The Daily Evolver

It has been a hundred years since humanity spun into the chaos of the First World War. Peter Jackson’s acclaimed new documentary, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” brings vivid new life to the experience of British soldiers fighting on the western front. Using newly released footage from the Imperial War Museum, Jackson and his team worked four years to digitally restore, smooth, colorize and convert the film into 3D. The narration is told completely by former soldiers, in their own voices, from interviews recorded by the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s. WWI is a case study of human evolution. Britain entered the war as a traditional culture (amber altitude), full of romantic visions of honor, duty and the glories of war. Young men, thrilled by the promise of adventure, clamored to answer the call. Once at the front, they soon realized that they were in a meat-grinder, beset not only by age-old battle curses like hunger, cold, mud, sickness, rats and lice, but also the emergent features of modern weaponry: aerial bombs,