The Pacific (HBO)

[[JiF]Pvt. Harrick]

Another point, and we would only be paying for HBO for this show, when we don't really watch anything featured on that channel. ( we being my family and I)

[[JiF]corn]

In my area Direct Tv is offering free HBO and Showtime for 3 months if you sign up for their service for a year.Installation is also free.
Looks like i may be dropping my current cable and calling in my order for Direct TV.
I'll have to convince the wife but, it may be easy to do after she had watched the movie Saints and Soldiers here recently.
She has really never seen a war movie and or documentary that i can remember befor this last one.
I always find myself alone or with my kids on the couch when i watch WW2 stuff.

[[JiF]ilw]

thanks 4 sharing

[[JiF]Trogdor]

Not sure how I feel after tonight's (first) episode. I'm a little worried they're going to stray into what I consider the downfall of every movie set in the Pacific theatre... this boring and overdone philosophical journey into why we're there. I get it - people signed up because they were pissed off we got attacked, and once they got there they realized fighting isn't all it's glorified to be, the enemy is crazy fanatical, and they'd rather be home. There was a bit of that in BoB, but they kept it in-check and focused more on interpersonal relationships, battlefield tactics, and military command structure. Then again, it's just starting out, and only 2 of the 3 main characters are even over in the south pacific yet.

Could get very interesting once they start island-hopping. And the small glimpse they gave of a naval battle tonight looked to be good stuff. Here's to hoping next week gets into the meat of it.

[[JiF]Brick]

I agree, and hope you're right.
One thing they did get right, but really didn't emphasize enough was our fleet getting destroyed after they landed. All the surviving ships left the area.
My father told me they watched it happen that night and saw the jap troop transport ships flowing in the next day.
He said they all thought they were abandoned and "screwed".
They had to eat a lot of captured jap food because most of their supplies were on those ships.

[[JiF]FrenchAfroman]

will it be set in the island hoping campaign or the phillipines. dont forget the americans split up going two ways McArthur doing hes i shall return thing(luzon and battan could be amazing scenes if its where its set) and nimitz hopping around on the islands.

[[JiF]Brick]

Island Hopping.
This is the episode list:
Part 1 - Enlistment, Guadalcanal
Part 2 - Guadalcanal
Part 3 - R&R in Melbourne
Part 4 - Cape Gloucester, Sledge Trains at Camp Elliot
Part 5 - Peleliu
Part 6 - Peleliu
Part 7 - Peleliu
Part 8 - Basilone trains recruits prior to Iwo Jima
Part 9 - Okinawa
Part 10 - Coming Home

[[JiF]FrenchAfroman]

hmm weird the real thing would have been more like
Guam
Saipan
Io jima

[[JiF]EA]

First episode was much like the first episode of BoB, just mainly introductions, and not much happening. It's really impossible to tell how the rest of the series will pan out, and I'm not going to judge it on the first episode alone. So far it is just ok, but I'm sure it will get better.

Part 5 - Peleliu
Part 6 - Peleliu
Part 7 - Peleliu

That seems to be the equivalent to BoB's Bastogne. Should be an interesting series of episodes.

[[JiF]Brick]

After watching the first 7 episodes, what a major disappointment!
Too much Hollywood, sex, dramatization, and psychological crap.

Hollywood has imposed their 21st century namby-pamby, psycho-babble BS on 1940's Men and conditions.

I guess one good thing is a lot of people that never knew what a horrible war it was in the pacific now have a better understanding.

The Band of Brothers was a much better and more historically accurate production.


For those of you that don't know what namby-pamby means:

Noun 1. namby-pamby - an insipid weakling who is foolishly sentimental
doormat, weakling, wuss - a person who is physically weak and ineffectual
Adj. 1. namby-pamby- weak in willpower, courage or vitality
spineless, wishy-washy, gutless
weak - wanting in physical strength; "a weak pillar"

[[JiF]Trogdor]

This series is all over the place. Individual episodes lack focus, and aside from the very beginning of each episode, you'd have no idea where the guys even are on the islands. The biggest problem I see, and it may be intentional, is that you only get the view from a low level enlisted man. Sargents are few and far between, and good luck finding an officer who would help explain just what in the hell tactics are being used in a given situation.

