The Pacific - Anyone else a little disappointed?

I get the impression that some folks would probably complain about the "talky" parts in Platoon :)

Not in my case, because they were good. Interesting how you've managed to deduce that not liking the 'talky bits' in one war drama means that you don't like the 'talky bits' in any war drama. Case in point: the first hour of Full Metal Jacket, which was outstandingly good.
 
Its good but it really is no BOB

Agreed, I don't think I'll ever see something that can beat the "Bastogne" episode of BoB.

Rated against anything but BoB its still pretty impressive, but we were probably expecting too much.
 
Not in my case, because they were good. Interesting how you've managed to deduce that not liking the 'talky bits' in one war drama means that you don't like the 'talky bits' in any war drama. Case in point: the first hour of Full Metal Jacket, which was outstandingly good.

Well I didnt specify you, I was very careful to say that it was a general "people", I still stand by that statement, I am almost 100% certain that some people did complain about the talky parts of Platoon.
 
I'm also dissapointed, I don't know anything about the characters, they've jumped around too much and not focused on a core selection of soldiers.
 
ive just read with the old breed and the show recreates the events in perfect detail

I couldn't disagree more.

TP takes tiny snippets of With The Old Breed and slipped it into the run of the show, rather than actually basing the program around it like they did with BoB (Which is a good, if not biased, read).

TP's portrail of Sledgehammer is so far off the mark based on WTOB that I've taken a sever dislike to him in the series, despite being captivated by his writing in WTOB.
 
really ? ive noticed maybe one or two things different at most

(would debate this further but dont think we are supposed to discuss episodes not yet shown in the uk)
 
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really ? ive noticed maybe one or two things different at most

(would debate this further but dont think we are supposed to discuss episodes not yet shown in the uk)

I think it's difficult because TP is based on individual accounts while BoB (the book) was written as a 'top down view' of events.

The mistake they've (seemingly) made is that they haven't filled in the blanks particularly well.

The Airfield battle is a case in point. Sledgehammer's take on that battle is obviously very focused on his experience, but doesn't represent everything else that's going on. In fact, his account of that particular battle is pretty limited because it wasn't his companies main objective.

TP has to represent the bigger picture but it seems that they've only used comments in passing from WTOB to generate this extra content, rather than by finding alternate sources.

I'd be very surprised if they hadn't done additional research but that's the way it feels to me. As a result, the bits that do involve Sledge or are mentioned in WTOB seem to be disparate to what I've read in WTOB and the bits that don't feature him have been (lazily) made up.
 
Very dissappointed. Put it this way, I get more enjoyment watching that PENCIL during the superb intro then watching the actual program. I am on the latest episodes so far and I only know one character's name.

The show keeps fast forwarding from event to event at such a stupid pace that any sense of immersion, or character development is effectively destroyed. This just get worse as the show progresses it seems.

It isn't even in the same league as BoB.


BI have the same feelings as Kainz. I thought it was me being thick so I didn't wanna post on here.

I know only one character, Leckie and my American friend tells me he isn't in 7-8.

I have no sense od scope or how hard the fighting was, you only seem to get 10 mins of battle sequence each episode which gives the impressions that it was a cake walk.

It totally fails.

flirting mention of a naval battle once, that is it. Iwa Jima was 10 mmins of fighting and some character that got a medal prancing about in America.

IT sucks. They should have included a Japanese point of view so it showed there culture and fighting strengths.

IT NEEDZ NAVAL BATTLEZ, THAT WAS WHAT HALF THE PACIFIC CONFLICT WAS....

:mad:
 
AT the end of the day BoB was showing us heroes and how they stuck together and came out the other side of a brutal but crucial war against an evil tyrant with battles showing some coherance and planning.

The Pacific really doesn't do one battle start to finish, as someone said they'll go in, see the shelling, see some guns, and kind of skip bits or just end the battle all of a sudden out of no where.

I'm thinking back to the 2nd ep probably of BoB where they know an objective(the 3 small arty guns in the field) gather up a team and ammo, go, start the attack, have various stages of the attack, take out the guns, get reinforcements, finish the job, withdraw and some aftermath of it.

its so much more complete in everything it did basically.

