Second ep is about Guadalcanal as well-- focuses on John Basilone.
WWII in HD is on The History Channel this Tuesday and Wednesday. The first 5 parts are on Tuesday morning, then again Tuesday afternoon. The last 5 parts are on Wednesday morning then again in the afternoon. I can’t recommend this series highly enough.
Having seen it, I consider it required viewing in order to properly appreciate The Pacific. (And likewise for Band of Brothers; too bad it didn’t exist back then.)
WWII in HD is similar to Band of Brothers in that they intersperse interviews with the still-living main players. The difference is that instead of mixing those interviews with dramatized action, they’re mixed with actual war footage.
While BoB and The Pacific are both 10-part series, WWII in HD is a single 10-part series that covers both theaters of war. It’s nice context to see both the European and Pacific fronts covered in a single timeline, though it does jump around a little.
Plus, something like 95% of it is in color. I wouldn’t have thought it mattered, but the 5% black and white footage is quite jarring and really pulls you out of the narrative. The color film is engrossing and comprehensive. Truly well done.
So, who here has read “With The Old Breed”?
Why do they call it WW II in HD when it’s not really HD? I know it’s color film but the quality is not at the level of HD from what I’ve seen.
I have - great book.
Don’t know how long it will be available, but it looks like you can watch the first episode online. I plan to do that tonight, and really hope they offer the entire series this way.
You have to register, though.
I hope tonight’s episode is better than last week’s. Last week’s was OK, but I expect more from HBO.
I thought the problem with last weeks episode was that the intro and opening credits took up the first 7 minutes of the show. That and BoB used to be longer than the 60 minutes. Didn’t leave much time for plot
Too much of this was a battle in the dark. It’s hard to enjoy something that you can hardly see. This isn’t getting any better, although I did enjoy the scene where they were robbing the army guys’ food.
The night battle scene was just ridiculous. Maybe it’s an accurate depiction of what a night battle is like, but hell, didn’t anybody give any thought to what it would be like to watch it? My opinion of the ability of the filmmakers just went WAAAAAAAAAY down. One more screw up like this and I do no think I will be watching the series any longer.
Two episodes and I’m losing interest rapidly. I really don’t understand all the raves for this series. When Ramirez was killed, I couldn’t even figure out who the hell he was or why Basilone was so upset by it. The lack of character development for this series and the poor production values leads me to believe the producers (Spielberg and Hanks) are just trying to cash in on BOB’s success.
I have the same complaints about last night’s ep as I did for the first one: too much night shooting (I guess to cover up for not putting enough money into hiring actors and building sets), and yes I know that many battles on Guadalcanal took place at night, but c’mon. I can’t get engaged with any of the characters, nor even tell them apart all that well, which goes back to the character development complaint. The ep ended and I thought “what was the point?” The editing seems very choppy, also.
Well, let me dissent. I thought last night’s episode was a great improvement over the first installment.
And you can’t re-write history to avoid night battles.
I liked the BOB guys like Winters and Nixon more , it seems like these guys are all the same. Even though the night fighting is realistic it is very hard to figure out what is going on. Not every battle was at night was it?
There were some daylight skirmishes, but the big battles particularly the Battle of Edison’s Ridge (which is what I think they were trying to depict in Episode 2), happened at night, over a three night period.
I absolutely loved the part of the Marines stealing the Army supplies–that actually did happen to an Army unit that was comprised of North Dakota Army National Guard members. (I am in a military class right now, and we just got done with a unit on Guadalcanal–one of my classmates is a NDARNG member, and I tease her mercilessly about this fact.)
I thought the Army was not in Pacific battles but I guess that was wrong.
As a general rule, I tend not to like WWII films that take place in the Pacific theatre as much as ones that take place in the European theatre. Cinematically the war against the Japanese is a little boring. There are no old villages and towns and farms. It’s all green jungle and volcanic islands against a blue backdrop. A bunch of identical dudes wallowing in their own shit during the day and killing Japs by night gets dull real quick.
This is Thin Red Line the miniseries just as BoB was Saving Private Ryan the miniseries. And you know what I remember from Thin Red Line? Green and inner monologues.
I was disappointed with this episode. The storyline is pretty thin, like others have mentioned I have trouble telling the characters apart, the editing seems choppy, and the cinematography is…considerably less than distinguished. BoB was a much better show.
I think one issue is they all have a dirty , unshaven look and dark hair and of course all the same uniforms. In BOB we had time to get to know the cast before they got into battle.
I also liked it - and to be fair, I couldn’t tell one guy from the next until WELL into BOB when I first watched it. Now I recognize everyone right off the bat. I’ve watched episode one of the Pacific twice and by episode two last night I had no issue picking out one guy from the next with some minor exceptions.
I agree that the characterization is lacking in this series so far, but I’d say that has more to do with the scope of the project than anything. To get through Guadalcanal in two episodes is pretty ambitious and, in my opinion, the results are a mixed bag. I think we’ll get more characterization in the next episode.
I personally don’t mind the night battles. If that’s when the stuff happened - and in particular, we had to see this battle as it figures heavily into Basilone’s future actions - then that’s when it happened. Maybe my brightness is turned up a bit because it was dark but it wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see what was going on.
I didn’t mind the night battle at all; in fact, I rather liked it.
The complete lack of characterization is really hurting my enjoyment of this miniseries. The only guy I care about at all hasn’t even gone to basic training yet. (Heart murmur guy.)
Agreed, and well put.