While I have been buying and collecting dvds for some ten years now (collection around 2500-3000 titles) I have seen those purchases dwindle and wane to almost just a few a year now. I blame the convenience of Netflix and my resurgence in gaming with my Xbox 360 as the main cause for my slacking off in the dvd collecting. While I still see myself collecting dvds and, most likely, moving onto blue-rays, I have seen why people love their Netflix accounts so much. Last night I was able to combine my love for my Netflix and my Xbox 360 and feed my need to always be watching a film. Using Netflix Instant I was able to watch streaming over my Xbox 360 one of the classic fantasy films ever made.
The film I speak of is the 1963 classic fantasy meets Greek mythology simply called Jason and the Argonauts. It is one of those films which has stood the test of time. I know of no film lover who hasn’t seen this at least once. It’s beloved and admired by millions of people of different generations for its simplicity and for the work of one man whose name overshadows everyone on the film from the director to the actors. This was the film which established for eternity the genius and imaginative creative of special effects guru Ray Harryhausen.
Jason and the Argonauts takes one of the more popular Greek myths about a son looking to re-take his father’s kingdom from a usurper but in the process goes through a journey that pits him against monsters, betrayers and the Gods themselves. The titular character and his crew must travel to the fabled island of Colchis at the edge of the world to find the legendary Golden Fleece purported to have magical properties of healing and even to grant peace throughout the land. I say that’s a piece of item worth fighting off a giant bronze warrior statue, screeching harpies, tempermental seaside cliffs and up to a many-headed hydra and skeleton warriors spawned from it’s teeth.
The acting is typical of most fantasy films of the 60’s and that’s they’re all bombastic, full of vigor and turns even the most simple dialogue into pronouncements of epic deeds to be done. Todd Armstrong leads a cast of British actors including such luminaries of their era like Nigel Green, Nancy Kovack, Honor Blackman and Douglas Wilmer. While the acting may seem quaint by today’s standards I still believe it’s what gives the film it’s timeless energy and quality. It makes the film flow like an epic poem that gave birth to it’s source material to begin with.
But what really makes this film stand out years after years and decade after decade since it’s release is the stop-motion animation effects created by the king of stop-motion effects himself, Ray Harryhausen. To say that the quieter moments where characters interact with each other almost feel like fillers to move the story along until it reaches one of several action sequences featuring Harryhausen’s work. It doesn’t diminish the work done by the actors or the efficient direction by filmmaker Don Chaffey. It just means that Harryhausen’s stop-motion work were so impressive that the audience just wants to see what new magic he has up next.
The climactic fight between Jason and his men versus skeleton warriors born from the teeth of a slain hydra (a stop-motion sequence which was in itself quite impressive) still goes down as one of the most impressive feats of filmmaking married with special effects today. There’s something to be admired about a four and a half minute action sequence where Harryhausen spent 4 months of meticulous frame-by-frame work to make the skeletal opponents come to life. There’s a reason why so many special effects magicians since then have pointed to this scene as one of their favorites and one reason why they got into the FX work to begin with.
Jason and the Argonauts may not have the technical wizardry of today’s fantasy epics and films with their million-dollar budgets spent on CGI-effects. It may not have the seriousness that today’s fantasy films have taken to heart (losing some of the fun, innocence of what makes fantasy films so great). What it does have is great storytelling which harkens back to a more innocent, hopeful and simple time. It also has the finest work of one of film history’s master magicians in Ray Harryhausen and that, in the end, is what makes this film of the the greatest of its kind and one every kid should be introduced to.
The latest entry for Anime of the Day is the romantic comedy from Japanese animation studio J.C. Staff. I am talking about the quite popular anime series which had a 25-episode run in Japan’s TV Tokyo from October 2008 and March 2009. The series is Toradora! and is based on the light novel and manga by Takemiya Yuyuko.
This series is a romantic comedy and also one that is full of well-done drama. It’s an anime about relationships and stars two very atypical leads in Takasu Ryuji and Aisaka Taiga. Ryuji is the misunderstood highschool boy whose squinty eyes has labeled him a thuggish, criminal-type which causes some hilarious reactions from classmates and teachers both. Taiga is the doll-like tsudere-type who manages to scare everyone in her school due to her quick temper and improbable strong attacks. The two end up accidentally bumping into each other in the first day of classes and hilarity ensues from there.
