Yeah. I can't stop though. 
The Pacific...Anyone watching it?
- Thread starter PKerr
- Start date
Yeah. I can't stop though.
Yeah, it's like the beginnings of a train wreck, ya gotta see how it ends.
^
Yeah, I'll probably add this to my collection eventually but I'm not in a rush. The way they've structured the stories just makes them all uninteresting. I mean, Basilone's story is basically Flags of our Fathers, but spread out across the 8 episodes it becomes rather pointless.
I sort of meant in terms of the acting and whatnot.
Well I haven't seen it since the days old movies were replaced by infomercials on free TV. I might have to stream it off Netflix tomorrow. Its interesting with Europe based war stories the Company always has interpreters in the Pacific however GIs could not tell Japanese from Filipinos yet here are two stories of interpreters who were able to talk Japanese into surrendering.
The Atlantic has an essay in the May 2010 issue of what they were striving for.
snip
I knew nothing of Basilone and never saw Flags of our Fathers, but after last night's episode, I think I'll rent that movie...
I'm like other posters: I've invested my time for the last eight Sundays...I have to see the train wreck at the end!!
I'm a little surprised at so much negative reaction to the series, which I have quite liked (haven't watched the last one, though). Perhaps because I had read the Sledge and Leckie memoirs, I was not expecting it to be similar to BoB. I also think the producers intentionally tried to differentiate it from BoB, skipping the training segments and making the early battles scenes chaotic and hard to follow.
Bloodwhiner made some good points above about the different type of combat units saw in the Pacific as opposed to the ETO. It also bears remembering that the Japanese, as an enemy, were far harder for the average American to understand. Germans would surrender to become POWs when they knew they were beaten. There were very few Japanese prisoners taken in the island campaigns, they just didn't do it. And by the time of Peleliu, they had given up on trying to win on the battlefield and adopted tactics of simply killing as many Americans as possible before they died themselves. This ongoing, slow grinding away, with its suicide attacks, nighttime throat-slitting, intentional targeting of medical personnel and so on, combined with the deprivations, weather and tropical sickness, seems to have left a different kind of mark on Pacific veterans. It came through in the Ken Burns WW2 documentary a few years ago, and it comes through in The Pacific. I'm liking it equally as well as I did Band of Brothers.
--Justin
Bloodwhiner made some good points above about the different type of combat units saw in the Pacific as opposed to the ETO. It also bears remembering that the Japanese, as an enemy, were far harder for the average American to understand. Germans would surrender to become POWs when they knew they were beaten. There were very few Japanese prisoners taken in the island campaigns, they just didn't do it. And by the time of Peleliu, they had given up on trying to win on the battlefield and adopted tactics of simply killing as many Americans as possible before they died themselves. This ongoing, slow grinding away, with its suicide attacks, nighttime throat-slitting, intentional targeting of medical personnel and so on, combined with the deprivations, weather and tropical sickness, seems to have left a different kind of mark on Pacific veterans. It came through in the Ken Burns WW2 documentary a few years ago, and it comes through in The Pacific. I'm liking it equally as well as I did Band of Brothers.
--Justin
thinking about Hell To Eternity points are coming back. George Takei played his brother who went to the 442. It was made after From Here To Eternity so there was a scene were the other marines were amazed he could talk to the Japanese prostitutes in Hawaii.
The problem isn't the history or the battles (well, maybe the battles, since they drag on for far too long). It's that they aren't telling interesting stories. In BoB, the first and last episodes were the framing stories for Easy Company as a whole. The middle episodes then told self-contained stories of the individual soldiers. Were they all cliche? Sure, but the structure of the storytelling (and admittedly the novelty of a 100 million dollar war series) made for a compelling narrative.
The way the characters are examined here just isn't as interesting. The fact that they decided to follow an entire Division and pick three guys who happened to be in the same Division was just too broad in scope - which is telling because their stories never overlap. It's Basilone/Leckie, Leckie/Sledge, Basilone/Sledge... and presumably back to Leckie/Sledge for the finale. It also doesn't help that the stories seem old hat now... and even if they spent way more money than Generation Kill did telling a simpler Iraq War story, there's nothing all that interesting about the way they told these stories.
