SFL 358 Blog Entry #15 - My Letter to Tom Hanks concerning The Pacific

For an assignment in my media class, we were asked to write a letter to someone in the media calling for some kind of change. I wrote a letter to Tom Hanks, one of the executive-producers of the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific. I'm posting the entire letter, but it is a lot longer than I anticipated, so don't worry about reading all of it. What was meant to be just a page about how there shouldn't be any nudity in the war series turned into three pages about what I liked and didn't like about The Pacific in general, including the bit about the sexuality. Anyways, here it is:

Dear Mr. Hanks,

Let me first say that I am a huge fan of your work! I am a college student and I absolutely love film. Today I write to you specifically about Band of Brothers and The Pacific. I absolutely love Band of Brothers. I saw the episodes when they originally aired and I’ve watched them several times since then. I even recently bought the book and the series on blu-ray. It’s such a masterpiece! The efforts you, Steven Spielberg, and everyone else made to make it as true to real life as possible and to make it all about the real men of Easy Company make the miniseries one of my favorite works of film of all time. Bravo!

So naturally, when I heard you guys were making another similar series about the conflicts in the Pacific theater, I got really excited to see it! I watched the entire series as soon as I got a chance, but unfortunately, I was actually pretty disappointed. I’ll start with what I liked. I love the measures you took to make it as realistic as possible. The marines’ conditions were brutal! I had no idea they had it so rough, with such outdated equipment, too. Their story doesn’t get told as often as those in Europe. The war scenes were phenomenal. They were very intense and at times quite unsettling, but that’s what it was like. I think they were handled magnificently.

One of the things I did not like so much, but I’m not sure you could have executed better, was character development and attachment. Unlike Band of Brothers, The Pacific didn’t follow one group of soldiers throughout their campaign; it followed a few different main characters, often in different places. As a result, I didn’t get to know much about these characters, and I wasn’t particularly attached as they made their way through the war. This is really a shame because I wanted to really get to know these guys like I feel I did in Band of Brothers. Though I of course in real life didn’t come even close, I felt like I experience the war with them. This just wasn’t the case in The Pacific. It felt like a lot more time was taken showing the soldiers outside the battlefield in this series than in Band of Brothers. I really don’t know for sure if this is the case, but that’s how it felt. During Band of Brothers, I loved all of the quiet time spent with soldier, getting to know them. I wouldn’t change a thing. In The Pacific, however, all I wanted was to get to the next battle. I didn’t really care so much what was happening with these characters because I constantly had to meet new ones before I got so attached to the old ones.

Now, admittedly, I don’t know the source material very well at all, so I don’t know how much you had to draw from to write the miniseries. I know Eugene Sledge has a book, but maybe it wasn’t enough on which to base an entire series. Perhaps you had no choice but to break it up into a few different marines’ stories. Because I don’t know, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t have much of a choice. I didn’t like that aspect of it, but perhaps nothing could have been done better in that regard.

What I cannot excuse, however, is the excessive sex and nudity that was in this series. The violence and gore needs to be there because that’s how war was. We weren’t there, so we can’t imagine what it was like without the intense, gritty, realistic portrayal you so masterfully executed. Again, though it was very intense at times, I wouldn’t change a thing about that. But do you really need to have nudity? My friends and I were so put off by that. That’s not why we watch these war movies and series. I don’t think anyone watches these things for the sexuality. I don’t think you would have sacrificed anything valuable to the story by excluding these scenes, or at least being more subtle. Yes, these men apparently had sex with women on their time off, and yes, it shows a lot about how valuable their time off the battlefield was. But it did not need to be shown so much, or at all. For these scenes alone I can’t recommend The Pacific to any of my friends or family. It’s a real shame, too, because I think more people need to see these series to more fully appreciate what these brave men and women did for us.

Mr. Hanks, again, I am a really big fan of your work, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you for putting so much effort into telling these stories right. I would love for you to somehow make more similar miniseries, because I know there are plenty of stories yet to be told from World War II. However, what I ask is that you keep out the explicit sexuality so that more people can appreciate it for what it is. Please do this. No one will complain about a lack of nudity. I know you’re a busy guy, and so I understand if you can’t write back to me, but I’d really appreciate it if you could. I’d love to hear what you think about all of this. I hope I’ve been respectful, and I hope you take what I’ve said seriously. Thank you.