Other characters such as Taiga’s friend Minorin (the weird, ditzy girl) and Ryuji’s best friend Kitamura Yusaku also lend their own personalities and relationship issues to the mix which ends up complication everyone else’s hook-ups. There’s also the kyuugere character in Kawashima Ami who is Yusaku’s very beautiful childhood friend whose attempt to hook-up with Ryuji causes other relationship complications which doesn’t untangle itself until very close to the end of the series.
Toradora! looks like the typical romantic comedy at first glance, but as one gets deeper into the series deeper layers in how the characters behave and their motivations for their earlier behaviors shine through. The comedy in the series actually begins to take a backseat to the complex romances in the show. We know from the beginning who should end up with who, but the journey the characters take to finally get to where they need to be in the end is the high point in the show.
For people new to anime this series is actually a very good starting point in the romantic-comedy genre as it takes the subject matter seriously and doesn’t pander to the usual easy hook of ecchi scenes and over-the-top comedy.
We’re now into the first episode of the second half of this initial season. The Walking Dead has been a definitive hit for cable network AMC who has been hyping up the show every week for months. The pilot episode has been hailed as one of the best premiere shows and it helped that showrunner Frank Darabont wrote and directed it. Then we had the follow-up episode which have been hit-or-miss for some people with the second one being a miss for some who began to question whether Robert Kirkman’s comic book series will have the legs to last several seasons and beyond. The third episode allayed some of those fears, but still some people were still doubting whether the show can truly balance the intense drama and character interaction with the zombie mayhem and gore.
Now we’re on the fourth episode and when people heard that creator Robert Kirkman would be writing the episode more doubts started to creep in. I say this because as critically-acclaimed and popular the comic book series is there’s a vocal segment of the fans who think the book succeeds despite Kirkman’s writing which tend to be heavy on the exposition. They see him not knowing the concept of “less is more”. As a long-time fan I can see what these fans mean, but I also think he’s quite good in creating the scenarios his characters must navigate through.
With this fourth episode titled “Vatos” we get Robert Kirkman writing not as a comic book writer but as someone who knows its a new medium and must write accordingly. In what I consider the best episode since the Darabont written and directed pilot, Robert Kirkman has shown just why millions of fans have flocked to read the comic book and why millions more have fallen in love with it’s tv adaptation.
The episode begins with a beautifully shot prologue of Amy and Andrea sitting in a boat fishing in the quarry lake and reminiscing about their father. It’s a nice tender moment which takes on a sad note as they finally voice every survivor’s fear. Are their parents alive? Maybe where they lived wasn’t hit hard. It’s survivor’s guilt to the nth degree as we and these characters know that the odds of any of the camp’s loved ones in far off places being alive are miniscule to none.
We also see a disturbing portent of what may yet come to pass as Jim, the mechanic from the past episode, seem to be losing his edge. It falls to Dale to notice Jim’s erratic behavior and then down to Shane to take care of things before Jim finally goes over the deep end and hurts not just himself but everyone else. I liked how Jim’s little revelation about what happened to his family arrived quite naturally and the effect it had on Lori and the others. Lori, Carol and Andrea may still have a semblance of a family, but Jim is the prime example of someone who has lost everything and may not have anything left to live for.
Now, we ended the third episode with Rick and his little band of Merle rescuers finding their quarry missing and not just from the roof but the hand he was cuffed with. We see the aftermath of Merle’s improbable, but quite the badass, escape from the roof. While we don’t see Michael Rooker as Merle in this episode his presence looms over everything and everyone. It’s during Rick and the groups attempt to find not just where Merle went but also the bag of guns Rick dropped in the pilot episode that we finally meet the episode’s title characters.
At first, it seemed like another attempt by Kirkman and the writers to drop stereotypical characters into an already crowded plate. Latino gangbangers becoming an immediate threat to Rick and his group. They even had a smooth-talking and intelligent leader that some may see as the show’s attempt on the typical drug lord. The confrontation between the two groups don’t come off so smoothly the first, second and third time, but it takes the intervention of the kindly grandma-type to ease the tensions. Tensions which reveals that people shouldn’t judge a book by it’s covers.
