HBO's "The Pacific"

MIDWAY through the first hour of “Band of Brothers,” HBO’s 2001 mini-series about a company of paratroopers during and after D-Day, there’s a scene on a troop ship that’s jampacked with new recruits on their way to hard fighting in the European theater. “Right now some lucky bastard’s headed for the South Pacific,” one soldier says to another, envious. “He’s going to get billeted on some tropical island sitting under a palm tree with six naked native girls helping him cut up coconuts so he can hand-feed them to the flamingos.”

Now comes “The Pacific,” an HBO mini-series by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and the rest of the “Band of Brothers” crew that spends 10 grueling hours and almost $200 million showing just how inaccurate that newbie’s idyllic image was. The series, in one-hour episodes that begin next Sunday, follows three real-life Marines from Pearl Harbor to homecoming after V-J Day. There are no naked native girls or flamingos. Instead there are bloody battles against well-fortified enemies on small islands. There are heroic deaths and random ones; unrelenting rainstorms, tropical diseases, nervous breakdowns.

Mr. Spielberg, who was born in 1946, said the seed that became “The Pacific” was planted in his childhood, when he was confused by the disparity between the formulaic war films he would watch — central hero, romance, defining battlefield moment — and the stories he would hear from his father and an uncle, who both served in the Pacific.

Television - ‘The Pacific,’ Shedding Light on World War II in the Pacific - NYTimes.com

 

I am excited to see this.

Although I should probably hold judgement till I see it, I am dissapointed that a series called "The Pacific" does not seem to have at least one episode dealing with the actual surface war going on.

Very sad to see some of our greatest sea battles only depicted in black and white movies or on the show "Dogfights".

It would have been cool to see something like the marianas turkey shoot going on at the same time as the Saipan invasion or something like that.

Maybe its just too much to cover I guess.

 

HBO: The Pacific: Homepage Cannot wait for this.

 

Same here, I've read both Leckie and Sledge books and the previews look great.

 

I cannot wait to watch this miniseries as well.

 

Read the Leckie and Sledge ones too, didn't know who Basilone was though. I'm buying as much WWII Marine camo things as I can right now, once that show premiers the prices on them will sky rocket!

 

Spielberg and Co are quoted as saying something about "more stories to tell" so that could be next. The Pacific is in response to BOB, the Pac war vets were saying you should tell our story too, so it makes sense that maybe a series about naval and/or air warfare will be next.

 

That is exciting to hear that! It would be great to hear some other stories, and not just the Navy, but airmen as well. 8th Air Force, a remake of the Flying Leathernecks and such.

 

At war’s end, the cabbie won’t take money from the Marine returning home from the Pacific. “I might have jumped into Normandy but at least I got some liberties in London and Paris,” the driver, a veteran of D-Day, says pityingly. “You gyrenes, you got nothing but jungle rot and malaria. Welcome home.”


Jungle rot and malaria, not to mention dysentery, hunger and nervous breakdowns, are as much a part of “The Pacific” as machine guns and bombing raids. And that helps explain why this mesmerizing World War II mini-series that begins on Sunday on HBO is the second one by the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks team and not the first. “Band of Brothers,” which ran in 2001, was one of the best and most popular series in recent times; not coincidentally, it explored a chapter of history that has been told and retold in movies, television and books.

The happy few in the parachute infantry unit known as Easy Company took viewers with them onto Utah Beach on D-Day, through the Battle of the Bulge, and in the final days of the war, all the way to Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s mountaintop fortress near Austria. (With a stop to raid Goering’s wine cellar.)

http://tv.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/arts/television/12pacific.html?_r=1

 

Threads merged due to same topic.

 

I'm looking forward this one very seriously. I absolutely loved the Band of brothers and have high expectations over this.

 

The Series website:

http://www.hbo.com/the-pacific?cmpid=b13#/the-pacific

 

It looks great. I can't wait to see it. I am a big fan of Band of Brothers as is.

 

It looks good, it'll definately be interesting to see if they use the same formula of focusing on one or two members of the group in each episode. BoB got the dynamic about right, I didn't get too wrapped up in the characters but I still cared what happenned to them, hopefully this will do the same.

As for covering the surface war etc, well they can't cover everything, it's a bit like complaining that BoB didn't show enough of the British or the air war. Well that's not what it's about, it's not saying the 101st won on their own, it's just telling their story.

 

I signed up for HBO just to watch this. Tonight is the night. Hopefully it is good.

 

I'm really psyched for this. I went out and got E.B. Sledge's book ( the one they based the series on ) and have been reading up on the Marine Corps.

 

"What moved us to tell these stories based on these veterans was to see what happens to the human soul throughout his particular engagement," Mr. Spielberg said at a January press conference. "These islands were stepping stones to the mainland of Japan. We weren't trained by the drill instructors stateside except what they could glean from recent history. We were trained by the enemy how to fight the enemy. They trained us how to fight like them.

"I don't want to compare one [theater of] war to the other in terms of savagery," Mr. Spielberg continued, "but there's a level when nature and humanity conspire against the individual. And to see what happens to those individuals throughout the entire course of events, leading up to the dropping of the two atomic bombs, is something that was very, very hard for the actors and for the writers and for all of us to put on the screen. But we felt we had to try."

Tuned In: HBO miniseries lets soldiers' stories paint vivid portraits of Pacific battles' tolls

​

​

 

Just finished watching it and it was boring up until the last 15 minutes. They spent too much time building on the foundation but really did not explain it successfully. On the plus side, the use of CG was excellent and were not overly done making them look fake. Initial comparison to BoB, not as good. BoB had a good flow. Looking forward to the next episode. My expectations were rather high I suppose considerating all the hype.