More Important than Band of Brothers

What lost me was just how BAD the screenplay is for TP. The source books are amazing and I highly recommend reading all of them, Sledge's, Leckie's tatums; etc., they are ALL great books and give a lot better picture than TP. They changed so much of the stories for TP it ruined the series for me. Read the books, you see exactly what I mean. Don't get me wrong, many of the combat scenes are intense and extremely realistic, but how the screenwriter attemped to show a relationship between Sledge, Leckie, Basilone when NONE existed ruined the story. Read Leckies book, there is NO Johnny Reb, that is nothing but the screenwriters fictional character created for TP. Sid Phillips knew who Leckie was but other than that they had no interaction at all in real life. And Sledge and Leckie never met (at least not in any of the books), that is just more fiction.

I would tend to agree with you art. Comparing the two is quite difficult. Both are saying different things. Technically, I think Band of Brothers is a better series, but as for more powerful, I'd say The Pacific.

Band of Brothers is about the camaraderie and brotherhood forged by combat. It's essentially the standard war film of a diverse group of individuals coming together to defeat a worthy enemy. Each episode is connected to a particular soldier and their personal experiences and is absolutely necessary for this story-line to function on such a high level. The character development in BoB is second to none. You feel a deep connection to each individual soldier. Each episode is well crafted and can stand alone, that is why I consider it an overall better series than The Pacific.

With that being said, The Pacific is a far more ambitious project with an entirely different point. The Pacific shows the realism and brutality of war that BoB doesn't match. Not to discount the 101st Airborne and Easy Company, but the Marines fought for every square inch of turf and defeated a fierce and fanatical Japanese Army through sheer grit and sacrifice. The Pacific theater was a grimy intense conflict where all Marines were casualties, both physically and mentally, both at home and abroad, during the war and after the war. I do think the character development in The Pacific leaves quite a bit to be desired. It's hard to follow the soldiers because they aren't part of a single unit, but the larger themes of sacrifice and the brutality/intensity of that theater of war are much more powerful than BoB. They gave us an entirely new and different story to tell of WWII.

Just my take on it.

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Your criticisms have some merit, but not enough to make BoB inferior to The Pacific, just different. Rather I think The Pacific is more important simply because the Pacific War has received much less attention than the war in Europe, even in the United States, and this miniseries redressed some of that imbalance.

The Pacifc certainly did certainly take a different approach than BoB.

For me, as a European, the most important aspect was quite simple: Showing the events of the war against the Japanese, in more detail, as that's something we really don't know much about around here.

The after effects of war on individuals has been the topic of many documents and movies, so that had been covered earlier. But there can't be enough emphasis on it.

BoB was far superior.... by the end i felt i knew all the characters in and out... by the end of the pacific i could only remember the character leckie..

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I loved B.O.B but it's way too Hollywood-fied and glamorized. While it made for a great series, I felt the Pacific was more HUMAN because it explored more darker and grittier aspects of war rather than the feel good/comrade loving/why we fight type of theme. This allowed HBO to move into their next project which was War Torn and didn't overglorify warfare like B.O.B or CoD games. It made warfare feel real, overwhelming, frightening, and just downright gritty. See B.O.B was about "elites" who trained together and set out for war in the European theater. Even so, it was more... civilized is the only word I can think of. Now no war is civilized but compare it to the Pacific and I'd definitely rather fight in Europe than go island hopping near Japan. Also, it was Japan who didn't downright lose the war like Nazis and it was Japan where US felt they needed to deploy 2 nukes.

I love both series but people who say the Pacific sucks compared to Band of Brothers are typical war-obsessed people who love terrible action flicks like 'I am Number 4' or something. As a STORY, B.O.B. was better as it followed one unit and you could see how the characters developed. In the Pacific, they followed 3 people from different units and different campaigns. BOB was about how the men in Easy Company banded together as brothers. The Pacific is about what happened that traumatized the marines so much that being there was living hell and they continued to suffer from that trauma even after coming home therefore the name was the Pacific.

Hanks gave an interview I think a week or two after Pacific premiered on the titles and how they were named that way for a reason; not to just look cool.