The Pacific

[Darrell]

Actually they should have done the whole first episode creating some Character development. Here we are at the start of 3 episodes in and I couldn't even remember a face. At least after this one, the characters are starting to mean something. Up to now that did not exist.

I bet when you watch the series the second time, it will be better than the first.

[Scott A. Hess]

A bit disjointed, not as good as Band of Brothers, IMO. I asked a few Guadalcanal vets, who participated in the battles depicted, and they told me alot is missing. But hey, it's a war flick and entertainment.

-Eric

I agree 100 percent, BoB focused obviously around Winters, and we got to know the people he was closely associated with, and his interactions with them, it just hung together better, The pacific is at first a bit difficult to follow, disjointed, however, Im hoping with 7 episodes left, it will deliver in the end, maybe its not fair to compare the two, however, such comparisons will follow given the period piece and the same individual who produced it.

[Federico Perez]

I have seen the series until now, not very impresed by the way it have been done, I mean, it's EXTREAMLY difficult to do an "spot-on/dead accurate" war movie and make every student of military history/events happy.......but when you are going to honor the men who fought in these brutal battles and will even have some of them as narrators in the series, an over the top effort should be made to make the "sence of the time and battle" accurate and to some point as brutal as it was......I know it's difficult but that is the truth and result of total war and what this soldiers had to endure day after day until the end of the war.

Band of Brothers was a fantastic series based on the European battle front, it's not perfect but you can notice that a LOT of effort was put into the production, I can't see that same quality/quantity in The Pacific series, probably because filming in the wild/jungle is not an easy task at all, the way battles where fought where diferent to those in the combat front in Europe and the amount of actions/attacks/counter attacks and field of operations was quite diverse, you will not only have to honor the brave and gallant actions of the Marines but also of the Navy sailors and pilots and the Army as where the troops of all the allied nations who fought in this combat front....most of them paid the ultimate sacfifice a nation can ask...and they did...and beyond,.

So in my very PERSONAL and humble opinion a production on the war in the Pacific and this series should have been done with a LOT of more care,budget and attention to historical detail as well as time on the screen, so new generations could see what all that hell in a tropical paradise was all about.

[Massimo F.]

I have seen the series until now, not very impresed by the way it have been done, I mean, it's EXTREAMLY difficult to do an "spot-on/dead accurate" war movie and make every student of military history/events happy.......but when you are going to honor the men who fought in these brutal battles and will even have some of them as narrators in the series, an over the top effort should be made to make the "sence of the time and battle" accurate and to some point as brutal as it was......I know it's difficult but that is the truth and result of total war and what this soldiers had to endure day after day until the end of the war.

Band of Brothers was a fantastic series based on the European battle front, it's not perfect but you can notice that a LOT of effort was put into the production, I can't see that same quality/quantity in The Pacific series, probably because filming in the wild/jungle is not an easy task at all, the way battles where fought where diferent to those in the combat front in Europe and the amount of actions/attacks/counter attacks and field of operations was quite diverse, you will not only have to honor the brave and gallant actions of the Marines but also of the Navy sailors and pilots and the Army as where the troops of all the allied nations who fought in this combat front....most of them paid the ultimate sacfifice a nation can ask...and they did...and beyond,.

So in my very PERSONAL and humble opinion a production on the war in the Pacific and this series should have been done with a LOT of more care,budget and attention to historical detail as well as time on the screen, so new generations could see what all that hell in a tropical paradise was all about.

I agree specially because the "people" involved in the production don't have problem with $

[Simon O.]

I have to say that i like it so far. Episode 3 included. I think it's one any ex-serviceman can relate to and for me at least brought back some good memories of 'runs ashore' and R & R in far off foreign lands. It also brought up the difficulties and dangers of forming any kind of relationship under those circumstances.

[Curt Steinbach]

So far I have unimpressed with the first 3 episodes. I know collectors tend to be quite picky about details but I think I noticed something in the first episode which threw me for a loop. I may have to go back and check it again on VOD. The map that was on the wall when they were told about Japanese expansion showed the whole world including German occupied areas marked with a swastika. Is it my imagination or was Iceland shown as being under German occupation? At this point in the war Iceland had actually been long occupied by the US (July 1941) and previous to that it had been occupied by the British as of May 1940. As I say, I'll have to review that but it always amazes me when producers spend so much money making a series/movie yet can't shell out a few bucks for some knowledge about basic historic facts.

[Daniel.S]

Ok, saw the first 2 parts now, and im quite happy.

Im quite starved for war movies and finally something new comes up so for me it was a nice 80 minutes in the couch.

Ofcourse theres stuff to wish for but at least they made some new 800 minutes for us to watch, so im happy

Imagine if the made a 10 part about germans, from Poland to russia and finally normandie...that would pwn.

