Band of Brothers or The Pacific????

[Jimmylad89]

I know that it falls under the catogory of WAR, and that this thread may be moved but for now.

Which one of these miniseries did you enjoy the most. Band of Brothers or The Pacific.
(if you haven't seen either then i would suggest you pick them both up on blu ray)

Even with two episodes left to go in the uk with The Pacific, Im more leaning towards Band of brothers, personally i feel more of a connection with the men of easy company rather than the likes of leckie or sledge from The Pacific.

i prefer the storytelling in BoB following just 1 company from training to the germans surrender the viewer gets to know the characters and thier personalities. Im finding the pacific a little all over the place eg characters just keep coming and going, i know that there following the main characters but it doesn't really allow you to get to know the characters comrades. as fast as the appear they die.

Apart from the odd problem with each of the series there are still brilliant, if you haven't seen them they i really do believe you should buy them and just enjoy them.

so wat do you guys think of them and which is your favourite????

(i know that this has been posted in general sci fi and fantasy so there no point in saying it whilst trying to look 'cool')

[DigiFluid]

Cool nothing, you just knowingly posted something in the wrong forum and expect the mods to move it for you.

Also: Band of Brothers.

[SaberBlade]

I'd say The Pacific. I just couldn't get into Band of Brothers, I'll try again some day but the appeal just wasn't there. I have been enjoying The Pacific though. I couldn't pick a favourite though, as I'd need to finish The Pacific (I'm in the UK too) and get my hands on BoB.

[Jeffala]

I haven't seen The Pacific yet but the Band of Brothers episode "Why We Fight" just tore me apart. I loved the entire miniseries.

[Skydiver]

I've seen all but part 10 of Pacific, and I enjoyed BOB more.

Pacific was brutal and graphic...and yes, the war was too. However, in BOB you got to feel the emotions, the heart break of having to put the Jews back in the camp, the adventure - which it sometimes was, not adventure in having fun, but adventure in 'omg, did i just pull that off?????' (like when bull hid out behind enemy lines overnight)

in BOB you got to care for the characters.

Pacific feels fragmented to me.

then again, the europe war was an endless grind across a large continent, and no, not everything was destroyed, while the pacific battle was island hopping with an enemy that literally died before surrender.

so i think, ultimately, the different tone is the different kinds of war that it was. Men were literally dropped off on an island with order to 'take and hold it' and just cut loose and let go and they were marooned with the enemy in a fight to the death...in europe, liberty was a car ride away.

[Cold Fuzz]

I'd say The Pacific. I just couldn't get into Band of Brothers, I'll try again some day but the appeal just wasn't there. I have been enjoying The Pacific though. I couldn't pick a favourite though, as I'd need to finish The Pacific (I'm in the UK too) and get my hands on BoB.

Saber, when you get the chance, you should give BoB another try. It's great in its own right and without it showing 9 years ago, I dare say that The Pacific would never be have been produced--and this is coming from someone who, like you, really enjoys Pacific.


I like both The Pacific and Band of Brothers but for radically different reasons. After watching Part 10 last night, I thought BoB ended up being more cohesive in general. That probably was, as Skydiver very correctly said, the nature of the two wars. Europe was a continent and we saw a lot of continuity with Easy Company's steady drive into the heart of Germany and Austria. With The Pacific, the island hopping and having to draw on multiple sources (With the Old Breed, China Marine, Helmet for My Pillow, Red Blood Black Sand) reflected the fragmented nature of the war.

I emotionally connected with Sledgehammer and Leckie more so than the E Company members in the ETO, maybe because their back stories were drawn out and I got to know who they were before, during, and after the war. I've already seen what happens to those who lose their humanity in real life and it's quite rare to see someone regain it, as Sledgehammer did. His story, and Leckie's descent into near madness at Pavuvu & Banika, really resonated with me emotionally. I also liked how unflinchingly brutal they decided to be with Part 9. It was only in such an environment that someone like Sledge could lose himself and find himself again.

My biggest criticism would be how the Battle of Iwo Jima was handled. I understand that they were focusing on Basilone but with literally thousands of men involved in that campaign, focusing on only Basilone's part of it--with just ten minutes devoted to the actual battle at the end of Part 8--really did not reflect the big picture at Iwo Jima. Again, I understand why the producers made that choice but I think the big picture was lost because of that choice in Part 8.

The brutal and graphic scenes aside, there were some wonderful moments in Pacific too: Seeing Leckie meet Vera meet in Part 1 and then win her over in Part 10, Snafu leaving Sledgehammer asleep on the train without waking him up or saying goodbye , seeing some closure with Lena, Hoosier taking care of a dog at Guadalcanal , etc. But my two favorite scenes, especially in Part 10, were seeing Burgie, Snafu, and Sledgehammer quietly celebrating the end of the war in Okinawa. Away from the others and with the stars in the background on a warm summer night, it was a very striking contrast to everything else we saw. We never saw the stars before in The Pacific and that, to me, was magnificent. The other thing I liked was seeing the actors and their real-life counterparts at the very end of Part 10. I wished we got something like that with Band of Brothers 9 years ago.

