"The Pacific" - check out the new trailer from HBO

[Plunkertx]

http://www.pacificfans.com

[Bearcat99]

Looks interesting............

[steiner562]

Seems like we have been waiting an enternity for this,http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif,should be a great series.

[Gammelpreusse]

I am actually not sure if I am tired of all that WW2 stuff you get bombared with in all the medias nowadays or if I am actually looking forward to this, hmmmm

[Monty_Thrud]

If this is of the same calibre as Band of Brothers, it will be fantastic, very much looking forward to this to add to my collection.

[wheelsup_cavu]

Wish I still subscribed to HBO. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

My uncle served on Guadalcanal and the dad of my best friend in high school served on Iwo Jima.


Wheelsup

[danjama]

Interesting is an understatement - this looks amazing, and it seems we've been hearing and waiting forever!!

[Feathered_IV]

Looks like a lot of soul-searching dialogue in the PTO this time. I suspect the message of the series will be coloured by the US experience in Iraq.

[ploughman]

Looks well produced, defo a must see. That music reminded me of Stardust.

[saipan1972]

i remember how excited i was for the " the thin red line" i thought i would be as good as private ryan. i fell asleep watching it.

i hope this series will be good but who knows, the bar has been set very high.

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

It will be hard to recapture the feeling of Band of Brothers, but I have hope that it will be in the same ballpark.

[R_Target]

This will be partially based on E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa which I would highly recommend to those interested who haven't yet read it.

[jarink]

Originally posted by Feathered_IV:
Looks like a lot of soul-searching dialogue in the PTO this time. I suspect the message of the series will be coloured by the US experience in Iraq.

By all accounts, the Pacific war had an entirely different nature than the war in Europe. In the MTO/ETO, troops at least had heard of their objectives (like Salerno, Rome, Paris, Brussles, etc.) and could relate on some level to the guys on the other side of the lines (such as the scene in Band of Brothers when one of the troops meets a German soldier that grew up near him).

At least for the US troops, the PTO was very much a mindless meat grinder for seemingly worthless atolls and jungle. The main objective for most of the troops (other than surviving the war) was simply to punish the "barbarian" Japanese for the attack on Pearl Harbor. I've heard of many PTO vets say at one point or another they would think to themselves "why the heck are we fighting the Jap(anese) for this God-forsaken lump of rock/sand/coral/jungle?"

I hope this series does not "recapture the feeling of BoB", I hope it has it's own unique feel to it. It was different war.

[Ba5tard5word]

I'm probably one of the only people who didn't really like Band of Brothers much. The characters changed every episode or didn't get much screen time to make an impression, so you never got to know them much. And the action scenes were short and chaotic and not particularly intense...maybe it was realistic but I didn't think it was very exciting.

I thought Saving Private Ryan was a lot better, the action scenes were ridiculously intense and scary even, and you got to know the characters well, pretty much all of whom were played with decent acting.

So hopefully this one is more to my taste.

[SeaFireLIV]

I love band of brothers and will be interested in this. I don`t think it`ll best BOB though.

Now if there could be a Russian at Stalingrad that would be something else... Meh, maybe even the German infantry at Stalingrad and retreat.

A Brit version would be nice too.

So much untapped stuff here. Just need someone with the willingness and moolah to make it. And ignore people who`d whine because it featured `evil` russians or germans. Some of these guys were just men roped into a deadly conflict...

[TS_Sancho]

Originally posted by Ba5tard5word:
I'm probably one of the only people who didn't really like Band of Brothers much. The characters changed every episode or didn't get much screen time to make an impression, so you never got to know them much. And the action scenes were short and chaotic and not particularly intense...maybe it was realistic but I didn't think it was very exciting.

I thought Saving Private Ryan was a lot better, the action scenes were ridiculously intense and scary even, and you got to know the characters well, pretty much all of whom were played with decent acting.

So hopefully this one is more to my taste.

Its interesting how two different people can watch the same film and be left with opposite impressions.

I avoided watching Band of Brothers for quite some time as it came right on the heals of Private Ryan and I had figured it to be a shallow attempt to cash in on Private Ryans box office success.

A good friend lent me the series after some prodding and to my surprise I absolutley loved it. One of the finer points Band of Brothers brought out for me was some of the best cinematic character development I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

Everyone has different taste but on the off chance that you harbored the same preconceived notions about the Band of Brothers series as I did I highly recomend giving it another chance with an open mind.

[TS_Sancho]

Originally posted by SeaFireLIV:
I love band of brothers and will be interested in this. I don`t think it`ll best BOB though.

Now if there could be a Russian at Stalingrad that would be something else... Meh, maybe even the German infantry at Stalingrad and retreat.

A Brit version would be nice too.