The Pacific seems to be focusing solely on how harsh and dehumanising that campaign was, Spielberg seems to want nothing more than to explain why so many soldiers came back from that campaign and were totally screwed up. A worthwhile story but unfortunately its also underwhelming in terms of story telling and also in terms of why they got so screwed up.

The battles and loses are horrible, but are they any worse than the European theatre and the BoB squad, no they took awful loses, and had their own beach landings to deal with on a seemingly much larger scale, though really just the once rather than repeatedly.

The character growth seems to be, naive through to torture and ripping gold out of peoples mouths, with nothing in the middle.

In BoB you cared that someone died/got hurt, because they were established as relatively good guys, heroes who really went the extra mile for each other, while these guys half hate each other, aren't that friendly don't seem to get to know each other and its rather like faceless/nameless people dying.

I'm sure part of it is wanting to differentiate itself from BoB, and partially a very expensive film making process and a LOT of different island battles to try and cover in even less episodes than BoB.

It really doesn't matter what happens in the final, errm, two(?) episodes, it isn't a patch on BoB, and while its got all the usual hallmarks of good TV, I'm not actually finding it that compelling or immersive.

I think the faceless enemy you barely ever see, and complete lack of character involvement and some characters that I actually just dislike just make for a fairly average show in reality.
 
IT sucks. They should have included a Japanese point of view so it showed there culture and fighting strengths.

Well no, that would totally complicated things even further, just like BoB did little to show how the Germans coped with the fighting in Europe.

If you want to see a Japanese perspective go watch 'Letters from Iwo Jima'.

But I agree about character development, I can only name a couple of soldiers and I feel nothing for them. Its a glass half-empty.
 
I see that many of you share my own thoughts on The Pacific. I am not the type of person who has to have wall-to-wall action and blood, but what little action there is has no context. As has already been said, you get dropped into a battle and 10 minutes later everything is over and all the people whos names I don't remember carry on.

I can see they want to show the horrors of war on people but after 6 episodes the only person I care about is Leckie. 6 hours of mostly "talky" stuff and I only care about one character? BoB had me caring about all of Easy Company in the first two episodes.

The really big problem is the pacing and the way it jumps around from one thing to another. You can't pin it down long enough to give a damn what's going on. This is not a bad show, and intend to watch them all, but I really do think they could have made it much better.

As for the comment about it being disrespectful to not like it - don't be silly. We are all well aware this is a story based on real people, it doesn't change the fact it is a TV show meant to entertain. BoB had far more action, far more character development and was far more enjoyable without being in any way disrespectful.
 
As for the comment about it being disrespectful to not like it - don't be silly. We are all well aware this is a story based on real people, it doesn't change the fact it is a TV show meant to entertain.


actually my point was that people saying that it is boring is almost saying to those two authors "thanks for telling us your story, shame it was dull"

anyways anyone read the tie in book? ive not heard good things?
 
I think it's difficult because TP is based on individual accounts while BoB (the book) was written as a 'top down view' of events.

I think thats the problem though, people understand there is a link between BoB and TP and think TP is a sequel which in my mind is not true.

Having watched 7 episodes so far i am enjoying the series. It was slow to start but 6&7 up the pace a fair bit and i am looking forward to the remaining episodes.

Have to remember that TP is based (mainly) on the accounts of 2 peoples war in the pacfic and their experiences. For the vast majority of the series, if they didn't see it/experience it/hear about it then it won't be featured. Whilst this leaves gaps in the story compared to BoB (which also has some gaps in) it would be impossible to cover all the battles/experiences of that theatre of war without making a lot more than 10 episodes.
 
Movies and the books they are based on are rarely the same and can almost never be compared! So it is a bit of a stretch to say people's opinion that Spielberg's, Hank's and whoever else's interpretation is boring means they think the actual events were boring!
 
it is a bit of a failure imo. i watched letters from Iwo Jima the other day...that is also pacific based and whilst it was a bit boring in parts it was vastly more watchable than the pacific series.
 
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