Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[StaedlerMars]

The Pacific

Kind of the follow up to Band of Brothers but set in the Pacific Theatre.

I'm pretty excited about this. From the featurette it seems like it's going to be pretty psychological. From the trailer it looks like it's going to be pretty action intensive as well.

[LeeC]

looks really good!

[Ptommydski]

Band of Brothers was indisputably one of the top three television shows ever made. Compelling, gripping, realistic - everything a historical drama should be. In my eyes Spielberg and Hanks gained back some credibility after the commercial revisionist nonsense of Saving Private Ryan. I'm hoping they have done real homework again, that's what made the first series so incredible.

[ImRonBurgundy?]

Jesus Christ, in the first trailer a guy gets his leg blown off as he's picking up another soldier on a stretcher.

[Inlander]

So has anyone been watching this? It finishes next week and holy shit, it's just built and built and built each week into a tour through hell that's unlike anything else I've seen on T.V. It's had its share of mis-steps (most egregious being the absolutely awful music which is completely at odds with the utter physical, emotional, and existential bleakness of the scenes depicted), but overall I think it's been incredibly well done. I've just finished watching episode 9 and there were parts where I almost had to cover my eyes, and parts where I was hoping it would stop soon because it was just too much to take. I've got to be honest, I don't know if I could watch this series again but I'm really glad it's been made. The overall message - "War is hell" - is pretty well-worn, but I've never seen it depicted so unflinchingly and so confrontingly.

Unfortunately, it's been pretty badly received in Australia, in no small part because Channel 7, which screens it here, has absolutely butchered it, cramming each episode full of ad-breaks and covering great swathes of the screen while the show is on with ads for upcoming shows and lottery results, and continuously trying to appeal to cheap jingoistic nationalism, going so far as to subtitle the series as "the Battle for Australia", which is patently absurd. What they've done to the show is practically criminal, but regretably that's the level to which commercial television in Australia has sunk.

[StaedlerMars]

Yeah I've been watching this, been meaning to boost this thread.

I haven't seen episode 9 yet, but episode 8 was really well done. Just the whole life on two sides of the war, he comes back, and it's obvious that he's such an inspiration, and *spoiler* blam.

It gets the message of "island hopping campaign was hell" across so well, when I watched episode 7 I was absolutely baffled. That was the one where they were attacking the mountains, after having tackled the airfield on Peleliu, and they follow the stretcher being carried to the front. It's just shocking.

I want to say that the writers of the show have no mercy on their characters killing them left and right, but then your remember that it's all based on true stories. There is no real heroism here, it's just all dirty, gritty, and really really messy. "unflinching and confronting" is a really good way of putting this.

[Nodaisho]

I've been watching it, but some of it just annoys me. It is covering a period from Guadalcanal to presumably VJ day, about three years. Band of Brothers covered less than a year except for Currahee, and those 9 episodes after Currahee are longer in runtime than the entire series of The Pacific. And there was less introduction in each episode of Band of Brothers. They don't have enough time to cover everything as well as they should, they shoved all of Iwo Jima into 15 minutes.

The Australia episode was also terrible. You know that Greek girl that the entire episode focuses on? She didn't exist. She was made up for the series. There was plenty of stuff going on in Australia, there was no reason to make something up.

Believe it or not, they are actually selling Basilone short on his actions. Remember that battle where he was hip-firing the machine gun on Guadalcanal? That was a three day battle in reality, at one point only two of the men with him were still able to fight. The guy was basically Rambo with smaller pecs and shorter hair. Rambo was basically Basilone with bigger pecs, longer hair, and a thicker accent. But if they showed what he actually did, people would insist that they were exaggerating.

[satsugaikaze]

Unfortunately, it's been pretty badly received in Australia, in no small part because Channel 7, which screens it here, has absolutely butchered it, cramming each episode full of ad-breaks and covering great swathes of the screen while the show is on with ads for upcoming shows and lottery results, and continuously trying to appeal to cheap jingoistic nationalism, going so far as to subtitle the series as "the Battle for Australia", which is patently absurd. What they've done to the show is practically criminal, but regretably that's the level to which commercial television in Australia has sunk.