I definitely think this is like Kirkman’s shot across the bow of his detractors who think he cannot write beyond wordy exposition. The dialogue in this episode was some of the strongest and I’d say just slightly above of the pilot’s. There were more characters involved with two paralleling storylines to manage. Kirkman has shown with this episode that he actually knows the concept of “less is more” and that his true calling may not be writing comic books but writing teleplays for tv. I wouldn’t mind if all the episodes of The Walking Dead were written by just Darabont and Kirkman. I truly believe that this episode won’t be last time we see a Kirkman-written episode and that’s a good thing to look forward to.
In the end, “Vatos” more than lives up to the high standard the pilot episode set. It was an episode which was able to combine not just the dramatic interaction between character and groups (and not just conflicts, but the quieter moments) but also the very zombie mayhem and carnage fans of the genre expect the show to have. The episode which begins so calm and serene ends on a horrifying and sad way. This episode has finally illustrated what the comic book was all about. A story and journey of survivors living day by day trying to retain a semblance of their old lives only to have the ever-present threat of the zombie apocalypse shatter such misguided attempts.
Extras
* KNB EFX founder Greg Nicotera makes an appearance as a zombie in the second-half of the episode.
* Merle Dixon never appearing on-screen but still ends up being the badass of the episode.
* Guillermo’s (leader of the Vatos) hounds from hell.
* “Admit it, we only came back to Atlanta for the hat” (Glenn seeming to be the one person in every episode with the witty quip and remark to lighten things a bit)
* Breakin’ Bad veteran-director Johan Renck’s masterful handling of the episode’s climactic scene in the camp.
* The show loses a regular character and one of the cardboard ones.
Who would’ve thought that a comic book named Cowboys & Aliens will end up being one of the most anticipated tentpole films for the Summer of 2011. It’s a fun little book from Platinum Studios created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley with the artwork done by one Luciano Lima. The premise of the comic book is literally about cowboys and aliens. With the latter attempting to enslave humanity during the 1870’s and starting with the Wild West. In their plans for world conquest are a band of cowboys and Indians who band together despite their many conflicts and issues to combat a shared and greater threat.
The film was announced prior to the release of Favreau’s Iron Man 2 and was a surprising one. Many insiders thought he was a shoo-in to helm the planned Avengers film for Marvel, but instead he chose this project instead.
To say that Cowboys & Aliens steamrolled into production with so many heavyweights behind it would be an understatement. Favreau was already in the director’s chair and producing the project behind the scenes were giants of the industry like Steven Spielberg, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. The cast roped in for the film was also quite impressive with Daniel Craig taking on the lead role with Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Clancy Brown, Keith Carridine, Walton Goggins and Paul Dano supporting Craig.
The very first teaser trailer has been released and could be seen above. While the trailer only shows only a little bit it does confirm that it will have cowboys and, from the brief glancing images, aliens. Cowboys & Aliens has a tentative release date of July 29, 2011 and joins other comic book-based films for that summer like Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern.
It will be interesting to see if Favreau keeps the bulk of the books storyline in the film or will he just loosely base the story on the books. One thing for sure, he and his crew have a tall order to try and tell this story and do it well enough that it stands out amongst the many comic book blockbusters and sequels set to appear in the same season. This film could be a real fun, action-adventure or it could easily turn into the second coming of Wild, Wild West. Here’s to hoping it’s the former and not the latter.
DC has always had the Batman franchise as it’s standard bearer when it came to its many properties adapted to the big-screen. In the past one could add the Superman franchise as well, but a return (no pun intended) to that franchise a couple years ago didn’t pan out too well.
Marvel Studios (film division of Marvel Comics) has had a better track record in the past decade in adapting its own franchise characters, both top tier and supporting, to the big-screen. Some of these adaptation have been through other studios like Sony, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal who licensed the characters for film. In the last 3-4 year Marvel has made the decision to adapt their characters themselves to better rake in the profits. This has led to successes and a subsequent purchase of the company as a whole by giant entertainment conglomerate Disney. With Disney’s Scrooge McDuck money bin to help finance further Marvel properties to the big-screen DC and it’s parent company Time-Warner had to respond with something other than Nolan’s Batman franchise.
What DC has decided to answer with first is the live-action adaptation of the iconic DC character Hal Jordan and his Green Lantern persona. The film has veteran action filmmaker Martin Campbell behind the director’s chair with Ryan Reynolds in the title role. The film has finally released it’s first official trailer and the film is set for a Summer 2011 release. A summer that’s becoming more and more crowded with superhero tentpole films not to mention the 800-lb gorilla waiting in the wings to beat everyone senseless: Warner Brother’s final Harry Potter film.