So much untapped stuff here. Just need someone with the willingness and moolah to make it. And ignore people who`d whine because it featured `evil` russians or germans. Some of these guys were just men roped into a deadly conflict...

In the off chance your not familiar with it the film Enemy at the Gates does a pretty good job with Stalingrad.

[TS_Sancho]

I'll be sure to give it a shot. I had pretty high hopes for Flags of our Fathers measuring up as a pacific theatre Private Ryan and was dissapointed. As Steiner posted earlier, hopefully this is the one we've been waiting for.

[Ba5tard5word]

Enemy at the Gates was pretty bad.



Everyone has different taste but on the off chance that you harbored the same preconceived notions about the Band of Brothers series as I did I highly recomend giving it another chance with an open mind.

I watched it on DVD a few years after it aired on TV. I fully expected to like it because the only thing I'd ever heard about it was how great it was. Unfortunately I just found it rather tepid.

[jarink]

Originally posted by TS_Sancho:
In the off chance your not familiar with it the film Enemy at the Gates does a pretty good job with Stalingrad.

Not if you're looking for a story line that is historically accurate. The love triangle, the "showdown" scene with the German sniper plus the initial river crossing and unarmed charge into German MGs are all BS. There was a top German sniper sent to Stalingrad to hunt Vasily Zaitsev, but his name was Heinz Thorwald, not König. I guess the movie makers decided "König" just sounded better...And while there were incidents of Commisars and other Red Army officers forcing their troops into battle under threat of being shot, I haven't seen it documented where it happened at Stalingrad. Quite the opposite, most Russian troops performed in a very brave and patriotic fashion.

About the only thing the movie got right was the amount of destruction that happened in the city.

[steiner562]

Regarding Stalingrad, the German film/tv series "STALINGRAD" I think it was a 1992 release?,the best I've seen on that particular battle,pretty gruesome though,just like that other German production Das Boot which is a fantastic peice of work too.

[BillyTheKid_22]

http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/25.gif

[Bo_Nidle]

Looking forwards to this a LOT!

A chap I work with has brother in Australia. He got a job as a platoon extra in the series when the Pacific scenes were being filmed there. He gave me a disc with a lot of behind the scenes photos that he took. I'll locate it and post a few.

[Bo_Nidle]

Okay found the disc:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b194/BoNidle/Pac1.jpg

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b194/BoNidle/Pac6.jpg

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b194/BoNidle/Pac5.jpg

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b194/BoNidle/Pac4.jpg

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b194/BoNidle/Pac3.jpg

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b194/BoNidle/Pac2.jpg


I have a lot more but I grabbed these and resized them quick for this thread.

BoB is a hard act to follow but I think "The Pacific" should be a worthy companion piece to it.

[waffen-79]

I'm not exited about this project http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-indifferent.gif

the trailer looked like "Thin Red Line II"

little combat, a lot of sequences of soldier's life, how they got in that situation, etc.

the hanks and spielberg anticipated project should've been about a RAF or VVS Squadron, BE SURE! ... not PTO infantry http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/shady.gif

[Feathered_IV]

Originally posted by waffen-79:
..the hanks and spielberg anticipated project should've been about a RAF or VVS Squadron, BE SURE! ... not PTO infantry http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/shady.gif

That would have been nice, but the accounts department would have had a fit. PTO infantry is much, much cheaper.

[joeap]

Originally posted by waffen-79:
I'm not exited about this project http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-indifferent.gif

the trailer looked like "Thin Red Line II"

little combat, a lot of sequences of soldier's life, how they got in that situation, etc.

the hanks and spielberg anticipated project should've been about a RAF or VVS Squadron, BE SURE! ... not PTO infantry http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/shady.gif

I think they wanted to do something to commemorate the many PTO vets the way Band of Brothers commemorated ETO vets.

[crucislancer]

I'm looking forward to it. If it's even half as intense as With the Old Breed, then it will be very powerful.


Originally posted by waffen-79:
I'm not exited about this project http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-indifferent.gif

the trailer looked like "Thin Red Line II"

little combat, a lot of sequences of soldier's life, how they got in that situation, etc.

the hanks and spielberg anticipated project should've been about a RAF or VVS Squadron, BE SURE! ... not PTO infantry http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/shady.gif

Well, The Thin Red Line was a 2 hour movie, this is a 10 hour mini-series. Much more room for action if that's what you crave.

And don't forget, this is produced by Hanks and Spielberg for HBO, so naturally they are going to focus on U.S. servicemen. While I'm sure we would all love to see something like this for servicemen from other countries, the typical HBO subscriber might not be interested at first glance.