To put it lightly Channel 7 are the biggest load of fuckheads amongst the Big Three

I hardly followed it and caught wind of it when they were advertising it as the "Battle for Australia". I thought they'd actually planned to involve Australians in it, but apparently it was just a front to get the Australians to watch it. It's not actually a bad series - my bro says it looks cheap - but I don't think that's an issue and it's engrossing enough for me to believe all of the depressing shit that happens in the series.
Channel 7 used to be a pretty cool network, but now it's just a steaming pile of shit that predominantly sells on American comedies and 'dramas'. At least Channel Ten had the good sense to use smarter imports. =/

Kokoda still stands out for me as the best WW2 Pacific-themed piece of film., though. It was a fantastic movie that heaped on so much of the psychological stuff (eg. the soldier randomly pulled from the mud that was so thick that during the half-minute shot of the track you couldn't even see him lying there face-down. )
And the scene where one guy hides under a giant fallen tree for a couple hours to evade a particular Japanese patrol and when he climbs out there's a Japanese soldier who's been waiting there the entire time on top of the tree and he bayonets him through the face

[Inlander]

I've watched one episode on Channel 7, and the rest I've downloaded. Quite frankly, when viewed without ad breaks and without Channel 7's vandalism it's a completely different show. It really annoys me that most people in Australia will have experienced the show only through the shit-brown filter of Channel 7's telecast.

[Alex C]

The freakiest thing about what Basilone did is the simple fact that the Medal of Honor recipients list is basically a compilation of fairly comparable stories. Like Alejandro Ruiz, for example. His unit was pinned down by a pillbox, so he charged through the machine gun fire and grenade blasts and managed to get on top of the pillbox only to find his rifle had jammed. So after beating the shit out of a guy with his (nearly) useless weapon, he ran all the way back through the gunfire, got another gun, ran back and proceeded to kill 12 people.

[Kugai]

Isn't Channel 7 one of Murdocks toys?

[Tom]

Channel 7 is a subsidiary of Fairfax, not News Corp. The same goes for TEN as well, Fairfax is like anathema of News Corp. PBL owns 9, I'm not sure if they're related to Murdoch but my moneys on yes.

EDIT: PBL is partnered with Murdoch for Foxtel, our major cable TV service provider.

[the_pied_piper]

Thanks to this thread reminding me I have almost caught up on this now after just finishing episode 8 and I have to say that it is one spectacular piece of television. It certainly rivals Band of Brothers in quality (being by the same people most likely helped a lot) and there aren't really enough superlatives to describe it.

I have been watching it on the internet so there haven't been any ridiculous advertisements as I'm sure there are/were on whichever TV channel picked it up here in the UK and it is one of those programs where you just don't notice the time fly by as you're completely glued to the story/action.

I've been watching it, but some of it just annoys me. It is covering a period from Guadalcanal to presumably VJ day, about three years. Band of Brothers covered less than a year except for Currahee, and those 9 episodes after Currahee are longer in runtime than the entire series of The Pacific. And there was less introduction in each episode of Band of Brothers. They don't have enough time to cover everything as well as they should, they shoved all of Iwo Jima into 15 minutes.

The introduction to The Pacific is a bit long, I agree, and I don't like those 'previously on' montages that they use for shows now like people are so braindead that they don't remember what went on in the program a week before (if it's for people who want to watch without catching up then that is even more stupid because who starts halfway through a series?). However, Iwo Jima has been well documented before from Clint Eastwood's brilliant Letters From Iwo Jima to Discovery Channel documentaries so that might be a reason to not put so much emphasis on that battle. Also, it allows them the chance to show the battles at Peleliu, Guadalcanal and other strategies that haven't been given such an outlet before.

It would have been nice to see the series given a full run of 16+ episodes but for what they have they have done an outstanding job.

[Alex C]

I usually don't start watching until halfway through a series.

[the_pied_piper]

But you watch by catching up rather than just missing out a huge chunk of the series, right?

[Alex C]

No.

[Alex C]

I mean, guys, it's World War II. Human stories are happening in the Pacific Theatre. Congratulations, you now have context.

[StaedlerMars]

Yeah, I've been watching it on the Internet, so basically they've been hour long periods of this show making me go 'damn war is fucking hell'.

But, I think this show is really good. I agree with the_pied_piper, it rivals Band of Brothers, in cinematography and story telling. I've heard criticism that there's too much going on and it gets confusing, but I connected a lot more with the characters in this show than in Band of Brothers, probably helped by the fact that there were three distinct stories going on, focusing on just three characters rather than an entire company.

I don't know whether I can watch it again though. 

[Jimor]

Just finished episode 7. Amazing. Horrific.