The trailer for Green Lantern just gives enough of a taste about what the film is about but despite some intergalactic scenes was still quite bare in terms of what the story will be about beyond it being an origin tale. Here’s to hoping the next trailer gives a bit more with a much more refined and polished fx work.
Ok, the second episode of The Walking Dead was seen by some as being too much like every past zombie films and stories that’s ever been told. It was too much about the typical zombie siege of a group of survivors inside a building with little to no way out of the predicament. Now add in the elements of infighting within the group not to mention a dangerous wild card of a character and some viewers were turned off by it. The fact that the episode was one of the goriest episodes of any show ever put on non-premium cable never got much press.
One character introduced in episode 2 which really polarized viewers was the one played by veteran genre actor Michael Rooker. The character was one Merle Dixon and he instantly appeared in the show as an uncouth, loud, abrasive redneck racist that for some the only thing missing was the song “Dixie” playing in the background. I must admit that the character of Merle Dixon was written and introduced rather awkwardly, but to say that the zombie apocalypse wouldn’t include such blatant racists individuals have way too an optimistic view of humanity.
It is how we start the third episode, titled “Tell It to the Frogs”, that has redeemed the character of Merle Dixon to some skeptics. I wouldn’t say redeemed as in they accepted the racist but that he might still have a part to play in this 6-episode first season of the show. In the second episode Merle was left behind by Rick and the group handcuffed on the roof of the very building which was now overrun by “walkers”. Fortunately for Merle, T-Dog (who had happened to drop the cuff keys down the drain in his attempt to free Merle) had chained and padlocked the door to the roof to keep Merle from becoming the next sun-burned meal for the walkers. Unfortunately for Merle the chain and padlock had some slack to it that the door could be opened with enough of a gap for a walker to stick its head through.
Merle opens the third episode talking to himself as he reminisces about punching some Army officer in the past. Right from the get-go we see Merle might have lost his mind somewhat. But as soon as his trip down racist memory lane ends he finally snaps back to reality and realizes he’s cuffed to the roof, no key to the cuffs and the zombies as working their damndest to push the chained roof door wide enough to get through. Before the scene moves to the intro credits me last see Merle trying to use his belt to pull the steel hacksaw to him while praying and condemning Jesus in equal amounts.
That was some fine acting from Michael Rooker and was one of the highlights of the episode. While it still doesn’t answer the question of how such a racist was even with the group in the building, it does confirm that Merle might not be all there mentally. The appearance of his brother Daryl halfway through the episode and showing the younger Dixon to be as racist but not as unhinged reminds me of the two characters from Of Mice and Men except these two are of the racist variety. George being the younger Dixon and the Lennie role taken on by Merle. It’ll be interesting how these two new characters to the series will unfold as the first season rushes towards its conclusion. The scene in the end with Daryl finding the aftermath of Merle’s attempts to escape his cuffs was another fine moment in an episode that was more about character interaction and drama than about violence and gore (thought there’s some of that in the episode).
While the episode begins and ends with the fate of Merle Dixon the bulk of the episode was the reunion of the Grimes family and how Rick’s miraculous arrival has changed the camp’s group dynamics with Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal in a performance which turned his character of Shane from hated “black hat” of the show to one that was a complex character who may or may not still be a simple “black hat”) and his wife Lori.
The scene where Rick slowly makes himself seen by the camp was very touching and showed hints of the love triangle the show will be exploring between Rick, Lori and Shane. The fact that Shane’s the first to see Rick and his expression turns from curiosity about who this new survivor was to one of shocked disbelief that the man he had spoken of as being dead has come back to his life. A life he seemed to be remaking with Lori as his partner and him a surrogate father to Rick’s son Carl. The reaction by Lori to suddenly seeing her husband back in her life healthy and alive ran the spectrum of surprise, shock and guilt.
Even the complex reactions from Shane and Lori didn’t diminish the heartwarming reunion between father and son as Rick literally fell to his knees in tears to hug his son Carl. That scene definitely was a tearjerker for many and Lincoln’s performance was very believable. One could almost see the burden and tension drain away from Lincoln’s Rick. The goal he had set for himself since episode 1 was now complete and nothing else mattered at that moment.