[Wildnoob]

nothing against people who like from it, but I hear, repeat, hear, don't have confirmation if was comment from someone who really hate the movie and may have create this, but the person saied that when enemy at gates was realised in Russia, well, first there was a small movie saying all the historical inaccuracy of the movie, and there are many things according to it, of witch reflect to the so quantity of big erros that the movie have.

[crucislancer]

Originally posted by Wildnoob:
nothing against people who like from it, but I hear, repeat, hear, don't have confirmation if was comment from someone who really hate the movie and may have create this, but the person saied that when enemy at gates was realised in Russia, well, first there was a small movie saying all the historical inaccuracy of the movie, and there are many things according to it, of witch reflect to the so quantity of big erros that the movie have.

Yeah, Enemy at the Gates is a good flick if you know nothing about Stalingrad. Check your historical accuracy at the door. The German movie Stalingrad is much better, IMHO.

[VW-IceFire]

Originally posted by Wildnoob:
nothing against people who like from it, but I hear, repeat, hear, don't have confirmation if was comment from someone who really hate the movie and may have create this, but the person saied that when enemy at gates was realised in Russia, well, first there was a small movie saying all the historical inaccuracy of the movie, and there are many things according to it, of witch reflect to the so quantity of big erros that the movie have.
Very few war movies are of any true historical value in terms of being accurate. Pearl Harbor is amongst the worst.

[R_Target]

Here's a passage from Sledge's With the Old Breed, after being in action in constant rain for weeks on Okinawa.

"The longer we stayed in the area, the more unending the nights seemed to become. I reached the state where I would awake abruptly from my semi-sleep, and if the area was lit up, note with confidence my buddy scanning the terrain for any hostile sign. I would glance about, particularly behind us, for trouble. Finally, before we left the area, I frequently jerked myself up into a state in which I was semi-awake during periods between star shells.

I imagined Marine dead had risen up and were moving silently about the area. I suppose these were nightmares, and I must have been more asleep than awake, or just dumbfounded by fatigue. Possibly they were hallucinations, but they were strange and horrible. The pattern was always the same. The dead got up slowly out of their waterlogged craters or off the mud and, with stooped shoulders and dragging feet, wandered around aimlessly, their lips moving as though trying to tell me something. I struggled to hear what they were saying. They seemed agonized by pain and despair. I felt they were asking me for help. The most horrible thing was that I felt unable to aid them.

At that point I invariably became wide awake and felt sick and half-crazed by the horrors of my dream. I would gaze out intently to see if the silent figures were still there, but saw nothing. When a flare lit up, all was stillness and desolation, each corpse in it's usual place."

[Ba5tard5word]

I didn't really like Stalingrad a whole lot as an action movie. Actually its depiction of despair and bored terror among the German soldiers was well done, and the actors were pretty good, but the action sequences were done rather poorly, like they didn't have a good budget for it.

[goshikisen]

Originally posted by waffen-79:
I'm not exited about this project http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-indifferent.gif

the trailer looked like "Thin Red Line II"

little combat, a lot of sequences of soldier's life, how they got in that situation, etc.

the hanks and spielberg anticipated project should've been about a RAF or VVS Squadron, BE SURE! ... not PTO infantry http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/shady.gif

You won't get Hanks & Spielberg to bank roll a project on the VVS... the US Marine Corp in the Pacific is the logical next project.

I am very excited by this project... if you want to read about harrowing combat in WWII then try "One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle For Tarawa". Unbelievable to read the statistics and facts on this battle and then realize that it's entire duration was one weekend. Try wading 700 yards into shore with intense Japanese machine gun fire coming at you. "The Pacific"... I'm looking forward to it.

[SeaFireLIV]

Originally posted by goshikisen:


You won't get Hanks & Spielberg to bank roll a project on the VVS... the US Marine Corp in the Pacific is the logical next project.



I wouldn`t be so sure...

[goshikisen]

Originally posted by SeaFireLIV:
I wouldn`t be so sure...

Of what? We already know they're finishing up "The Pacific" so we can be sure of that. On a VVS project... have you heard something I haven't?

[leitmotiv]

I have no high hopes for this series. The kind of hagiography produced by the Spielberg workshop is not to my taste. A ten episode elegy, "Band of Brothers", tested my patience to the limit. Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" was pure Stephen Ambrose bun*** on American exceptionalism which made this Yank gag. Ambrose was an executive producer of "Brothers". Maybe the elimination of Ambrose from the equation (by death) will help the Pacific series, but I am not optimistic. The tone has been set by "Brothers", and it is good business, but bad art. For generations the classic American tone in our war literature and films was ironic. Along comes Spielberg (with the collusion of Ambrose) and changes it to self-congratulation, high solemnity, and high seriousness. It's poor art compared to our greatest films about war.

