If you saw the ten severe episodes of HBO’s Band of Brothers in which battle was not spectacular but painful, and death was swift and ignominious you probably didn’t imagine there was an even worse aspect to World War II than this miniseries didn’t show you. The battle against Japan differed tactically, topographically, and psychologically from the struggle against Hitler. WWII in Europe was, for all its mechanical death and misery, a return in some ways: it was the final big land war in Europe, fought in places with familiar names by massive armies. The guys fighting there may not have understood the big picture or cared about geopolitics, but they were aware of the battle.
About the show: The Pacific
The Pacific is based chiefly on the memoirs of two US Marines, Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Robert Leckie’s Helmet. The mini-series follows the two authors and Marine John Basilone during World War II in the Pacific Theater.
The miniseries includes well-known conflicts with Japan involving the 1st Marine Division (and temporarily the 5th Marine Division), such as Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, and Okinawa, as well as Basilone’s participation in the Battle of Iwo Jima. Hugh Ambrose published the official miniseries tie-in book, which chronicles the tales of the three guys portrayed in the miniseries and other Marines.
About the opening scene of The pacific:
The primary characters are sledge (Joseph Mazzello), Leckie, and Basilone. The show stands out for having fewer prominent characters than its predecessor, Band of Brothers, which featured a big ensemble cast. This is because the story primarily concentrates on the perspectives of those three people. After the opening titles, we see a sheet of paper with a line written on it with a bit of charcoal as the theme “Honor” plays. Eventually, you witness it making doodles of marines that periodically transition into black and white sequences. This continues until you see a marine carrying a wounded on his back before the screen fades dark and displays the episode number.
The ratings scored by The Pacific:
Critics widely praised the Pacific. The series has a 91 percent rating on the aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.32 out of 10 based on 43 reviews. “An honest, albeit terrible, examination of World War II, The Pacific is a visually spectacular for the faint of heart, according to the website’s critical consensus. The series has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 32 reviews, indicating “universal acclaim.” According to HBO, the miniseries presently has an 87 percent rating on review aggregate Metacritic. It has a rating of 8.8 percent on IMDB.com and a rating of 7.2 percentile on TV.com.
The Pacific HBO Reviews:
On the other hand, Sled is the dramatic focal point, a sensitive soul who has been steadily brutalized by the horrors he has experienced. And, as you’d expect from HBO, they’re presented beautifully, right down to the last shell casing and terrible jungle combat. A tracer-strewn assault over Peleliu airstrip is as horrifying as Saving Private Ryan’s opening volley, while enormous CG armadas provide epic grandeur to the Americans’ island-hopping. But it’s at the quiet times that the show shines the brightest. Sledge is comforting a dying Japanese woman, and Leckie is sobbing in his cot, exhausted. It was the same type of conflict. The Pacific is a touching lament for lost innocence, whereas Band of Brothers was a tribute to comradeship.
The best marketing strategies for The Pacific show:
In June 2009, HBO showed the first official trailer for The Pacific before the season 2 premiere of True Blood. It featured sequences from the three central protagonists, Basilone’s marriage, and various fight scenes. The teaser ended with the word “2010” flashing across the screen, implying and confirming the series’ debut date. On the HBO website, a second trailer was uploaded, following which the date “March 2010” was shown, indicating a more exact series premiere date. Comcast introduced an on-demand video from the series, including a scene from The Pacific, interviews with the filmmakers, and character biographies, on January 14, 2010. In February 2010, another trailer was released. The series’ official website features an extended trailer for the miniseries.
In its early episodes, The Pacific makes it brutally evident that the Marines it follows had no idea what they were getting into. On the one hand, the conflict was straightforward. However, if you see The Pacific, you will be rewarded with a horrific but poetic drama that is finally less about how men fight and die and more about what happens to them when they fight and survive. It will demonstrate how character and pure, unjust randomness may interact to generate cruelty or kindness. And it will make you feel strongly for the guys who return cautiously to calm places, searching their souls like men inspecting their bodily parts after a mortar blast, carefully feeling themselves out to see what’s still around.