The show did have some moments which showed Darabont and the writers still feeling their way around Kirkman’s source material. One of it being the introduction of an abusive husband for one of the book’s regular faces in Carol. In the book the husband was only mentioned as not having survived the trip to Atlanta but no mention of him ever being abusive. Like the introduction of Merle in the previous episode, the appearance of Ed as the caveman husband was done too haphazardly. Almost like someone out of stereotype casting call, Ed bullied his way around the women in the camp until Shane had to step in and put on an epic beating that added some depth to the character of Shane but also made one wonder if the addition of Ed was just as a way to give Shane an outlet for the anger and frustration he was feeling from the return of Rick and the subsequent frosty attitude by Lori towards him.
In the end, “Tell It to the Frogs” was a much stronger return for the show after a second episode that some thought was being too stereotypical of a zombie story. I enjoyed the second episode but understand why some reacted to negatively to it after such a powerful initial pilot episode. The crew of Darabont, Kirkman and the other writers definitely have a balance to do between dramatic storytelling and zombie mayhem as the show continues through this first season and into the next. While some of the characters, both new and old, do seem too one-dimensional and more like plot devices for the main characters the show is only in its third episode and to judge the whole thing on such a small sampling is not fair to the show and the people behind it. I think the show has hit a nice balance of drama and mayhem. Time will tell if the show will live or die by balancing the two or finally landing on one side or the other.
PS: Oh yeah, anyone who happens to be fans of Bambi and her mom will have a hard time watching this episode.
In the winter of 2009, BioWare released a new rpg franchise to bookend their massively successful and critically-acclaimed scifi-rpg series Mass Effect. This new franchise was to be fantasy-based and would take the same deep and complex storytelling paired with morality choices that all past BioWare rpgs were well-known for. The game was Dragon Age: Origins and it did quite well that the company quickly began on creating the follow-up.
The game was a success, but not without some gripes from critics and players alike. While overall the game delivered on the experience BioWare promised it had some gameplay and visual failings which kept the game from becoming one of the great ones in 2009. The combat mechanics was not as intuitive as most gamers were used to. It played more like early BioWare games where commands for types of attacks were given but players had no control on how the attack were performed. There was also some major graphical issues in the game even on some high-end gaming pcs which ran the PC version.
Despite these flaws the game did entertain and gain quite a following. It’s no wonder that BioWare is ready to release the sequel, Dragon Age 2, a little over a year since the first game. This sequel will have BioWare addressing the very flaws gamers had with the first game. The combat will be more geared more like an action rpg with a streamlined control system. The company has stated that the look of the game will surpass that of the original now that programmers have had a better look at the PS3 and Xbox 360 systems. The game will also have a storyline which will span 10-years with the player’s character affecting how the world in the game changes depending on actions and decision played throughout.
Like its scifi brethren, Dragon Age 2 will use players’ saved completed games of the first title to tool and alter this sequel for that particular gamer. There’s one major change to the gameplay which may make some players unhappy. A player will not be able to choose their character’s race class. No more dwarf or elf characters. This sequel is strictly a human affair.
Until more videos of actual gameplay come out these CG-animated trailers will have to whet the appetites of rpg gamers everywhere.
Ok, so this particular choice for “song of the day” is not the usual metal, rock or even apocalyptic and horror music, but that’s why my taste can range so far and wide. My latest choice is the song “Listen To Your Heart” by the Belgian trance duo D.H.T. who covered it from the original Roxette track.
I enjoyed the original Roxette version which is so 80’s power synth ballad, but for some reason this cover by D.H.T. is my favorite. Maybe it’s because it’s a much slower vocal version of the song which does have a much faster tempo with a lot of 80’s style instrumentation. It also may be due to the fact that I just seem to get lost in the vocal stylings of Edmée Daenen who is the vocal front of the trance duo.
Lastly, it could also be that she has quite the voice in addition to being quite the hot number herself. Or I’m just a sucker for sappy ballads.
Hey, even the dark heart of a metal and horror aficionado will soften somewhat once in awhile.
Listen To Your Heart
I know there’s something in the wake of your smile. I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yea. You’ve built a love but that love falls apart. Your little piece of heaven turns too dark.
Listen to your heart When he’s calling for you. Listen to your heart There’s nothing else you can do. I don’t know where you’re going And I don’t know why, But listen to your heart Before you tell him goodbye.