Daniel

[billcarson]

Here is a review of it from the Sunday Times,

This was a week of clichés. What week isn’t? The box is a net exporter of repeated truisms, but last week there were a whole lot more of them, some of them sucked as smooth as gobstoppers. Take The Pacific, the vast multipart warfest brought to you by the same conflict-profiteering company that gave us Band of Brothers, the Blackwater of feelgood death, DreamWorks. The joint producers of this sentimental entertainment are Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

The Pacific is roughly the story of America’s fight across the Solomon Islands after Pearl Harbor. It begins with the landing on Guadalcanal and the slow and bloody fight for the airstrip and control of the island. It was mythically horrendous; a truly terrifying battle. Hanks and Spielberg have decided the best way to treat it is the tried-and-tested formula for all war films since Sergeant York. There is not a character, a scene, a line of dialogue you haven’t seen, not just once before, but a dozen times. It was remarkable that every shot, every nuance, was as familiar as your own sock drawer. This was war as a comforting, familiar bedtime story. I started looking for tiny details, reactions, fleeting scenes or observations that I couldn’t trace back to a hundred other films and TV shows. There was nary a one. The only vaguely original thing was a special effect that had vaporised clouds of blood escaping from Japanese who had been shot.

The culmination of all this is to render war utterly unsurprising, happily shorn of danger, fear or suspense. It was as cosy as a remake of HMS Pinafore. This would have all been simply predictable, lazy escapism if it hadn’t been made by two of America’s most high-profile and voluble liberals. What is the point of making a war film if you have nothing germane or pressing to say about war? Was it simply the money? Why go to all the trouble to render the death and misery so vital and balmy?

There is a real war being fought at the moment. As The Pacific was being broadcast, another British soldier’s death was announced from Afghanistan, and a video of an American helicopter crew laughing and obscenely bantering after they killed civilians in Iraq in 2007 was being leaked. Also came the news that American special forces dug bullets out of women’s bodies to cover up their involvement. Film and television don’t happen in a vacuum or without consequences. How young men react to conflict is in part dictated by what they already know, and what they know comes from the fiction they’ve seen. It’s telling that letters from the trenches of the first world war echo the boys’ adventure stories and newspaper reports of the time. You can’t excuse a war film shown in the middle of a war as merely escapist entertainment.

What was particularly depressing about The Pacific was the familiar stereotype of the Japanese as cruel and not valuing their own or anyone else’s life; of being suicidally sacrificial without apparent human emotion. Does that sound familiar? Does it ring any bells? That was juxtaposed with the Norman Rockwell-style bathos of the sentimentalised American lives. The Pacific was not just bad storytelling, intellectually and emotionally feeble and cynical, it was morally reprehensible, shaming, from two men who not just should know better but claim to know better. On the plus side, the title sequence is really pretty.

[Darrell]

What was particularly depressing about The Pacific was the familiar stereotype of the Japanese as cruel and not valuing their own or anyone else’s life; of being suicidally sacrificial without apparent human emotion. Does that sound familiar? Does it ring any bells? That was juxtaposed with the Norman Rockwell-style bathos of the sentimentalised American lives. The Pacific was not just bad storytelling, intellectually and emotionally feeble and cynical, it was morally reprehensible, shaming, from two men who not just should know better but claim to know better. On the plus side, the title sequence is really pretty.

Well .. maybe because it's the viewpoint from the American side ... this isn't Letters from Iwo Jima.

[Robert Shoaf]

Here is a review of it from the Sunday Times,

This was a week of clichés. What week isn’t? The box is a net exporter of repeated truisms, but last week there were a whole lot more of them, some of them sucked as smooth as gobstoppers. Take The Pacific, the vast multipart warfest brought to you by the same conflict-profiteering company that gave us Band of Brothers, the Blackwater of feelgood death, DreamWorks. The joint producers of this sentimental entertainment are Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

The Pacific is roughly the story of America’s fight across the Solomon Islands after Pearl Harbor. It begins with the landing on Guadalcanal and the slow and bloody fight for the airstrip and control of the island. It was mythically horrendous; a truly terrifying battle. Hanks and Spielberg have decided the best way to treat it is the tried-and-tested formula for all war films since Sergeant York. There is not a character, a scene, a line of dialogue you haven’t seen, not just once before, but a dozen times. It was remarkable that every shot, every nuance, was as familiar as your own sock drawer. This was war as a comforting, familiar bedtime story. I started looking for tiny details, reactions, fleeting scenes or observations that I couldn’t trace back to a hundred other films and TV shows. There was nary a one. The only vaguely original thing was a special effect that had vaporised clouds of blood escaping from Japanese who had been shot.

The culmination of all this is to render war utterly unsurprising, happily shorn of danger, fear or suspense. It was as cosy as a remake of HMS Pinafore. This would have all been simply predictable, lazy escapism if it hadn’t been made by two of America’s most high-profile and voluble liberals. What is the point of making a war film if you have nothing germane or pressing to say about war? Was it simply the money? Why go to all the trouble to render the death and misery so vital and balmy?

