. We are talking about what, at the core of it all, is flesh and blood and the stasis of years asked of an entire generation—plus some—to say, ‘Put the present on hold. Your future doesn’t mean anything right now, because there is a moral task before us.’ That has not been the same since.” Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date
July 24, 1998
Runtime
169 minutes
Writers
Robert Rodat
Producers
Gary Levinsohn, Ian Bryce
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