Sometimes you wonder if this fight is worthwhile. The precious moments are all lost in the tide, yea. They’re swept away and nothing is what it seems, The feeling of belonging to your dreams.
Listen to your heart When he’s calling for you. Listen to your heart There’s nothing else you can do. I don’t know where you’re going And I don’t know why, But listen to your heart Before you tell him goodbye.
And there are voices That want to be heard. So much to mention But you can’t find the words. The scent of magic, The beauty that’s been When love was wilder than the wind.
Listen to your heart When he’s calling for you. Listen to your heart There’s nothing else you can do. I don’t know where you’re going And I don’t know why, But listen to your heart Before you tell him goodbye.
Listen to your heart, mm hmm.
I don’t know where you’re going And I don’t know why, But listen to your heart Before you tell him goodbye.
In 2009, a small film from South Africa turned the film industry on its ears. Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 was a sci-fi film which took the well-traveled alien invasion subgenre and added a new twist to the whole thing. The invasion wasn’t malicious and the bad guys ended up being the puny humans themselves. The ending of that film mentioned something about a possible real invasion of the aliens who were being oppressed, but until Blomkamp and Peter Jackson decide on making a follow-up sequel then we’ll just have to settle for the sudden wave of alien invasion films which seem to be popping up out of nowhere the last couple months.
There’s the little-to-no budget film Monsters which dealt with the landing of large tentacled aliens in the Central American jungles and how the world has come to cope with the aftermath. This one was more of a character piece with the aliens themselves little-seen til the very end. But it definitely falls under the alien invasion genre.
Then there’s Skyline by The Strause Brothers which comes out November 12 and while it also has a very low-budget compared to epic alien invasion films in the genre the film looks to have some top-notch special-effects. The story and acting may not be up the par with the visuals but then Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day was the same and it made a ton.
While late to the party it looks like Battle: Los Angeles by filmmaker Jonathan Liebesman (another South African) may be the one to pull off not just being a dramatic piece, but a sci-fi war film and FX-heavy visuals. From what could be seen in the trailer it definitely has a look that some people has called Black Hawk Down meets Independence Day.
It stars Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Bridget Moynihan and Michael Peña and is set for a 03-11-2011 release.
“I may have dropped into Normandy on D-Day, but I still had Liberty in Paris or London. You Gyrenes had jungle rot and malaria.”
In 2001, HBO came out with a mini-series that detailed the experiences of the men of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Regiment of the 101st Airborne. This series was produced with loving care by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Two men who were instrumental in the success of an earlier World War 2 project called Saving Private Ryan. This series was called Band of Brothers and became one of the most critically-acclaimed mini-series of its time and has become part of the staple of military-themed shows and films that gets shown on Memorial and Veterans Day in the United States.
Even as this series was only a year old there was talk from some of its admirers about whether HBO and the team of Hanks and Spielberg would re-visit this era Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation”. To re-visit and tell the stories of the men who fought on the other side of the European Theater in what was an even more hellish battlezone in the Pacific. It took almost 9 years, but the ending result is the mini-series called simply The Pacific.
The Pacific tells the story of three Marines of the 1st Marine Corps Division from their time before their unit ships out to the Pacific Theater of Operations and through some of the bloodiest and most savage battlefields of World War 2. There’s Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone (played by Jon Seda) who would show the sort of stoic heroism people nowadays would dismiss as a figment of Hollywood writers, but who actually did all the things only seen in action films. Bookending Basilone would be two newcomers to the art of war in PFC Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale of AMC’s recently cancelled series, Rubicon) and Cpl. Eugene “Sledgehammer” Sledge (Joseph Mazzelo from Jurassic Park). These two Marines are our guide through the unending hell that were the battles in Gen. MacArthur’s island-hopping campaign to beat back the Army and Naval forces of Imperial Japan.
It’s also these two men and their memoirs which detail their experiences during the war in the Pacific which make up the bulk of the narrative for the series. One would be Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa which many consider as one of the best first-hand accounts of combat in the Pacific. The other one is Helmet for My Pillow by Leckie which was a more personal account of his time from Marine boot camp and experiencing a type of warfare in the Pacific which was new to a young man from the States. A type of warfare where the enemy didn’t surrender and would sacrifice his life in the service of one’s Emperor.
