cooper9411 wrote:
The Red Tails film should be better as Lucas, I'm sure had a much bigger budget to work with.
It's not the size of your budget that counts, it's what you do with it. Lucas is a bit of a ham so i don't really expect great things. He may surprise me, I hope so.
cooper9411 wrote:
Tuskegee Airmen rank right up there with "Band of Brothers" and "South Pacific".
"South Pacific"? That really gay 1950's musical?
My opinion of the HBO Tuskagee Airmen is it was a very good film indeed. For me it was a real eye opener as we have never had the apartheid style racism and seperatism here in NZ that was prevalent in the USA, and seeing how those chaps were treated was appaulling.
In WWII the RNZAF had many Maori pilots, aircrew, groundcrew and WAAF's, who were all just part of everyday units with everybody else, and were treated no differently. So long as they could do the job, they were in. There was never any division along racial lines in our Air Force. That would have been totally unthinkable in NZ society I believe.
NZ did have No. 28 (Maori) Battalion which was one of our many Army battalions which was set up at the insistence of Maori leaders and with the Companies within being divided along tribal lines. It was never anything about seperatism from the rest of the army though, it was all about Maori pride in their tribal system. They were traditionally great warriors and proved so again in WWII. Many Maori people served in the other battalions and units of the Army too, as a matter of choice. And the Maori Battalion was hugely respected by the whole Army, and even by the Germans, with Rommel singling them out as his greatest enemy at one point.
Some Maori did very well indeed in the RNZAF, one of NZ's fighter aces was Maori pilot Bert Wipiti who fought in Buffalo fighters against the Japanese in 1942 and later fought and died flying Spitfires against the Germans in Europe. Another well known Maori pilot was John Pohe, who was one of the 50 murdered by the Germans after the Great Escape. You can watch a documentary on Pohe's life here:
http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/turanga ... story-2008I don't mean to profess that NZ is a eutopia, there are certainly people with racist views here, and always will be on both sides. But it has never been to the extremes as seen in the USA. So, for me it was a bit difficult to watch the treatment of those Tuskagee guys, watching those white southern hicks on a power trip. They were certainly no better than anyone else.
I had of course watched other US films, etc., on slavery and had a good understanding of the institutionalised racism that existed back then, but it was still very nasty indeed watching it in the WWII USAAF. I can see why these days these airmen are so reverred for their courage because they had to overcome so many more challenges than the average white US pilot, and that is before they even left their own country. And their fine record in combat and their bravery was superb.
I will watch Lucas's film one day when it comes on DVD but I don't expect it to be better than the HBO version.
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