The Pacific

In more news!

Those of us who are serious Military Nerds have been awaiting the arrival of The Pacific, which is generally accepted to be Band Of Brothers 2. These same Military Nerds have also been rather concerned by the rumored intent of the program, which would jump around from unit to unit instead of focusing on just one, as in Band Of Brothers. The feeling was that in attempting to cover the entirety of the Pacific Theater in ten episodes, a lot would be left out (naturally) and the end result would be shoddy.

I signed on IMDb today and looked it up. There's considerably more information up than there was before, including projected release date (2009), a list of characters, and the writers.

Two of the writers are Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie, both USMC veterans who wrote two of the best memoirs of the Pacific. Sledge's With The Old Breed is particularly amazing, and there are enough characters from his book listed in the credits to lead me to believe a good portion of this show will be focused on Peleliu and Okinawa. (I guess Iwo Jima would be hard to touch after Clint Eastwood).

It also looks like they went with relatively unknown actors, which is a GREAT choice. Honestly, when watching Band of Brothers, I can't see Ron Livingston as anyone but Peter Gibbons (even though he does a good job as Nixon), and Jimmy Fallon's cameo just throws me right off track. (This also works retroactively; whenever I watch Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels it's Sergeant Martin playing Soap). The only one I recognized, and this was after looking at his page, was Joseph Mazzello who is playing Sledge (the lucky dog) - remember Timmy from Jurassic Park? He's all grown up.

Anyway, having read both Sledge and Leckie and given that this is coming from the team that did Band of Brothers, I have fairly high hopes for this series.