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WWII Movies

Trekker4747

Trekker4747

Boldly going...
Premium Member
Whenever a World War II movie is made it's almost always the European Theater. Normandy, Omaha Beach, D-Day, green-camo, rough-talking, men trudging through European battle grounds fighting Nazis.

Yawn.

I'm tired of this.

Can we get some Pacific Theater WWII movies? Some Corsairs, Mustangs, figthing planes. Some scenic landscapes and beaches. Lets see something different if we're going to keep making WWII movies until the end of time!
 
The Thin Red Line was in the Pacific theatre.
Oh and Windtalkers.

Ooo, Operation Petticoat! :lol:

Correct me if I am wrong, but was the P-51 Mustang used in the Pacific?
 
FWIW? I thought the Pacific Theater/plane battles (including the attack on Battleship Row and or heroes' counter-attack) was pretty well done and some of the better scenes in the movie. Yeah, the love story and "plot" stuff was shit. But the battle stuff and plane stuff was pretty well done.
 
Well, there's always The Bridge on the River Kwai.

For my money, though, the best WWII movie ever made is Das Boot.
 
Well, fact of the matter is, almost all of the Pacific Theater movies that have come out in the past decade have pretty much sucked (The Thin Red Line, Windtalkers, Pearl Harbor, etc.) Only two exceptions would be Flags of Our Fathers (which was decent) and Letters from Iwo Jima (which was excellent). And I still haven't seen The Pacific but the across the board consensus seems to be that it doesn't hold a candle to Band of Brothers. So it's not like Pacific Theater movies haven't been getting made, they have, it's just that their track record has been downright lousy.

And speaking as a WWII buff, I find the European Theater far more interesting. :p
 
There's also Midway and Tora! Tora! Tora!, though neither are particularly impressive. There's also MacArthur, but it's not nearly as good nor as interesting as Patton, which it is obviously trying to imitate.

According to wikipedia, there are hundreds of films and television series set during the war. A good number are set in the Pacific Theatre, though the vast majority are certainly pictures with Nazis as the villains.

And don't forget The Bridge on the River Kwai!
 
D-Day is the iconic/movie moment when you talk about WW2 so it's no surprise that it gets used the most in movies and they want to have the "nazi's" as your classic villains.

I do have high hopes for the upcoming production of the Flying Tigers. The story about Claire Chennault and how he pretty much formed a mercenary group of Americans to create an Air Force for the Chinese to fight off Japan and eventually would be reintroduced back into the US Air Force.

It's an area that isn't really addressed much in most WW2 movies so to see the conflicts in and around China/India/etc... during the course of the narrative would be interesting.
 
A lot more people were involved in the European Theatre then the Pacific and the large formations of men at land combat for the duration, take the hill just to have another hill in front of you makes for a better story then the one island battle.

The racial component also gets in the way. Today your, either your story will focus on it or be accused of something if it goes unmentioned. Nazis can be completely evil , however when the Japanese are shown that way say in The Great Raid we flinch at the thought that we are treating the Japanese unfairly.
 
sojourner said:
Correct me if I am wrong, but was the P-51 Mustang used in the Pacific?
Click to expand...


Yup, the P-51 with its large combat radius was used for escort missions in the Pacific. The P-38 was better for the long over water missions due to its twin engines though. The highest scoring ace in US history (MAJ Richard Bong) flew Lightnings against the Japanese and scored 40 kills.

As for why we see all the attention on the European theater? My guess is thats where we focused most of our attention during the war so it gets most of the post war attention as well. Also the war against the Nazis is seen as a war against pure evil, which it was. Meanwhile many of the war crimes of the Japanese were covered up, and most people today don't realize just how bad they were.
 
Off the top of my head I can't think of a US aircraft that was used in the Pacific only. The nature of the Japanese and German Air Forces, the Germany first strategy and the need to escort the bomber streams into Germany saw most of the P-51s as the premier fighter go to Europe while the Pacific air commanders made due with what they had. P-40s late into the war in China and P-38s in the South Pacific. Iwo Jima was taken in part to be a P-51 base to escort B-29s into Japan.

While the Germans were able to produce "super weapons' Japans Air Forces just got further and further behind after their carriers and pilots were lost at Midway.
 
I just watched "Downfall" recently...not really a World War II movie as much as a 'life in Hitler's bunker' movie, but it does take place during World War II and there are some very well done (albeit brief) battle scenes. It was novel to see some of the war from a losing German side's perspective.
 
In Harm's Way
Operation Pacific
Sands of Iwo Jima
Flying Leathernecks
Flying Tigers
They Were Expendable
The Fighting Seabees
Back to Bataan

all set in the Pacific theatre.
 
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