[magictrick]

I have yet to see part 10 of The Pacific. But based on everything else I enjoyed Band of Brothers more. I really felt a connection to the men of Easy Company. I think a major part of both shows is the characters, and I just didn't feel the same attachment to the main ones in the Pacific as I did to Band of Brothers.

With that said, I still think both shows were great and I think they did an excellent job depicting the events of WWII.

[Sealurk]

I rewatched the whole of Band of Brothers before The Pacific aired, and it was even better than I remember it. The Pacific, however, never lived up to BoB in my eyes, and I hate to say, I stopped watching it (or more accurately, I missed it two weeks running and wasn't concerned enough to find repeats). Like others have said, I just never developed any kind of connection to the men in it - I actually found most of them to be quite unlikeable - whereas I definitely did in BoB.

Definitely Band of Brothers.

[Promethius30]

Still got another two episodes of of pacific to watch but i feel that band of brother was the better program. The production values for both shows are amazing. Band of brother just felt more of a series and less stop start like pacific.

[The Mighty 6 platoon]

I’m going to go totally left field and go with Generation Kill

I liked BOB and the Pacific but few series have come close to Generation Kill, it really shows the reality of war, about 10 hours of boredom followed by 10 minutes of sheer terror.

[DigiFluid]

I liked both Generation Kill and Band of Brothers more than I've liked The Pacific.

Sky said it best: Pacific is fragmented.

All the elements of a great story are there, but they're so fragmented and poorly arranged that it makes the whole experience a bit tedious to watch.

[The Mighty 6 platoon]

I liked both Generation Kill and Band of Brothers more than I've liked The Pacific.

Sky said it best: Pacific is fragmented.

All the elements of a great story are there, but they're so fragmented and poorly arranged that it makes the whole experience a bit tedious to watch.

I would imagine that BOB and Generation Kill feel less fragmented than the Pacific, is because they deal with smaller time periods, BOB only had to deal with a year or so and Generation Kill takes place across only a few weeks. By contrast The Pacific had several years to cover.

[DigiFluid]

I would imagine that BOB and Generation Kill feel less fragmented than the Pacific, is because they deal with smaller time periods, BOB only had to deal with a year or so and Generation Kill takes place across only a few weeks. By contrast The Pacific had several years to cover.

Yes, but it's fragmented in ways that need not have happened given the material they were already working with. Quoting my own post from a week ago in the Pacific-dedicated thread:

Spoilers up till episode 9

Spoiler:

I like The Pacific, but certainly don't love it the way I did Band of Brothers. The pacing of The Pacific is all wrong. All the pieces are there, but they're paced/arranged poorly and it makes the whole series suffer. For instance:

Guadalcanal/Leckie: Guadalcanal should've been spread out across three episodes. The first two felt jumbled and rushed, and I really didn't care who lived or died. If they'd spent longer on getting to know them and making the Battle of Guadalcanal feel like a significant battle, I might've actually given a crap by the time they spent their fourth episode in Melbourne.

Gloucester/Pavuvu-Banika: The Cape Gloucester/Pavuvu episode should have spent more time on the battle, and less on the looney bin. Don't get me wrong, it was interesting to see a different side of the war and I still would've wanted to see it, but it shouldn't have gone on for as long as it did.

Peleliu/Iwo Jima: The Peleliu trilogy I enjoyed as-is, but Part 8's Basilone story just felt like an enormous waste of time. It would have been better if, instead of forgetting about the character for 3 episodes, they'd showed his time at home and training new Marines as the B-plot in the Peleliu episodes. And then, come Part 8/Iwo Jima, they could've showed it for a much lengthier span of time and his death would've been far more impactful than it was in the final product. Especially if we'd been shown a bit of time afterward and the impact his death had on the Marines that he'd just finished training.

[The Mighty 6 platoon]

Yes, but it's fragmented in ways that need not have happened given the material they were already working with. Quoting my own post from a week ago in the Pacific-dedicated thread:

Spoilers up till episode 9

True. I felt that the Pacific had a feeling of this had been done before, it was nothing new, another world war 2 story done in the same old style. Maybe Generation Kill had an advantage about being about the Invasion of Iraq, of which there have been comparatively few tv shows and movies about, but their was something very unique about Generation Kill.

[maneth]

I liked both of them but I admit to liking BoB a bit more than The Pacific. Can't really say why exactly, though.