There is a real war being fought at the moment. As The Pacific was being broadcast, another British soldier’s death was announced from Afghanistan, and a video of an American helicopter crew laughing and obscenely bantering after they killed civilians in Iraq in 2007 was being leaked. Also came the news that American special forces dug bullets out of women’s bodies to cover up their involvement. Film and television don’t happen in a vacuum or without consequences. How young men react to conflict is in part dictated by what they already know, and what they know comes from the fiction they’ve seen. It’s telling that letters from the trenches of the first world war echo the boys’ adventure stories and newspaper reports of the time. You can’t excuse a war film shown in the middle of a war as merely escapist entertainment.

What was particularly depressing about The Pacific was the familiar stereotype of the Japanese as cruel and not valuing their own or anyone else’s life; of being suicidally sacrificial without apparent human emotion. Does that sound familiar? Does it ring any bells? That was juxtaposed with the Norman Rockwell-style bathos of the sentimentalised American lives. The Pacific was not just bad storytelling, intellectually and emotionally feeble and cynical, it was morally reprehensible, shaming, from two men who not just should know better but claim to know better. On the plus side, the title sequence is really pretty.

This "review" reads more like a political rant. I would have expected more from the Sunday Times, but perhaps they have caught BBC disease.

Bob Shoaf

[Darrell]

This "review" reads more like a political rant. I would have expected more from the Sunday Times, but perhaps they have caught BBC disease.

Bob Shoaf

Not surprising in the PC world we live in. That's the way the enemy was viewed back then. Today unless we give the enemy the best food, the best living accomodations and health care we are held in contempt.

[Jonathan M]

Not surprising in the PC world we live in. That's the way the enemy was viewed back then. Today unless we give the enemy the best food, the best living accomodations and health care we are held in contempt.

I agree, viewing the events of WW2 with a 2010 PC mentality will get you nowhere. The Japs were viewed as yellow inferior peoples, the Germans were all Nazis and the Italians as cowards. An enemy was an enemy and treated as such, especially the type of enemies that blew you up with a grenade as you offered them water as they lay wounded.

Emapthy is the first skill GCSE history students are taught, and perhaps the hardest as it is very difficult not to cloud a hisotrical opinion with ones own opinions or prejudices. The writer of the article can by all means comment on the technical and artistic values of the series so far, which I think is way below the standard set in BoB, but he cannot slam the producers for trying to convey the feelings of the times. Is PC the death knell of objective history? If it is them they can all go to Hell, what next the Crusades will be removed from the Curriculum, Ancient Rome deemed to barbaric to learn about?

[Paul B]

Sunday Times Review

"...the Japanese as cruel and not valuing their own or anyone else's life; of being suicidally sacrificial without apparent human emotion..."


Oh Dear....what the reviewer has failed to grasp is that this is exactly how most Allied combat troops in this theatre of war DID view their enemy...this wasn't some cosy situation where Brits, Yanks and Japs could all identify with each other and feel some kind of empathy or common humanity, the behaviour of the Imperial Japanese Army, both before and during the conflict, reinforced Allied conceptions that these were people who were somehow less human (and humane) than they were.

My great-uncle was an infantryman with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in Burma throughout the campaign -to the day he died his hatred of the Japanese was undiminished, and he felt not a shred of remorse about killing them, nor any empathy towards them as human beings or soldiers, and his views were not untypical of British veterans of this campaign. It's an uncomfortable truth, but a truth none-the-less.

All the best

Paul.

[Blued]

Actually they should have done the whole first episode creating some Character development. Here we are at the start of 3 episodes in and I couldn't even remember a face. At least after this one, the characters are starting to mean something. Up to now that did not exist.

I bet when you watch the series the second time, it will be better than the first.

My thoughts 100%.

When BoB came out, I was glued to it EVERY week. I just missed Sunday, and I'm not that eager to see it on a re-run this week. It's missing a lot IMO

[BenVK]

Hanks and Spielberg have decided the best way to treat it is the tried-and-tested formula for all war films since Sergeant York. There is not a character, a scene, a line of dialogue you haven’t seen, not just once before, but a dozen times. It was remarkable that every shot, every nuance, was as familiar as your own sock drawer.

I just watched a special about the Pacific. Tom Hanks was talking about the high degree of effort put into this project to avoid cliches and references to previously seen war movies etc. In his words, when they watched a scene back, if anyone on the crew said that it reminded them of something else, they would re-shoot it.

I have to agree in part with the Times reviewer though. Only seen the 3 episodes so far like everyone else but most of it has been unremarkable and sorry to say, very cliched in parts, especially in part 3. Anyone could see the fight started by the Aussie soldier in the bar coming from a mile away plus the whole Greek girl affair and her dumping the GI in the end. I am enjoying watching it but I just don't understand how they managed to get the format so wrong compared with BOB. I know they have a lot of ground to cover but Guadalcanal all done in 1 episode? then another whole episode just to cover R&R in Australia?

I guess the real proof of whether this project is working so far is how many images stick in the memory after you've watched it? The only ones I can remember well is of the Japanese soldier standing in the water screaming and shouting and getting shot at and the medal of honour winner throwing up in the waste paper basket, oh and one stunning Aussie girl.
In BOB, by part 3, there were about a dozen scenes that I will never forget.

Ah well, expectations of everyone were just too high I guess.