Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:05 pm
We finally went to see Red Tails this evening. I tried to keep an open mind..it wasn't terrible, but not great either. I could rivet-count it to death on historical/technical/markings inaccuracies, but I tried to see it for what it was intended to be: a live-action version of a 1950s action/adventure comic. From that perspective the one-dimensional characters, ridiculously cliched dialogue and ham-fisted performances weren't quite as painful as I'd feared. The CGI was OK, but still pretty obviously CGI. Overall I'd give it a "C."
SN
SN
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:14 pm
I just read an after action report from VF-10 dated 5/19/44 where two other pilots, not with VF-10, had the call signs "Ace" and "King."
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:47 am
I ended up seeing it again with another friend. Just like I say about Pearl Harbor, if it gets veterans attention, then great. If it teaches a younger generation about a subject that they have never heard about, then awesome. It served it's purpose. I will more than likely get it on DVD as my daughter who is 7 loves the red tails. She hasn't seen the movie (I think she is just a bit young for it yet), but she has been told stories and has a diecst red tail in her room. She also has a Corsair after I told her about the Blacksheep. Take that barbie!
The other side of the coin is this. Those saying that the folks that didn't like it are just rivet counting are missing what the others mean. Sure paint jobs and such are off, however outside of P-51's with red tails and black pilots, there really isn't any history in it. The acting was rough, very rough.
Now there are those that compare it to Pearl Harbor. Here is where Pearl Harbor was a much better movie. First off folks watching PH learned of folks named Doris Miller, Jimmy Doolittle, ADM Yamamoto, ADM Nimitz, Captain Mervyn Bennion who refused to leave the bridge and died in Miller's arms, and Lt. Miller who helped the Doolittle pilots. These are all real people that folks can look up and read about after seeing the movie. That is a huge tie in for learning. Watch the movie, then read about the real guy. There isn't one person that you can do that with in Red Tails.
Pearl Harbor used the wrong variant airplanes. That is very true. However they were real airplanes. Real P-40's and Zeros. Real B-25's and they even launched three of them from an aircraft carrier. CGI was used to enhance things, but not as the main focus. Red tails used the wrong type of planes at times, and they were all mainly CGI. Was the story cheesy? Yes during the love story, however they were attempting to show that people had lives and the war got in the way of all of that.
In closing my opinion is that Yes this movie is a good entertaining film. yes it is doing good things for veterans and introducing a story that was never known to more. Good to go and watch on the big screen. Where it missed the mark is to have ANY tie to the actual veterans. How can you tell the Tuskegee story without a character of B.O. Davis., Roscoe Brown, Lee Archer. People they can google after they get home to continue the learning.
The last thing is the comparison of this to Flying Tigers that starred John Wayne. Remember that John Wayne actually had the chance to meet and drink with some of the real Flying Tigers. He apologized to them about the movie.
The other side of the coin is this. Those saying that the folks that didn't like it are just rivet counting are missing what the others mean. Sure paint jobs and such are off, however outside of P-51's with red tails and black pilots, there really isn't any history in it. The acting was rough, very rough.
Now there are those that compare it to Pearl Harbor. Here is where Pearl Harbor was a much better movie. First off folks watching PH learned of folks named Doris Miller, Jimmy Doolittle, ADM Yamamoto, ADM Nimitz, Captain Mervyn Bennion who refused to leave the bridge and died in Miller's arms, and Lt. Miller who helped the Doolittle pilots. These are all real people that folks can look up and read about after seeing the movie. That is a huge tie in for learning. Watch the movie, then read about the real guy. There isn't one person that you can do that with in Red Tails.
Pearl Harbor used the wrong variant airplanes. That is very true. However they were real airplanes. Real P-40's and Zeros. Real B-25's and they even launched three of them from an aircraft carrier. CGI was used to enhance things, but not as the main focus. Red tails used the wrong type of planes at times, and they were all mainly CGI. Was the story cheesy? Yes during the love story, however they were attempting to show that people had lives and the war got in the way of all of that.
In closing my opinion is that Yes this movie is a good entertaining film. yes it is doing good things for veterans and introducing a story that was never known to more. Good to go and watch on the big screen. Where it missed the mark is to have ANY tie to the actual veterans. How can you tell the Tuskegee story without a character of B.O. Davis., Roscoe Brown, Lee Archer. People they can google after they get home to continue the learning.
The last thing is the comparison of this to Flying Tigers that starred John Wayne. Remember that John Wayne actually had the chance to meet and drink with some of the real Flying Tigers. He apologized to them about the movie.
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:48 am
I also wish to applaud WIX for having a healthy discussion with no fighting. It's a subject we are all passionate about.
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 9:35 am
John Wayne and "Tex" Hill were best of friends after the Flying Tigers movie until the Dukes death.
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 10:04 am
Great points, Chris. The only part where I might disagree is the way Doolittle was portrayed in PH. I'm not slagging Alec Baldwin..he was just playing the role he was given. But the script's portrayal of Doolittle as a person and his biographical history were soooooo far off the mark that what ended up in the movie was a totally fictitious character that just happened to have the same name. I'm sure that's largely my personal bias, as Doolittle is a bit of a hero to me..but then I could rip on PH all day... 