I'm looking forward to the Okinawa episode because it's one of the more... well, darker battles of WW2. I think the problem is that I'm just really tired of war cliches at this point - these people feel like caricatures. Sledge going from innocent "aww shucks" hometown boy to coldblooded "kill them japs" soldier just rang so hollow to me... especially considering they told the exact same story in "Carentan" much more effectively (and in much less time).
Perhaps most people had unreasonable expectations... but a lot has changed in 8 years I guess.
(It doesn't help that there are many more interesting stories that they could have told. Least of which were Japanese-American translators operating in the Pacific campaign as mentioned above)
Well, I've got it ordered anyway... let's hope it doesn't look too cheesy or try too hard. 60s films always make me cringe.
This is the most important part about all of this. Maybe expectation's were too high, but for crying out loud they're making a "sequel" to one of the greatest war stories of all time. If they couldn't match or top it, they probably shouldn't have bothered. Band of Brother's is practicaly mandatory viewing in the Army. Hell, I once had a test where I had to examin the scene from episode 2 of BoB (where they storm the trench) and analyze the maneuvers tactical merits. The love placed on BoB is unreal. Hanks should have known better than to follow up with something so lame
I stuck with it too, and I thought the final episode was pretty underwhelming. I guess my expectations were set too high that The Pacific would be just as good or even better than Band of Brothers...
But I just saw on AMC that the guy who played Leckie (James Badge Dale) is going to be starring in their new series Rubicon. I might have to check that out.
But I just saw on AMC that the guy who played Leckie (James Badge Dale) is going to be starring in their new series Rubicon. I might have to check that out.
MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
It was okay. It just took a different tack, 3 characters who never really interacted.
I like the scene where the cajun (even in real life every unit had a cajun in it) was dropping pebbles in the open, soupy skull of a dead Japanese soldier.
I'm waiting for KOREA, with William Sadler back as Chesty Pullover or whatever his name was.
Wait, no one cares about the Korean War. Almost, but not quite greastest generation...
I like the scene where the cajun (even in real life every unit had a cajun in it) was dropping pebbles in the open, soupy skull of a dead Japanese soldier.
I'm waiting for KOREA, with William Sadler back as Chesty Pullover or whatever his name was.
Wait, no one cares about the Korean War. Almost, but not quite greastest generation...
I was disappointed. I'll always remember that guy throwing the pebbles into that guy's open bloody skull though.
I really liked it, as did my brother. SNAFU was my favorite.
It was a good series. But now, HBO will have nothing of interest to me on forever.
What about True Blood season 2(or is it season 3?) starting on June 13?
I see TP and BOB as completely different shows with different purposes.
It was telling when the Taxi driver even told Lackey that he got to go to Paris and London on leave while the "Jirines" got nothing but a hell-hole. That really summed up the differences of the two theaters.
My son has watched both and said he preferred the grittiness of TP. He said it really made war something horrific while BOB made it seem like a great bonding time. I thought that was pretty observant and deep for a 13-year-old.
I believe people wanted the feel good BOB experience; good guys battling honorably. What they got was nice boys turned into killing machines and paying dearly for it with their minds and bodies. It just wasn't comfortable to watch and I'm not sure that isn't a good thing.
It was telling when the Taxi driver even told Lackey that he got to go to Paris and London on leave while the "Jirines" got nothing but a hell-hole. That really summed up the differences of the two theaters.
My son has watched both and said he preferred the grittiness of TP. He said it really made war something horrific while BOB made it seem like a great bonding time. I thought that was pretty observant and deep for a 13-year-old.
I believe people wanted the feel good BOB experience; good guys battling honorably. What they got was nice boys turned into killing machines and paying dearly for it with their minds and bodies. It just wasn't comfortable to watch and I'm not sure that isn't a good thing.
I thought it was good. The Pacific was given a lot less attention than the European theater of war and seeing countless World War II stories almost exclusively about Europe is boring.
The Pacific was an equally important part of that war but due to various factors was never given the deserved screen time before now. And thanks to stuff like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, people see stuff like the Pacific and just don't understand it.
The Pacific was an equally important part of that war but due to various factors was never given the deserved screen time before now. And thanks to stuff like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, people see stuff like the Pacific and just don't understand it.
One of the oddities of history is that today when someone talks about WW2 the average american thinks of Europe. During the actual war years most Americans were more attune to the Pacific theater.