Basilone, Sledge and Leckie’s stories never come together but were told in concurrent fashion to show the audience the differing views of each. All three would go through the same meat-grinder that were the battles in immortalized places named Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
We see Basilone’s heroism on Guadalcanal make him into a Stateside hero and taken away from those he fought beside to help push war bonds for the government. This change in environment for him doesn’t sit well with Basilone as we see the survivor’s guilt in him. Why does he get all the celebrity attentions when others like him were still fighting and dying the same battles he was just in months before. His story is the most poignant of the three as he finds happiness while training new Marines for the war only for his need to get back into the fight win out. The fact that all this happened for real makes his story even more memorable. Hollywood writers have tried to capture such moments and often-times fail. It was great to see Basilone’s story told for everyone to see that the world past, present and future has real-life heroes that Hollywood could never replicate but only imitate.
Jon Seda’s performance was in-line with what one thinks a gung-ho Marine should be but he brought a sense of realism to the role. He didn’t try to make Basilone more a hero than he already was. I like to compare his performance to that of Tom Hanks’ Capt. Miller in Saving Private Ryan and Damian Lewis’ Maj. Dick Winters in Band of Brothers. He was a man who did acts of bravery as seen by others on the battlefield and one which made him a celebrity to the civilians Stateside. But in the end he just saw it as him doing his job as he was trained and trying to keep his men alive. He didn’t see himself as a hero and while his Stateside role of war hero pushing war bonds did bring some perks he never fit in. Seda’s work in Part Eight where he meets his future wife was some of the best work in this series.
In Leckie’s story we see a man swept up in the great enlistment drive which happened right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His story sees a cocky and smart young man wanting to do his part for the war effort yet not knowing the sort of sacrifices he’ll have to make or the horrors he will witness and inflict to survive day-to-day. We see Leckie quick to make friends in his unit during their training and then through their baptism of fire in the Battle of Tenaru before seeing the real horror of the war in the Pacific as his unit and the rest of the 1st Marine Division land of the island of Guadalcanal.
His time on Guadalcanal would soon erase any romanticized notion of honor and glory in battle Leckie may have had when he decided to enlist. As a writer in his civilian life prior to the war’s start he would continue to write his experiences in-between battles and skirmishes with the Japanese. Even when friends in his unit would die each and every day it seems Leckie seemed to want to keep that savagery at bay with his writing which would become a basis for his wartime memoirs. His story ends midway through the series and we won’t see him again until the final denouement as we see Leckie’s life as a civilian once again after the war. His final time in the warzone would be on the Battle of Peleliu (one of the bloodiest battles in USMC history and one that would be steeped in tragedy afterwards) where a severe concussive blast would render him unable to fight. It’s scenes on one of the hospital ships off the coast of Peleliu where Leckie’s own survivor’s guilt is temepered by the realization that any more time out in the battlefield would surely strip him of his humanity and turn him into the growing examples of battle-scarred and psychologically damaged Marines who have seen and done too many horrible things to ever return back to their civilian life intact.
The final episode shows Leckie (with James Badge Dale in a confident and cocky turn) the one who seem to adjust to the life back to civilian life with a modicum of ease. While he still carries the scars of battle in his psyche its that time in the Pacific which has also given Leckie the confidence to get his old job back at the local paper he used to work for and woo the pretty girl next door he had been shy and awkward with in the very first episode. While his performance wasn’t as good as Seda it was still a noteworthy one which brought the person of PFC Robert Leckie to the masses watching this series.
Lastly, we come to the third of the three whose story the series revolves around. The story of one Cpl. Eugene Sledge who, like Leckie, wanted to do his part for the war effort. While his young age at the start of the war prohibited him from enlisting without his parents’ consent he finally gets a chance a year later when he is of age and just in time for him to join the Corps, train and see his first taste of combat in the Pacific on the killing grounds of Peleliu then the hellish nightmare battlefields of Okinawa.
Sledge’s story is the most complex and runs the gamut of dark emotions a young man should never have to take. His young idealism in helping his country in its time of need will get some tempering even before he ships out to become a Marine. His father tells him of having to treat young men from an earlier era from another major war which had engulfed the world. His father spoke about how some of these young men who came back whole physically didn’t do so psychologically. He spoke about how the horrors of war seemed to have “ripped the souls” from these returning young men and how he didn’t want his son to go through the same thing. But as young, headstrong men who think they’re invincible are wont to do he enlists anyway.
