So then they’ll leave the book’s homosexuality out of the miniseries as they did the movie?
I have to agree this is a letdown from BoB.
They seem to have developed some new special effects though, the big red sprays for the bullet hits. Sometimes it seemed the Japanese soldiers were charging through a red fog. Japanese soldiers simply seem to have more blood than German soldiers. 
But you can decide how much time you devote to a battle that takes place in the dark. I spent a lot of time looking at mostly black on my TV screen.
It is true that I will eventually tell the various guys apart but it’s tough now.
From the previews for next week’s episode, it looks like we’ll get to know a lot about the personalities of some of them.
One of the effects that I thought was particularly effective happened just before the battle, when they saw the artillary barrage approaching them. whump whump WHUMP WHUMP If I had seen that remorseless wall of death inexorably approaching me, I’m afraid I’d have been a quivering mass of crybaby.
I’ve experienced a mortar barrage being walked in on our position and can tell you that it’s a traumatic experience. There was a lot of screaming as the last few rounds detonated just outside our bunker, sending shrapnel through the vent tubes and lifting us several inches off the floor.
I’m not disappointed quite yet.
Like most, I’m not getting into the characters and have a hard time telling a few of them apart. However, I’m actually liking the night fights. I think it gave a good sense of the disorientation and fear the soldiers would experience as wave after wave of soldiers madly dash at them, only glimpsed in flashes of gun fire and the occasional flare.
BTW Did anyone catch what the sign under the rotting head of the Japanese soldier said?
I watched both episodes again. It’s difficult to get any sense of chronology. It’s as if they get shelled one night, they have a battle the next, and get shipped off the next. They rely on comments from the characters and narrator to tell the viewer about time. IMO that’s really inadequate.
And so far at least, the geography of the battle zones are not explained. Why did the marines set up at the places they did? It looks like the set up a machine gun whenever thy found a clearing in the jungle, and sooner or later the Japanese would come pouring out of the other side.
Maybe it was just me, but I originally gave up on *Rome *because I couldn’t tell the different women apart. The whole “Junii” and “Julii” thing threw me, too. But I gave it a second chance, and I can now say I think it was the best show I’ve ever seen on TV. I also noticed, after re-watching the whole 1st season that a lot of (minor) characters were introduced much earlier than I had thought they had been
Not that I think that will be true for this series, but just saying…
I’m trying to stave off disappointment…but it is encroaching…in the dark…across a stream.
BoB was better. I hope this gets better…though 20% of the series is down already.
OH - I like the fact that they had to reload the MG’s!
I don’t agree about the night battles. You can have great battle scenes at night. The entire final battle of Platoon was at night. As was the scene in Apocalypse Now when they came across the bridge. As were many scenes in Band O Brothers. You just have to film more than 20 minutes of dudes staring into the blackness and tracer fire.
I would agree that you get absolutely no sense of place, scale or tactical necessity in this series. Compare that to the several episodes that covered Bastogn and the Ardennes in BoB. It’s like “here’s a good place to set up a perimeter”.
I think this week they were set up to prevent the Japanese from taking back the airfield. They initially thought they would not be attacked but found out they would be.
Agreed, though BOB is probably my favorite series ever produced for TV. It would have to be pretty amazing to even come close to matching it.
Are these really the combat tactics of the Japanese Army in WWII? I’m not just referring to doing a frontal attack. You don’t conquer the whole of Southeast Asia fighting like that. They didn’t have grenades in Japan? Seems to me that one sniper would be more effective than 500 infantryman or however many bullets the marines kept around. The tactical realism of the series just doesn’t add up to me. I have never seen in film an American company being mowed down by a heavy machine gun… I honestly didn’t get the sense that the fighting was hard at all for the marines in Guadalcanal from this episode, except maybe for the shelling scene.
Well, you do right up until you run into a trained, determined and heavily armed fighting force with their backs against the wall, like the USMC on Guadalcanal. The Japanese had mortars and the like, but they probably figured that the naval barrages and air strikes had pounded the Marines into submission.
So far BoB is still superior. I just think this series has so much potential with the guys already sort of getting shell shock from the intense fighting that happened.
That last “you’re heroes back home” moment was f-ing awesome though.
After reading up on it on Wiki (great article) it’s looking like a shockingly accurate depiction of battle.
I agree with the comments regarding the lack of strategic context for what we’re seeing on screen.
I’ve also found the series thus far to be a little disingenuous regarding the tactical situation by going out of its way to portray the US as an underdog in the fight.
You mean that battle, which IIRC was 3-5 thousand Japanese attacking 800 Marines? Or do you mean in the war in general? If the latter, you may be too caught up in the Cold War and beyond. When Germany invaded Poland, the US had the 17th largest military force in the world, behind Romania. And then had to fight a two-front war alongside the British, Australians, Canadians, and Russians. Russia was huge but was mostly concerned with its own borders to Germany; I think they even signed a NAP with Japan, and they certainly didn’t help out in North Africa.
Britain, along with her former Empire of Australia and Canada, (and technically the US but let’s keep the US separate for now) were basically the only ones fighting alongside the Americans. God love the Brits, when I think about what they did during the war I am almost moved to tears, but “massive ground army” is not something you would typically associate with Britain, Canada or Australia, y’know?
So in a very real sense, the US was an underdog, fighting a two front war in which either opponent could conceivably have won the day. And if it weren’t for the incredible ingenuity (radar, specifically) and near-superhuman tenacity of the Brits to hold their island, they very well might have.
EDIT: For clarity, the credit for radar goes to England. Basically, I’m saying that without Britain, the US didn’t stand a chance. And Britain was beaten to hell, and not even that big to begin with. So painting the US as an underdog isn’t a stretch.
Keep in mind that up until the battle we saw in episode 1, the Americans had lost pretty much every battle with the Japanese. No doubt, the guys were scared and probably pretty intimidated.