Also, I can watch the last episode of BoB and be genuinely interested in what happened to the guys after the war - with this series, I couldn't care less, because they haven't made me interested in them as people. A couple episodes ago, a commanding officer was killed in battle. I could tell I was supposed to feel sad by the somber music that was playing, but I couldn't give a damn. That's just poor storytelling.

I read something interesting the other day about why everything feels so disjointed with a total lack of character development. The theory was that these episodes were cut down from a typical HBO run-time of 50-55 min to around 42 min average to accommodate an eventual showing on syndicated tv. If you take it at face value, it would certainly explain why they cant flesh out a character in 7 episodes now and why I don't really care when an main character gets a last ticket home. I really hope that the rumor is true, and somewhere there is around an hour of cut footage from the entire series just waiting to make it into a director's cut or something.

Such a shame - it's a waste of 250 million and the opportunity to tell a great story about guys serving in hellacious conditions with little support and prevailing against what was arguably the most dangerous threat in the second world war. To see it from the perspective of this series, it was just a crappy time in the jungle with lots of rain and bad food, and the occasional faceless Japanese soldier charging against apparently limitless machine gun fire.

[[JiF]Lt Gav]

Funny you should say about the time thing. It always used to make me laugh when I watched the 1st few series of 24, when each episode was supposed to be an hour, but when it showed on a non commercial channel it eneded up as a 45 minute show.
I'm glad that you've told me it wasn't worth watching as it is running on one of our satellite movie channels which I don't take. I thought the trailers looked good & was sorry I was going to miss it. Not so sorry now!!

[[JiF]Brick]

Also, I can watch the last episode of BoB and be genuinely interested in what happened to the guys after the war - with this series, I couldn't care less, because they haven't made me interested in them as people. A couple episodes ago, a commanding officer was killed in battle. I could tell I was supposed to feel sad by the somber music that was playing, but I couldn't give a damn. That's just poor storytelling..

Good point Trogdor. There are so many real stories here that they missed or did not tell very well.

The CO, Capt. Haldane was absolutely beloved by his men. In his book, Sledge recounts a conversation with him that he calls "the most important conversation I have ever had in my life", at the end of which he hears a booming voice (from God) telling him he will survive the war.

Sledge's corporal, RV Burgin, recounts many of the same stories in his book, including how he wants to make it through the war so he can marry an Australian girl he falls in love with in Melbourne (he actually does).
Instead, they show a sex scene with a different Marine (In Leckie's book, the Greek girl is actually married to someone else)

Sledge's buddy Snanfu is nothing like they portray him him the show.
They show you the old Gunnery Sargent Haney and make him out to be a real crackpot, but there's another interesting story there.


Such a shame.
Read the books! Aren't they always better?

[[JiF]CowHide]

I've only watched 3 episodes and I'm not sure if I'll watch the rest. It doesn't even compare to Band of Brothers and its too bad that it has its name aligned with it. I agree with Trogdor, I couldn't care less about the guys in this but with B of B I cared about all of them even the ones with smaller parts. And has anyone noticed the bad language? It seems to be thrown in just for the hell of it. It's very obvious that in WWII real life every other word was probably @*$&# and *$&#^*% but it distracts me from the story when I hear it just thrown in. I guess they wanted to appeal to the younger generation but it shows how amateur the writing is.

Cheers

[[JiF]Top321us]

Wow - I thought maybe I was just comparing it too hard to BoB. I am glad to see that my impressions are inline with all here.
I have been very disappointed with this series. While this has nothing to do with the meaning of the show it really bugs me that the show is only 46 minutes. That is almost 2 hours worth of content that could have been put in. Maybe with that amount of time they could have actually built the characters to the point you did care what happened with them.
I will finish watching the series, mainly because I have spent as much time as I have watching it already and hoping that just maybe it would start to be good.
It really is too bad, after all the hype, I thought this would be a very good series. Guess it is time to get the books and read about what really happened to these characters.