The performance by Joseph Mazzello (hard to believe this young man is the same young boy who ran and escaped from CGI raptors and T-Rex on Spielberg’s Jurassic Park) tops all other performances in this cast full of noteworthy and great acting work. We don’t just see his Sledge go through each horrific scene after scene of battle and its aftermath with is emotional and psyche gradually sliding down into the abyss, but we could actually see Mazzello’s body, mannerisms and the look in his eyes make the same changes. I fully bought into his performance as the young idealistic young man from Mobile, Alabama slowly turned into the same uncaring, savage Marine one had to become to survive the war in the Pacific. He had seen enough bodies of Marines and enemy Japanese torn apart and strewn about everywhere one looked that one became inured to them.
One of the most powerful scenes in the series has Sledge confronted by the aftermath of what he and his mortar-team might have been responsible for. It was deep into the campaign to take the island of Okinawa and Sledge and his fellow Marines have been brought to the edge of insanity by all the fighting. A fight which has some of them questioning why the enemy just doesn’t surrender. An enemy willing to suicide charge into heavily armed Marines and also willing to herd Okinawan civilians into the line of fire. It’s this brutality by the enemy and mirrored by his fellow Marines which brings Sledge to a darker side of his nature which we as an audience don’t see a way out for him. But in the scene close to the very end of Part Nine brings Sledge back from the abyss and reminds him that there’s still humanity in him and the very Marines he has been with since the beginning. His reaction afterwards to a group of new Marines killing a young Japanese soldier for sport sickens him. We see Sledge realizing how just days and months before he was spouting the very same savage hate for the enemy as these newly arrived Marines looking for their first kill.
Of the three it’s Sledge who will carry the deepest scars of the Pacific for the rest of his life. We see the extreme difficulty he has in adjusting back to civilian life. Nightmares haunt his nights and flashbacks of the battlefields hound his steps in the daytime. His mental and emotional breakdown as he tries to go back to hunting with his father encapsulates this series at its most basic core. This series doesn’t have the camaraderie and brotherhood established between fellow soldiers that its predecessor had. While Band of Brothers also showed the horrors of war in Europe it was balanced by the hope that everyone in Easy Company had their brothers in arms to back them up when the bullets flew and shells exploded. This wasn’t the case in the Pacific.
Sure the were the same camaraderie and brotherhood, but the type of enemy fought in abject conditions which made downtime from battle almost as bad as the battle themselves didn’t bring hope. It only brought misery and a fatalistic view of the world Sledge and his fellow Marines existed right there and then. His breakdown in the final episode shows how those who fought in the Pacific definitely bore deeper scars and returned more damaged than their European brothers. Scars not just inflicted by the enemy but those they’ve inflicted on themselves by fighting savagery with their own form of savagery. It was a kill or be killed world and returning back from that brink didn’t happen to everyone and those who were able to return did so not whole.
I understand that some were disappointed by how The Pacific turned out. How it didn’t live up to the standards created by Band of Brothers. Some have said that there was no main focus to the narrative the way its predecessor strictly followed the men of Easy Company through the battles in Europe. They’ve pointed out how some episodes took too much time to get to the battle scenes. I think trying to compare The Pacific to Band of Brothers is foolish and a doesn’t give this follow-up mini-series the proper due it deserves.
The Pacific wasn’t trying to tell Band of Brother in the Pacific. While the two series do take place in the same world war the circumstances surrounding the storylines in both series diverge to take different paths. The first series almost seem like men fighting for a common cause and the good fight against tyranny. The Pacific is all about revenge. Revenge and payback for Pearl Harbor at first then as the series moves forward it becomes revenge and brutality for seeing their buddies die. This series showed nothing noble about the fighting in the Pacific. It was just a struggle to survive from one day to the next.
So, while this series may not be the second coming of Band of Brothers it does stand on its own merits and I think was the more powerful of the two. It didn’t flinch away or dismiss the darker side of the “good guys” and showed that war truly is hell and that those who fight and live through it were truly never the same. I say watch The Pacific and stop trying to compare it to Band of Brothers or any of the several shows dealing with the current wars. The Pacific should be watched as seen as the bookend to Band of Brothers. A darker journey to seeing the war of the “Greatest Generation” from the eyes of those who fought and died on the islands and jungles of the Pacific.
Through the Shattered Lens 