[jarink]

C'mon, Leit, tell us what you really think!

[TheOriDoci]

Originally posted by Bo_Nidle:
Okay found the disc:


I have a lot more but I grabbed these and resized them quick for this thread.

BoB is a hard act to follow but I think "The Pacific" should be a worthy companion piece to it.

Can you post the original sizes of those?

[grifter2u]

Originally posted by SeaFireLIV:
I love band of brothers and will be interested in this. I don`t think it`ll best BOB though.

Now if there could be a Russian at Stalingrad that would be something else... Meh, maybe even the German infantry at Stalingrad and retreat.



a good movie about the germans retreating from the eastern front is "Cross of Iron" made in 1977 with James Coburn

[Gammelpreusse]

Originally posted by leitmotiv:
I have no high hopes for this series. The kind of hagiography produced by the Spielberg workshop is not to my taste. A ten episode elegy, "Band of Brothers", tested my patience to the limit. Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" was pure Stephen Ambrose bun*** on American exceptionalism which made this Yank gag. Ambrose was an executive producer of "Brothers". Maybe the elimination of Ambrose from the equation (by death) will help the Pacific series, but I am not optimistic. The tone has been set by "Brothers", and it is good business, but bad art. For generations the classic American tone in our war literature and films was ironic. Along comes Spielberg (with the collusion of Ambrose) and changes it to self-congratulation, high solemnity, and high seriousness. It's poor art compared to our greatest films about war.

Just curious, what would your ideal war movie/series look like?

[DuxCorvan]

I liked both SPR and BOB, but I agree that they are too prone to convert most characters into glorified saints or martyrs. The few jerks in the film -mostly incompetent officers- are just caricatures with no real depth in their reasons or motivations.

I hate those Spielberg/Hanks's sanitized self-righteous characters who never do the wrong thing nor act in a selfish way, always doing sublime things and showing deep feelings in slow motion.

But it was well-done, IMHO.

"The Thin Red Line" was a boooring thing supposed to be deep, only managing to be a presumptuous collection of postcards, long stares and weepy moments -much as "The English Patient" also was.

I hope this series doesn't go that way, but those scenes with daddies and kissing girlfriends bring me bad memories of TTRL and that makes me fear the worst.

[SeaFireLIV]

Originally posted by DuxCorvan:


"The Thin Red Line" was a boooring thing supposed to be deep, only managing to be a presumptuous collection of postcards, long stares and weepy moments


I agree.

I found the music good though.

[leitmotiv]

"Thin Red" was excruciating---what Dux wrote was it in a nutshell. I was blindsided by the film because Malick directed "Days of Heaven" which is one of the finest American films. I hope the novel does not get tarred by this dismal, pretentious, silly film because James Jones (who was at Guadalcanal in the army) wrote the best novel about ground fighting in the Pacific by an American. It is tough, gritty, realistic, and his psychological portraits are spot-on (unlike the wooly, impressionistic job done by Malick in the film). I recommend the novel highly.

I recently tried to watch BOB again (I reluctantly watched it once in 2001). Sanctimonious twaddle. I'd rather watch "Letters from Iwo Jima".

[leitmotiv]

Originally posted by Gammelpreusse:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by leitmotiv:
I have no high hopes for this series. The kind of hagiography produced by the Spielberg workshop is not to my taste. A ten episode elegy, "Band of Brothers", tested my patience to the limit. Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" was pure Stephen Ambrose bun*** on American exceptionalism which made this Yank gag. Ambrose was an executive producer of "Brothers". Maybe the elimination of Ambrose from the equation (by death) will help the Pacific series, but I am not optimistic. The tone has been set by "Brothers", and it is good business, but bad art. For generations the classic American tone in our war literature and films was ironic. Along comes Spielberg (with the collusion of Ambrose) and changes it to self-congratulation, high solemnity, and high seriousness. It's poor art compared to our greatest films about war.

Just curious, what would your ideal war movie/series look like? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Doesn't take itself seriously and doesn't try to make plaster saints out of human beings. Actually, one of the best war films is about a shameless coward who hopes to sit out the war in the UK on an admiral's staff, but, due to a whim of his mentally ill admiral, he is forced to land in the first wave on D-Day---and get killed so the USN could say the first fatality was a naval officer. The film is 1965's "The Americanization of Emily".

As far as I am concerned, the most perfect war film ever made was "12 O'Clock High" because it evaded every single pitfall of the dismal Spielberg style. When the general has a nervous breakdown and can't board his airplane, is one of Peck's great scenes. No plaster saints, no sanctimoniousness, no high seriousness, just hard psychological realism.

P.S. Spielberg actually made a good war film---his nearly forgotten "1941"---absolutely hilarious.

[erco415]

Look! I'm a BUG!