The The Pacific

farritya

The The Pacific

The Pacific follows the lives of a U.S Marine Corps squad during the campaign within the Pacific against the Japanese Empire during WW2. Made by the creators of Band of Brothers, it follows a similar line of thought to outline the hardships of the common man during war. The Pacific is in parts a fast paced war series that can be enjoyed by action lovers whilst containing a more sensitive side when projecting the relationships (brotherhood) of Marines on the battlefield. Where The Pacific takes a new direction from its "older brother" is in its depiction of the lives of soldiers who were picked to return home to increase the sales of war bonds. In doing this it also depicts the life cycle of returned soldiers from initial joy to the eventual feeling of regret and to a certain extent shame felt by soldiers wanting to return to the war in service of either their comrades or nation.
The Pacific Theatre of World War II, as seen through the eyes of several young Marines.
Once again, the Spielberg/Hanks-team bring us an epic series about WW2, this time focusing on the war in the pacific. Some people claim that comparing 'The Pacific' to 'Band of Brothers' is unfair because is was a different kind of conflict. That may be true, but the fact remains that The Pacific fares poorly when you make the comparison. Band of Brothers followed Easy company throughout the war and you feel connected to the characters as they go through boot camp, get shipped out to the UK, the deployments in Normandy, the Netherlands and ultimately ending the war in Germany. The character development in The Pacific is sketchy, at best. Instead of focusing on the soldiers in one single company, The Pacific tries to follow three characters, who have nothing to do with each other, because they are all in different companies or battalions. What these marines experienced is genuine and epic, but making a series out of two stories (Leckie and Sledge wrote the books after the war) makes for poor television. Sure, you can show what the war was like for these men, but if you try to do too much, you will ultimately do neither convincingly. This kind of storytelling is incoherent and soon enough you realize how good Band of Brothers really was. The Marine Corps has a great tradition and prides itself for being different than the US Army, but nothing in the series shows the marine culture, except for a few words here and there. It would also seem that the enemy is faceless and not very distinctive, yet in reality the Japanese were anything but those things. Guadalcanal was probably hell on earth, but it doesn't translate to film. The action and carnage are highly sanitized, compared to most war movies. I had expected a whole lot more from this series and coming from the team that made Band of Brothers you inevitably start comparing. Maybe we have been spoiled in the past, but to me The Pacific is a missed opportunity....
When I first heard about Pacific,in fact when anyone first heard about it, the first thing that came into peoples' minds was Band of Brothers. Once again HBO had brought together Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg on a supposedly 'epic' war story. So the comparisons that crop up between the two are, of course, inevitable. If you would like to compare the two then without any doubt Band of Brothers will come out a winner. Although the visual effects are stunning and the scenes are shot quite realistically, there is always that feeling that you never were able to connect with the characters much, something that was never the problem with its predecessor, Band of Brothers. The soldiers who are portrayed in the Pacific are not much more than ordinary soldiers to us. They fight in a battle and die. We don't find ourselves welling up when something bad happens to them. The uncanny way in which Band of Brothers made you sympathize with the characters is almost completely absent here. That being said,even though it falls a little short on the aforementioned front, in no way should you miss Pacific as it is a gripping tale of the Pacific Theater of war. The effects of war on the soldiers irrespective of which side they are on are portrayed quite efficiently. If not for anything else, the overwhelming battle scenes are something that should definitely keep you hooked to the screen. So all in all, I would say The Pacific is a must-see and is well-worth the time.

Although it is possible that a few actors who had small non-reoccurring roles in the "Band of Brothers" series will make an appearance in "The Pacific", it is highly unlikely. This is mostly due to the fact that it is totally different true account of Marines experiences in WWII and that reusing certain actors may take away from the credibility of the series. Producers do not want any confusion to take place, and this is entirely possible if the viewer recognizes a face and assumes he is the same character from "Band of Brothers". Freddie Joe Farnsworth, a stuntman who who had two minor roles in the third and sixth episodes of "Band of Brothers" will appear in "The Pacific." In war the first source of valuable loot comes from dead comrades, and secondly from dead civilians. Valuable objects such as wristwatches are usually of use to the enemy, therefore they should be taken. Obviously gold was a strategic resource during the war. Civilians in combat areas often carry their total wealth in banknotes, and again it was better for this to be recovered from the dead and used. Thefts by everyone from everyone is common in war zones, and especially from vehicles, even tanks, as they carry all sorts of interesting things. It was a common grisly practice of American marines fighting in the Pacific, and there is documentation that it happened (see below). The obvious reason would be for the gold's value & the potential money to be gained from trading it during or after the war, however, there may be a symbolic or thematic meaning in it too, the concept of collecting a trophy from those you've conquered. A similar scene takes place in the movie <a href="/title/tt0120863/">The Thin Red Line (1998)</a> which is about the Army mop-up actions some months later after the initial Marine invasion of Guadalcanal in August 1942. There is some documentation that it took place. Robert Leckie writes in his book, Helmet for my Pillow, that there was one Marine who did go around taking the gold teeth out of dead Japanese soldiers' mouths. He kept them in a bag around his neck. He never really explains why the man did it, but as stated above, it would have been worth a lot of money. Many of the Marines fighting in the Pacific wanted "trophies" and yes, gold teeth were just another trophy. (In the book, he refers to another Marine doing this, but not Snafu. Several smaller characters were amalgamated into Snafu for the purposes of the series.) However, Marine practices such as this were in response to initial Marine encounters with Japanese atrocities committed against captured Marines. Marines were often tortured, mutilated, and dismembered by Japanese soldiers upon capture, and some strung up alive for bayonet practice. As a result, Marines showed no mercy as none was shown to them. The pistol is a Nambu Type 14, a common one carried by Japanese officers. (It's German counterpart in Europe was the Luger P08. Both pistols were highly prized by American soldiers, the Luger more so. GI's like Leckie would often trade them for anything, including favors, which is why Leckie gives the 14 he had to Dr Grant; Grant allowed Leckie to return to his unit before his recovery was done. In Leckie's memoir "Helmet for My Pillow" the pistol was not in the chest he found on Gloucester. Another Marine had a run-in with an officer and stole the trophy sidearm back from the officer, giving it to Leckie right before he left Pavuvu so he wouldn't be caught with it. Leckie did point it at the orderly to scare him after he was ordered to strip and hand in his razor blades and belt, but when the doctor expressed an interest in the handgun however, Leckie explained to him that it wasn't his to sell. Yes. The primary sources for the screenplay were Robert Leckie's book Helmet for my Pillow (1954) and Eugene Sledge's book With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (1981). They were re-released to coincide with the release of the miniseries in Spring 2010 & are still available. For John Basilone's story, the book Red Blood, Black Sand by Chuck Tatum was used. Tatum was at the Battle of Iwo Jima that claimed the life of Basilone in 1945 and had been friends with Basilone since boot camp. RV Burgin's book Islands of the Damned (2010), is based on his experiences on Okinawa, Pavuvu and Pelilieu. It is currently available as well, and the author is portrayed later in the series by Martin McCann. In 1937 the US armed forces adopted the 8-shot semi-automatic M1 Garand rifle as their standard weapon. However distribution was slow and by the time the US entered the war in December 1941 most US forces were still using the 5-shot bolt-action Springfield rifle which had been in use since 1903, including the Marines at Guadacanal. The Army reinforcements which arrived in Guadacanal were equipped with the M1 and afterwards the Marines swapped their Springfields for them. However production of new Springfields continued until February 1944 and some units such as the military police continued using them until the very end of the war. a5c7b9f00b

The The Pacific

Report Page