The Pacific is the newest venture from the Spielberg/Hanks team that brought us the Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan and the Golden Globe-winning Band of Brothers mini-series. With a resume like that, expectations for the pair’s new mini-series were understandably through the roof and buzz surrounding their new production began, in earnest, a full four years ago.

The Pacific began airing last Sunday on HBO. It’s a ten-part mini-series which will air in installments until May 16th. Like Band of Brothers, The Pacific seems to be based around the actual stories of World War II veterans but instead of focusing the action around the European theatre of war our characters find themselves in, unsurprisingly, the Pacific. The American war with the Japanese.

Now in the history of television mini-series and certainly in the history of war-themed cinema, Band of Brothers is truly, without exaggeration, among the top of the top. Thanks, in large part, to its team of all-star producers, the mini-series had exceptionally high production values. It looked incredible—it was absolutely immersive—and it told the story of World War II in a way that truly hadn’t been done before on that kind of scale. In many ways, Band of Brothers wasn’t a movie as much as it was a textbook, dramatized.

The Pacific, obviously, has big shoes to fill, but I think we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see how it does.

The first episode, Guadalcanal/Leckie, was alright. To put it another way, it certainly didn’t knock my socks off, but then again, neither did the premiere of Band of Brothers. The pace begins slow. The major difference between the start of the two series, if I can compare once more, is the introduction of its characters. In Band of Brothers, we begin in paratrooper training. We meet the characters just shortly after they’ve met each other; they grow on you as they grow on each other. You learn each characters personality traits, their temperaments, in a very friendly and natural way. In The Pacific, we’re nearly thrown right into the action, so to speak. The characters are very briefly introduced and then they’re shipped out. For whatever reason, The Pacific wastes no time in character introductions and it looks like we’ll be getting to know them in the heat of battle, instead of in the relative calm of army training camp.

But the lack of character introduction and development, at least in the first episode, is an interesting choice and I wonder how intentional it was. In fact, I wonder about a lot of the choices they will have had to make during the production of The Pacific. The war against the Japanese, in actual fact, was a very bloody, disturbing, and incredibly racist affair. The Americans chased the Japanese around the Pacific from tiny island to tiny island often fighting against a Japanese force that was better prepared and far more ruthless. The casualty rates in comparison to the European theatre, and in comparison to the amount of ground the Americans were gaining, was outrageous. And the racism, which was prevalent on both sides, was extraordinary. All that said, I wonder how The Pacific mini-series will play out. Will the producers be honest about the racism? What will their message be? Will we see the sense of meaninglessness that American marines felt charging beach after beach and taking very little real ground with their victories? Will we experience their hopelessness?

I have to say, for the most part, that only time will tell. The first installment in The Pacific was slow, it was fragmented, and we really didn’t get to know the characters very well but it’s just starting off. I do like that they’ve recognized the meaninglessness of the invasions. There’s one poignant scene in the battleship as it approaches the invasion point where the soldiers wonder aloud what the point was of their efforts. I also like the realism of some of the very racist marine commanders. One particular commander seems to want nothing more than to kill the Japanese. It’s brutal, but it’s realistic.

The second episode in the series airs on HBO tonight. I’ll have a review later in the week, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m a History nerd and if it’s weird to say that War History is my passion, then I’m weird. So far, like Band of Brothers, The Pacific is well-produced, with high production values, and we’ll have to see where it goes from there.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2010 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.