Spielberg, Hanks and HBO's grudge against the Navy persists...

[Admiral2]

the G-man wrote:

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Why don't you people all just find the "Victory at Sea" series?

I've seen all of those shows, like three times each. I've seen McHale's Navy, I've seen Black Sheep Squadron, Midway, Tora Tora Tora!, Enemy Below, Run Silent, Run Deep, etc. etc. countless times, which means I don't give a tinker's damn if Spielberg and company never find it in their hearts to do "Band of Sailors" because I've already seen the best (and worst) WWII naval stories Hollywood has to offer.

Let 'em stick to land war. No skin off my butt...

[J.T.B.]

Icemizer wrote:

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One of my favorite WWI air movies is The Blue Max. For WWII I just watch Black Sheep Squadron reruns.

Yes, The Blue Max is really good.

As far as a Pacific based Navy movie the time and distances between actual battles is just immense. Few ship to ship encounters happened as ours were mostly destroyed at Pearl and so it ends up being an air war over water.

I can't really agree with that. Even if you don't accept carrier actions as "naval" battles, you still have the Java Sea, Sunda Strait, Cape Esperance, Savo Islands, 1st and 2nd Guadalcanal, Empress Augusta Bay, Cape St. George, Tassafaronga, Komandorski Islands, Surigao Strait, and many more destroyer-level engagements.

[Gaith]

J.T.B. wrote:

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It would be but it will never happen. Halsey was in action, but the other three... spending the war in planning meetings and staff conferences isn't going to translate well to the screen.

I don't know about that - The West Wing had lots of incredible drama scenes in the Situation Room.

Granted, one wouldn't want to see twelve episodes of only that, but I can definitely picture a miniseries of, say, four three-episode arcs, say, about admirals, a sub crew, a convoy, a squad of carrier-based pilots... with the admiral eps serving as relatively cheap "bottle" shows to offset the cost of showing full-on naval battles.

[J.T.B.]

Admiral2 wrote:

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I've seen all of those shows, like three times each. I've seen McHale's Navy, I've seen Black Sheep Squadron, Midway, Tora Tora Tora!, Enemy Below, Run Silent, Run Deep, etc. etc. countless times, which means I don't give a tinker's damn if Spielberg and company never find it in their hearts to do "Band of Sailors" because I've already seen the best (and worst) WWII naval stories Hollywood has to offer.

As good as some of those shows were, they don't have the time for the more detailed and in-depth treatment that a mini-series has. The Thin Red Line was a great movie, but that doesn't diminish The Pacific in any way, and I'm glad it was made.

Also, to use the example of Victory at Sea: As fine as it is, it has some real problems of historical accuracy. A lot of fine scholarship has come out in the past 60 years; it would be nice to see something with a good budget be able to take advantage of it.

Gaith wrote:

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Granted, one wouldn't want to see twelve episodes of only that, but I can definitely picture a miniseries of, say, four three-episode arcs, say, about admirals, a sub crew, a convoy, a squad of carrier-based pilots... with the admiral eps serving as relatively cheap "bottle" shows to offset the cost of showing full-on naval battles.

That would be great, but that wouldn't be a miniseries based on the four admirals lives, which is what I was responding to.

[Othello]

Gaith wrote:

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So first Spielberg and Hanks gave us Saving Private Ryan, about a few soldiers. That's fine, nothing wrong with that... then they teamed up with HBO to give us the Army-themed series Band of Brothers. And then the triumvirate produced The Pacific, about the Marine Corps.

At this point, one could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that it was the Navy's turn to get the S-H-HBO WW2 spotlight, what with the Navy being arguably the most important branch of service during that particular time. But some sailor must have sat on Steven's glasses or made one too many "Run, Forrest!" jokes to Hanks at some point, because the semaphore signals have revealed that the next HBO WW2 miniseries will again honor non-floating (or sub-floating) warriors by focusing on aerial warfare over Europe, even though this material has been all but exhausted by the George Lucas-commissioned masterpiece Red Tails. (And what's more, the Air Force didn't even become a separate branch until after the war!)


Let's see... President Carter served in the Navy. Maybe the S-H-HBO boys would accept an apology from him for whatever it was wronged them? And give us a submarine or battleship-themed miniseries at last?

Well, the best branch to cover will ALWAYS be the USMC. The rest of ya are just normal to our awesomeness!!

[Nerys Myk]

Othello wrote:

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Well, the best branch to cover will ALWAYS be the USMC. The rest of ya are just normal to our awesomeness!!

Nah, I've watched Gomer Pyle, USMC. What more needs to be covered?