Give it to me now...
It took us a while, but Katie and I finished the final two episodes of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks' 10-episode miniseries The Pacific last night.
Our overall review? Not bad, but not great either.
Why? I think it can be summed up with the closing moments of episode 10 when they showed the photos of characters from the series and then replaced it with actual photos of the real guys and then said what happened to them after WWII closed. Save for four guys, Katie and I couldn't remember who each of them were. Not by actor photo nor by description of what they did in hopes of it cluing us in to who they were. We just felt very little emotional attachment to a vast majority of the characters at all.
Sure, you felt badly for Leckie's urinary infection or you worried that Sledge would be one of those guys you prayed would not get his hands on a gun after returning home or you wept over Basilone and his death during the charge on Iwo Jima. But will we remember them for long? Well, maybe Basilone, but nobody else.
And this is where The Pacific fails miserably.
Spielberg and Hanks' other collaboration, Band of Brothers, was first televised 10 years ago. Granted I didn't get around to watching it until nearly four or five years later, but the characters still stay with me now. I remember so many of the actors and the characters they portrayed. I remember what Hell they went through as portrayed on the small screen. I even remember some of the minor characters.
While I did like that a lot of time was focused on events and battles that many may not even realize happened, there was very little time spent on what we were aware of and could identify with. The timeline began after Pearl Harbor. There was little to nothing on Iwo Jima save for Basilone's death. And no mention was even made of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Suddenly it was VJ Day and people were celebrating.
I think it would've been great to see the story told of a Marine who was captured and sent through the Japanese POW camps or was part of the Bataan Death March. I read of the brutality of those camps in Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken and it's amazing that anyone survived them at all. That would've made for a much more powerful story in my mind than a lot of what was told in The Pacific.
Oh well. Maybe Hillenbrand's true story of Louis Zamperini will be made into a movie. I can only hope.
I want the world,
I want the whole world.
I want to lock it all up in my pocket
It's my bar of chocolate
Give it to me now!
And now I want this!
I only wish Gene Wilder was going to be there, too. He's one of my all-time faves.
I am so not tv friendly, because I've never heard of The Pacific. Sometimes I feel like I live in a hole. A HOLE OF AWESOME.
Anyway, that Willy Wonka thing is pretty sweet!!
Posted by: Sybil Law | Tuesday, 22 November 2011 at 11:29 AM
You said "hole of awesome." Heh heh.
Posted by: kapgar | Tuesday, 22 November 2011 at 02:40 PM
Over the years I've watched Band Of Brothers a number of times and love it each and every time. You're right, the characters really stay with you. For whatever reason I've still yet to watch The Pacific, I should rectify that forthwith.
Posted by: Kevin Spencer | Monday, 28 November 2011 at 02:52 PM
Let me know what you think.
Posted by: kapgar | Monday, 28 November 2011 at 03:25 PM