To me Red Tails was an OK bit of entertainment, but it just didn't feel "real." I'm not quite sure how to explain it..the whole time I was painfully aware that I was watching actors playing roles on sets in a movie (watching Cuba Gooding Jr. chew on his pipe reminded me of when I was a kid and used to pretend I was smoking my dad's..he obviously had no idea what to do with it.) The cockpit and B-17 interior scenes were obviously shot on a soundstage, the CGI was very obviously CGI, and the full-scale mockups were very obvious as well (other markings inaccuracies aside, it was nice to see them get the proportions on the USAAF insignia correct for a change.) I don't have a problem with CGI..it's just another tool that allows moviemakers to simulate reality. But the scenes in Red Tails just weren't very convincing. Also, like you I wish they'd included some real historical people..I think that would have made a story every bit as inspirational and heroic than Lucas's fictional one, if not more so.
Interestingly, there were a couple of middle-age black ladies in front of us..my wife got to talking with them after the film (she's from Alabama, and so were the ladies.) The loved the movie, and mentioned that several Tuskegee Airmen were actually from a nearby town here in Michigan. So I suppose if the film helps the Red Tails get some recognition, then that makes up for some of it's weaknesses.
SN
To me Red Tails was an OK bit of entertainment, but it just didn't feel "real." I'm not quite sure how to explain it..the whole time I was painfully aware that I was watching actors playing roles on sets in a movie (watching Cuba Gooding Jr. chew on his pipe reminded me of when I was a kid and used to pretend I was smoking my dad's..he obviously had no idea what to do with it.) The cockpit and B-17 interior scenes were obviously shot on a soundstage, the CGI was very obviously CGI, and the full-scale mockups were very obvious as well (other markings inaccuracies aside, it was nice to see them get the proportions on the USAAF insignia correct for a change.) I don't have a problem with CGI..it's just another tool that allows moviemakers to simulate reality. But the scenes in Red Tails just weren't very convincing. Also, like you I wish they'd included some real historical people..I think that would have made a story every bit as inspirational and heroic than Lucas's fictional one, if not more so.
Interestingly, there were a couple of middle-age black ladies in front of us..my wife got to talking with them after the film (she's from Alabama, and so were the ladies.) The loved the movie, and mentioned that several Tuskegee Airmen were actually from a nearby town here in Michigan. So I suppose if the film helps the Red Tails get some recognition, then that makes up for some of it's weaknesses.
SN
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 10:11 am
Very true Steve! That is where the film seems to be doing good. Getting the word out to honor the veterans.
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 12:15 pm
Good points Chris.
Yes, I will buy it when it becomes available. Maybe it will be a good excuse to get a Blue Ray player.
Yes, I will buy it when it becomes available. Maybe it will be a good excuse to get a Blue Ray player.
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 12:25 pm
Opinion piece in today's Washington Post by one of their columnists, who is black:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/red ... story.html
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‘Red Tails’ a disservice to Tuskegee Airmen
By Courtland Milloy, Published: January 29
The movie “Red Tails” could not possibly have been “inspired by” the Tuskegee Airmen, as billed, for it is little more than a black comedy about guys who clown and connive their way through World War II, supposedly as combat pilots.
Disheveled, undisciplined, crude and uncouth, they are the exact opposite of the real men who served in the all-black fighter group in the 1940s.
In this movie — which has raked in millions of dollars at the box office and even got a thumbs up from President Obama — the squad leader finds courage in a bottle of booze while his wingman’s lust for an Italian woman leads to insubordination. During dogfights with the German Luftwaffe, the black pilots behave like kids in a video arcade.
“Stop fooling around,” the booze-head captain tells his womanizing lieutenant, who has disobeyed orders to engage a more experienced enemy.
“I’m just playing with him,” the lieutenant replies.
This is not just a bad film; it is ridiculous. It caricatures the black airmen with the very stereotypes they fought so hard to dispel in real life.
“I wanted to make it inspirational for [African American] teenage boys,” producer George Lucas said in an interview with John Stewart on “The Daily Show.” “I wanted to show that they have heroes that are real American heroes that are patriots that helped make this country what it is today.”
So he turns the story of the famed Tuskegee Airmen into the first-ever happy-go-lucky hip-hop war movie.
The cast includes several actors from the HBO TV series “The Wire,” two of whom played street-corner killers and one who was a heroin addict. One combat pilot talks like Bubba, the black country bumpkin in the movie “Forrest Gump,” while another sounds like a jive-talking Chris Tucker, the squealing comic who co-starred with Jackie Chan in the series of “Rush Hour” action comedies.
“If somebody asks me something about the war,” a black airman says, “I’m going to make something up.”
A real laugh riot, this movie.
In reality, the Tuskegee Airmen placed a premium on discipline, precision, order and military bearing. After all, they were under the command of Benjamin O. Davis Jr., a black man from the District, whose rank as an Air Force general and whose education — 35th out of 276 at West Point, class of 1936 — was awe inspiring.
Davis stood 6-foot-4 and weighed in at a trim 200 pounds. Terrence Howard, who sang “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” in the movie “Hustle and Flow,” hardly fills those shoes.
“The men knew that their all-black fighter group was an experiment that many people wanted to see fail,” J. Byron Morris, past president of the East Coast chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, told me. “They wanted us to self-destruct. But B.O. