Eliminatus said:
aTmAg said:
Cinco Ranch Aggie said:
aTmAg said:
Cinco Ranch Aggie said:
aTmAg said:
OldArmy71 said:
There is a payoff in the last episode.
Stick with it.
What payoff? They just come home and stuff. Watching sledge sit around under a tree and Leckie try to pick up a girl is boring.
If you are talking about the credits where they show pictures of the actors with the real life guys and describe how they ended up, then that is good. Though I prefer how BoB did it with the baseball game.
For me, the payoff was not watching Sledge sit under a tree but in keeping with the show's overall theme of the brutality of war, and the Pacific conflict in particular, how that impacted his life postwar. The depiction of what we now call PTSD, the nightmares, and then his breakdown while hunting with his dad.
I guess to me, they made this series more about PTSD than about the actual war in the Pacific. So much so, that the show would have been more aptly named "PTSD" instead. I get it that many of them suffered from that. But by focusing so much of the show on that detracted from the big picture.
The primary thing The Pacific lacks is the brotherhood aspect of war. I have never fought in a war, but I understand that no bond is closer than between soldiers fighting together in war. Band of Brothers got that across to viewers in spades. Not only were they close to each other, but they made us viewers close to them as well. No show/movie I can think of gives the same nostalgia feeling as the final scene of BoB. However, The Pacific fails miserably on this front. I couldn't care less if Snafu died for example. Or even Leckie and Sledge. Except for Ack-Ack, I didn't care about any of them. Yet you know damn well that the real life soldiers did care a LOT. The show runners failed translating that to film.
You're comparing one show with a cohesive unit to another following separate characters who are largely never connected in any way, shape, or form (they did throw in a scene with Leckie and Sledge but I have my doubts that interaction actually happened). Europe being a single land mass, it makes sense that you'd have a solitary unit that stays together as depicted in BoB. I believe The Pacific also had a sense of that brotherhood you're talking about, but it wasn't the focus (heck, that focus is even in the title, Band of Brothers).
You do have a point on the big picture that is lacking somewhat in The Pacific. I'd say that now, as even during the war, many people had never heard of these islands. One island looks like another island, certainly, and this does not allow for an obvious track of history such as following the guys from France into Germany, where architecture and landscapes that are ingrained into our memories make it clear the passage of history. Maybe for me, just knowing that this group was on Guadalcanal, and later some other group is on Peleliu, then here is Basilone at Iwo Jima and later Sledge is at Okinawa, where we see the B-29s fly overhead against that ominous music, lets me know the progression of the historical story.
That interaction between Sledge and Leckie did not happen. I looked it up last week when I rewatched.
I agree 100% on having to follow separate characters and groups. They were hamstrung by that. But I think they hamstrung themselves. They should have just picked one (I think Sledge story was more interesting). See my previous post about that.
I am actually glad they took multiple perspectives. The Pacific is about the all encompassing topic of brutal warfare and what it does to men and why. It's not a single human interest story and was never meant to be. You get the man who was basically an auxiliary and his story, the regular grunt that everyone can identify with and then the war hero and his thoughts and emotions. Watching each of them go through what they did gave a great account of the whole equation which was the Pacific campaign and the effect it had.
I guess my point is that I wish they didn't chose to make The Pacific about that. There are a lot of shows/movies about the brutality and PTSD-ish nature of warfare. For example, virtually every Vietnam movie is about that topic. That doesn't need 10 episodes of mini-series to cover.
What made BoB special was it was like Saving Private Ryan, except that we can get to know the characters really well, and watch them from basic to the end of the war. And, unlike SPR, it was (mostly) a true story. It wasn't a single human interest story, it was a company level interest story. They made full use of the mini-series format and made the best video-format show in history, IMO.
I wish The Pacific also took full advantage of the mini-series format to cover the Pacific like they did BoB. I understand people who say "The Pacific is NOT BoB!!!". I'm saying that it should have been. It would have been vastly better that way.
