1 It was Boring.
2 Character Development was poor, I still don’t know who the hell was who, so it was hard to care who lived or died
3 The “Feel of the times” factor didn’t work. It wasn’t as bad a something like Black Sheep Squadron where all the WWII nurses all had Farah Fawcett hairdos but I just had a hard time believing these were vets of the WWII generation.
They had more baby boomerish mannerism.
4. Too crammed, Band of Brothers covered a little more than a year, this one covered 4 years and worse it had some episodes that were wasted a lot of time with irrelevant uninteresting subplots (i.e. The guy banging the Australian babe, the Sargent trying to get in the Italian cooks pants, etc).
WTF does that have to do with anything???? Boomers? Just maybe these were the fathers of the Boomer generation???
Oh wait, I recall your screen name being ID'd with some grunge generation ping list.....you are dismissed....irrelevant and ignored. Go suck on some shotgun suicide music.
I agree there were two episodes out of the 10 that could have been left out or shortened. - but removed those and it was not boring. The fighting scenes were as intense as anything I have ever seen in a war movie. More shocking that even Band of Brothers, and from books written about Guadalcanal, Peleliu, and Okinawa they did not stretch the truth.
I would agree some on your feel for the times comment. Its a very difficult thing to do to make the viewer feel you are taken back in time . There is a long list of movies that accomplished that well, and a longer list that didn't. But I'm not going to give the movie a thumbs down just because they missed that mark.
As far as it being too crammed. The sole purpose of the series was to show the viewers what one group of men went through during the war as they island hopped with the 1st Marines. Would you rather they have shown one battle, and then just before the credits have text explaining what happened the next two battles - who died, who got medals, who went on to civilian life after the war, etc?
My biggest complaints would be the lack of character development, and the two episodes that had a “modifier TV movie” feel about them. The production quality was not as good as Band of Brothers, or Saving Private Ryan, but it was still a nice addition to my war movie shelf.
Now my Dad if he could have seen it , would of said, “Where the hell is my ship?” And then gone on for an hour about how the Marines would not have gotten on Peleliu or Okinawa without his Navy, and his USS Mississippi's 14 inch guns.
Finished the series last night and here is my final thoughts. Out of a possible 5 stars I would give it a 3 and a half. Not nearly as well put together as Band of Brothers, but the battle scenes were excellently done, with historical accuracy a goal for the film makers.
I would have liked to see more of the Navy involvement. I know the story was about the 1st Marines, but they could have shown some of the action taking place to support those landings. 5000 sailors were killed off Okinawa, including on my Dad’s ship the U.S.S. Mississippi, which was struck by a Kamikaze and was damaged horribly. Unless you studied that battle or watched the extras, you would have thought the sailors had it easy. My Dad would have said, where the Hell is the Navy?
All of the battles, especially Okinawa could have been improved with a narrative before each explaining a little about the objective, what the Americans were up against, and afterward another narrative with the aftermath. Instead you had to go to the extras. We armature WWII historians maybe knew some about the battles, but I had to explain what was happening all the way through to my wife.
And finally the last episode was a total bore. It could have been done away with and then move the soldiers bios into the specials section.