"I've never been to Heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma."

- the words of the immortal Elvis Presley (who it turned out, was mortal after all).

I've also never made a movie, mini series, nor been to war. That being said -

The Pacific ... Ryan's take:

I liked the series. I didn't love it. I liked it. Now lets establish something from the very start of my "review." I am not at odds with the story, in any way shape or form. My criticism is reserved exclusively for the story telling. The presentation. I realize that the primary sources, as listed by the producers, were "With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa", by Eugene Sledge, and "A Pillow for My Helmet", by Robert Leckie. And if you think I'm criticizing their memoirs, you're out of your mind. I should also note that it's probably the height of hubris for little ol' me to criticize Spielberg, Hanks, and their affiliated directors on movie making, but it's my blog, so I am. I should also readily admit that my template for how a war movie/series should be made is Band of Brothers, and you don't have to be Spielberg to know that's a fair standard (nor do I need Ebert to tell me The Godfather was a good movie, if you get my drift). And given The Pacific is from the same creators, I can only assume Band of Brothers was their template for war-story-telling as well.

These 3 are presented in ascending order:

1.) My smallest beef. I really enjoyed and thought it impacting to have various episodes of BoB narrated by the characters, in closing each episode (ala Winters in Day of Days and Points / Webb in The Last Patrol) and sometimes throughout (Lipton in the woods over looking Foy). They didn't do that in The Pacific, at all. If you pushed "play with historical background" you got Hanks' 3 minute history lesson (which was fine, don't get me wrong), but it didn't have near the impact, cohesiveness, and most importantly the intimacy afforded the viewer as the character in-story narration does, in my opinion.

2.) I had to decide whether it was this or the next one I was bothered by most (in fact I'm still not a 100% which it is), but I had to choose for the purposes of the post, so here it is: Band of Brothers was very, very "frontline-centric." If you think about the series, after the initial episode (in which the Sobel dichotomy was priceless, the Friends guy really did a great job) the entire story line takes place within yards, if not feet, of the front line of battle (for Easy Company and the 101st). Even Winter's leave to Paris was a vehicle for telling his recent combat at the crossroads. In The Pacific there was a lot, and I mean a ton, of "off the line" scenes, entire story lines in fact. Case in point - Basilone was the most decorated Marine of the War. So I'm curious as to why I get a half hour story line of Leckie banging the Greek-Aussie hottie, and the battle/assault surrounding Basilone's death gets all of 5 minutes of air time. Do you see what I'm saying? The two lads he trained (exclusively, for some time before the company arrived), got maybe 5 - 10 seconds of reel time reaction to their Sarge's death, but Leckie's and the Aussie's break up got a full 3 minutes or so. I don't get that. The Melbourne story line, Bassilone banging starlets in 5 star hotels, that's all nice, it's fine, but that is not what I expected, nor wanted with BoB as my template. And given there must be unlimited frontline story lines available for the 1st Marines, I was dissapointed the producers didn't opt to spend more time on them.

3.) Cut and paste story telling ... there were three distinct story lines, revolving around 3 men in The Pacific. That means in a 10 episode series the viewer is getting roughly 3.3 episodes for each story. Any one of which could have been a 10 part series in and of itself. Now I realize that Band of Brothers was about a very specific Company, and The Pacific was an attempt to portray, well, THE Pacific theater. Only, that's nearly impossible in 10 episodes ... in 1000. They had to cut off what they wanted to portray at some point - for instance, there were no Naval battles in "The Pacific", of any kind, no sailor's fighting. And that was certainly an aspect of that front, to say the least. And my point is I don't think they made the cut off narrow enough. You can portray the entire Marine effort through the story of one core (corps) group of men, as was done in B.o.B, without having to constantly cut and go to a completely different story line on the other side of the planet. They used only one book, Ambrose' work, for the European front. They used two for The Pacific, and tossed in a short biography of Basilone. And that's exactly what it felt like to me, "tossed in", choppy. They attempted to mesh story lines that should have been told on their own, making the entire arrangement feel "forced" to the viewer (at least this viewer).

I would have much preferred (again, my opinion) that they picked one of the three story lines, and let us get to know that man and his comrades the way we got to know Easy Company. I like to see the word play, the back and forth and merciless mocking of the guys with each other. The Pacific was largely minus that (save Sledgehammer & Snafu, but even then in a limited amount) because the time wasn't taken to let us (the viewer) get to "know" the men the way it was done with Easy. The entire story was almost an inner dialogue of 3 seperate men, only without the words.

At any rate, I did like The Pacific. The story itself wouldn't allow for anything less. But I'm near heart broken that I didn't love it ... I sorely wanted to.

And if this puts me out of the running for "favorite uncle", I understand.