This is likely due to TV and the movies that followed the war. The European theater was much easier and cheaper to make movies about. The settings could easily be varied (A town could be France, Holland, Italy, Germany, etc) while islands look alike and few could relate to them. Ships were ships, one submarine looked like the next.
During the war itself more movies were based on the pacific front. This could also be due to racism. It felt good to shoot the "yellow monkeys" because they looked different. In contrast a German could be your neighbor in different clothes.
Then we factor in the guilt of seeing our own racism and that has brought us to begin seeing the war with a Japanese perspective of heroism in films such as "Letters From Iwo Jima." Even the Japanese have similarly begun exploring their war years in movies like "Yamato."
The Pacific theater was unquestionably more brutal than the European theater. That is not to say the European theater was pleasant, it wasn't. But it has been sanitized and romanticized in most every medium. Further the greatest and most horrific battles in the ETO took place on the Russian front. That front has never been truly explored or recognized by the American public. Their only exposure has come in a select few films, most notably "Enemy at the Gate." Of course the Soviet and Russian cinema took a different view. A historical essay worth reading on the subject, "Soviet Films of the Great Patriotic War" was written by Denise Youngblood.
Once we begin to recognize these differences of time, we can appreciate what Hanks and Spielberg hoped to accomplish with the approach taken in The Pacific.
This is likely due to TV and the movies that followed the war. The European theater was much easier and cheaper to make movies about. The settings could easily be varied (A town could be France, Holland, Italy, Germany, etc) while islands look alike and few could relate to them. Ships were ships, one submarine looked like the next.
During the war itself more movies were based on the pacific front. This could also be due to racism. It felt good to shoot the "yellow monkeys" because they looked different. In contrast a German could be your neighbor in different clothes.
Then we factor in the guilt of seeing our own racism and that has brought us to begin seeing the war with a Japanese perspective of heroism in films such as "Letters From Iwo Jima." Even the Japanese have similarly begun exploring their war years in movies like "Yamato."
The Pacific theater was unquestionably more brutal than the European theater. That is not to say the European theater was pleasant, it wasn't. But it has been sanitized and romanticized in most every medium. Further the greatest and most horrific battles in the ETO took place on the Russian front. That front has never been truly explored or recognized by the American public. Their only exposure has come in a select few films, most notably "Enemy at the Gate." Of course the Soviet and Russian cinema took a different view. A historical essay worth reading on the subject, "Soviet Films of the Great Patriotic War" was written by Denise Youngblood.
Once we begin to recognize these differences of time, we can appreciate what Hanks and Spielberg hoped to accomplish with the approach taken in The Pacific.
Possible also because the primary American effort was in Europe and more veterans served there then the Pacific, Southwest Pacific and China put together. There being about 28 Army and Marine Divisions in the Pacific and about 75 Army Divisions in the Mediterranean and Europe with both theaters having about the same Air Corp slice. Meanwhile the Navy was different but in the end that is the story of a ship surviving or not not the man or unit of men.
Angela 0077
Captain
I seen the preveiws of this series and thought this looks good
So yeah l started to watch it and l was very disappointed with the way they made this series.
It was supposed to be about World War 2 which it wasand there was supposed to be a love story which looked good in the previews.
it seemed to be more of a docomentry about the island the marines were on and how the American navy left them there to fight the japanese.
Some of the fighting scenes looked good and looked quite real but there was a flick back in time to what was happening in there love lifes and what they did before they went to war and l was waiting for more to happen.
Then they said that a couple of aussies were coming to to the series and l couldnt wait but iit took a while before we saw them coming into conflict of war.
I wish they could have done more with the series so you could sit down and really enjoy it
So yeah l started to watch it and l was very disappointed with the way they made this series.
It was supposed to be about World War 2 which it wasand there was supposed to be a love story which looked good in the previews.
it seemed to be more of a docomentry about the island the marines were on and how the American navy left them there to fight the japanese.
Some of the fighting scenes looked good and looked quite real but there was a flick back in time to what was happening in there love lifes and what they did before they went to war and l was waiting for more to happen.
Then they said that a couple of aussies were coming to to the series and l couldnt wait but iit took a while before we saw them coming into conflict of war.
I wish they could have done more with the series so you could sit down and really enjoy it
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