Retrospective
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tony-sobon — 11 years ago(November 13, 2014 06:26 PM)
Its still a good show , but BoB was a lot better. I agree with BOB having 9.6 rating and Pacific 8.3.
The Pacific spends to much time with soldiers outside of battle , it ruins the overall experience. Also the story jumps around between diff story arcs , with only 10 eps. its hard to get invested in the soldiers. -
sandcrab277 — 10 years ago(April 01, 2016 06:52 AM)
showing the too much of the bloody gore in numerous battles does not a movie makenor is it the only way to show the pain and anguish i especially liked the scenes done in australia and camp pendleton and the soldier's homes where the human side of could be visited up close and personalmore than any other scene in the film, i could relate best to lena's loss of her finally found beloved husbandno more future for themi've watched band of brothers many timesit was a different type of war in europe so i'd never compare it to island hopping logistics or coping with monsoon rainsthe marines have my respect
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MrMojok — 9 years ago(May 03, 2016 04:48 PM)
I think they did just what they needed to, which was to make something a little different from BoB.
I was, and am, a huge BoB fan. When I first watched the Pacific, on Sunday nights as each new episode aired, I felt a little underwhelmed. When it was over, I liked it, admired the craft that went into it, but overall I felt like it wasn't as good as BoB. But about a year later when I had a long weekend, I rented all the Pacific episodes from our last local Blockbusters as it was closing, and marathoned them all.
After that weekend I had a whole different view of the series. Where Band of Brothers is about this group that you follow through training, through their baptism of fire, and through to the end, the Pacific is more about the effects of war on the individual.
In this sense, Sledge's character arc was fantastic. I realize it's a bit crass to talk about a real man who experienced these things and call it a character arc, but Spielberg/Hanks were essentially making a cinema-quality film that was ten hours long with both series, and the writers had to adapt the real stories into recognizable arcs that the audience could follow, and empathize with.
In watching these series, and reading the probably dozens of books I've read about the infantry in WWII, the main thing I always wondered is how these guys could have seen and done the things they did, and then returned home and live some kind of normal life. Especially based on what I know about the realities of the war against Japan. Sledge's story in the series really shines in this respect. He starts out as a sensitive kid, who experiences progressively worse and worse things, and is changed forever. I really enjoyed the last episode that showed him, Leckie, and Lena after the war.
I still love BoB, but in a way, The Pacific had a larger emotional impact on me, in the long term.