The Pacific

In 2001, Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks joined forces with HBO and created one of the greatest television events of all time, the epic World War II series Band of Brothers which followed a group of American soldiers as they lived the events that lead up to the D Day invasion. Almost a decade later, they have regrouped to look at a different group of men fighting a very different kind of war in The Pacific. While there may be a similar stylistic feel to the two pieces, the stories told in The Pacific are totally different, and in a way far more intense, because of the completely different style of war fought by the Japanese. The battle of Guadalcanal in the series opener is a perfect example, particularly the firefight where the Marines go up against wave upon wave of Japanese soldiers to the point where they can’t see the enemy because the dead are piled too high. The battle scenes are, of course, epic throughout the series, but it’s the way each episode shows you how war impacts the individual soldiers that makes The Pacific so absolutely haunting.