Has anyone seen any movie trailers for the Hanks -Spielberg production, The Pacific? It is now slated, I have heard , for release in early 2011. It covers the story of Eugene Sledge, John Basilone and one other guy whose name escapes my 60 year old brain...
The movie has been in production for two years and I believe part of it was filmed in Oz.
It will be constucted along the lines of Band Of Brothers. I hope they can find the same fake Japanes tanks used in Letters from Iwo Jima.
Or maybe they will use real ones....if they can find 'em. There is a website, and some info on the movie.
reportedly over $200,000,000USD. It is being filmed largely in Australia, and should do for the Pacific campaign what Band of Brothers did for the European fighting. I expect it to be up to the same standards. Tom Hanks stated in an interview that The Pacific will be darker and more violent than BoB, due to the more vicious fighting and the hand-to-hand combat that featured in so many of the island campaigns.
As far as tanks and equipment are concerned, TP may have even better stuff than BoB. Peter Jackson had the Chinese build 10 full-size Lancasters for his remake of The Dam Busters, and they look terrific. I saw some pix on a website recently that showed replica pre-WW2 tanks - I believe they were Skoda PzKpfw 35t models, but they might have been T26 variants. The Chinese factory had reproduced that complex T26 type levered suspension extremely well. God knows what it cost. The Japanese tanks were fairly low-tech: coil springs and simple rocking beam bogies, all very easy to duplicate. I wouldn't be surprised if TP had better Japanese tanks than even Flags of Our Fathers.
No doubt the DVD set will be a keeper..... Spielberg and Hanks have shown a love of military history and a respect for the soldiers in the war that makes me believe they will do their best to represent the story as honestly as they can. No doubt a lot of CGI will be involved, but good CGI is really transparent; you shouldn't be able to tell it's being used. I think most of us will be very pleased with the series.
Bruce...not to stir the pot, but...
I am in general agreement with your opinion of Mssrs. Hanks and Spielberg...except for some of their anti-British sentiment, which is likely just some of Stephen Ambrose's blather. Take that brief scene in "Pvt Ryan" between Hanks and Ted Danson, dialogue about Montgomery not moving quickly enough (as if the presence of 12th SS Panzer and Panzer-Lehr were of no consequence!)...or the Brit tank commander in BoB refusing to fire blindly THROUGH civilian houses at a hidden Stug. Otherwise, their work is top-notch.
...why does the movie world insist on having bazooka men fire directly at the frontal armor of Tigers, instead of the tracks?
Or (as in the recent "Defiance")why do German tank commanders insist on leaving the hatch open in the presence of enemy infantry so they can conveniently toss grenades into the turret?
No more rants (today), I promise.
I also think less of those guys for making the same mistake actors/directors make over and over again: that is that we give two sh..., uh hoots about their politics. That said, I must hope that my dad's first cousin, who served on Iwo, looks down from heaven or the stars and says "I approve".
But hey, I thought The Thin Red Line was by and large as good as SPR.Different movies entirely, different paces, but interesting "art" and "history" , esp the "dental scene".
Letters From Iwo Jima was interesting because for the first time I can remember, the movie dealt not with sterotypes, but with historical "nuance".
Different Japanese social strata, American troops killing POWs* , torture, refusal to torture, etc.
But, What do I know?!
Patrick Leddy
* This a movie fact, not my opinion. I also have spoken to WWII American Vets who freely admit it happened.
