Red Tails

[yanceylebeef]

If all the stars of the movie are black, how do we know which one dies first?

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@yanceylebeef

If all the stars of the movie are black, how do we know which one dies first?

You’re forgetting that this is a George Lucas movie: white folks like Alec Guinness die in the first hour, black folks like Billy Dee Williams make it through to the end unscathed, and anyone who even sounds like James Earl Jones will surely be revealed as a pasty Englishman before he can get killed off.

[SeamusMcCool]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

From wiki, “Lucas held discussions with Samuel L. Jackson regarding Jackson possibly directing and acting in the film. Although Jackson praised the script, he did not commit to either role.” Could’ve been interesting.

I’m not surprised by this. Jackson doesn’t usually play heroic black characters, he usually plays flawed to varying degrees characters and action/comedy roles.

[Lochdale]

Is this movie just one big apology for Jar Jar Binks?

[Alessan]

Don’t be silly. George Lucas never apologizes.

To apologize, you have to first admit to being wrong.

[Lochdale]

@Alessan

Don’t be silly. George Lucas never apologizes.

To apologize, you have to first admit to being wrong.

He should start with the entire prequel trilogy.

The problem I have with moveis like this is that they can distort history. With all due respect to the Tuskeegee Airmen, they didn’t really change the course of the war. Whatever they may have done to improve racial attitudes they were a very minor footnote in the war.

That being said, this movie looks no where near as egregious as Jon Bon Jovi finding the enigma machine and winning the war.

[Raguleader]

@El_Kabong

Saw it last night and I liked it considerably better than I thought I would based on the trailers. It works reasonably well as a straight-up action film, and in this context I thought it was actually the correct decision to start straightaway with the Tuskegee airmen in Italy rather than attempt to detail the stateside origins of the program. The CGI was reasonably effective; in any event, if one is going to have whole squadrons of P-51s and Me-262s duking it out in the midst of massive formations of B-17s, CGI is pretty much the only choice.

As far as miltary accuracy goes, I’d say, probably not so much. The American fighters are apparently armed with magic .50 cal bullets that cause steam locomotives and entire German Destroyers to blow up; others have noted that the physics of some of the aircraft maneuvers are a bit screwy (most of the CGI effects are pretty good, though), and I find it hard to believe that the rank insubordination of some of the characters toward their superior officers (white or otherwise) would have been so readily tolerated. To get even nitpickier, I was under the impression that the Red Tails flew C-model Mustangs, not the -Ds shown in the film (or at least didn’t go straight to -Ds), and I’m likewise pretty sure that US bombers were raiding Berlin long before March '45, although the script seems to state otherwise.

What most lets it down is the teeth-gritting corniness of much of the dialogue and many of the characterizations. I really don’t get the point of the apparent declared intention of emulating a ‘40s-style propaganda film. The Germans are all throwback Nazis from a Sgt Rock comic book (the writers even have one of the German pilots saying “Foolish Americans”, give me an effin’ break) and the characterizations of many of the Americans aren’t much better. I’ll give some of the lead actors (particularly the pilots “Easy” and “Lightning”) some credit for managing to fashion more or less credible characters out of rather thin gruel.

Anyway, great eye candy for a WWII geek like me, but nowhere near a great film.

For what it’s worth, the thing with the destroyer actually happened. Most likely, the gunfire from the strafing fighter plane set off something the destroyer was carrying on the deck (torpedoes are a likely suspect). American fighter planes of the era, IIRC, carried a mix of armor piercing, incendiary, and tracer rounds in their magazines.

And yeah, they got the model of Mustang wrong, but how much do you want to bet that if they showed the -C model instead of the famous bubble-canopy -D model, that you’d hear cries of “HAVEN’T THEY EVER SEEN A PICTURE OF A P-51 MUSTANG?!”.

I’m just pleased the P-40 Warhawk got some love in this film. Some interesting trivia that I learned while doing a Wiki-Walk, is that the P-40 was the third most widely produced American fighter of the war, and was evidently quite capable at low and mid altitude combat. Evidently it could out-turn a Me-109. It just didn’t have the capability to operate at high altitudes, which is why it didn’t get the spotlight like the Mustang, Lightning, and Thunderbolt did. Then again, it was also significantly cheaper to produce than any of those planes…

As far as the characterization of the Germans… what characterization? There were only two Germans in the entire film to get any spoken lines. There was Pretty Boy who mostly only had a few fighter pilot type lines, and no real chance to build his character unless you read between the lines, and there was the Stalag guard who mostly only got to cheerfully introduce the POWs to their new bunkmate, showing that either he is taking some sadistic glee, or is a genuinely pleasant but naive man who thinks these Americans will be thrilled to have a famous fighter pilot living with them.

The Germans didn’t really get much opportunity to be characterized one way or the other, they were just the almost-faceless “Enemy”.

There’s a romance plot, it doesn’t have much central bearing on the film. Just something for one of the main characters to do when he’s not shooting things up or pissing off his boss. Much of the plot is fairly formulaic, though sometimes it seems like they are setting up a standard “A+B=C” plot point, only for it to play out differently. Mostly though, if you’re paying attention, you’ll see where the main part of things are going.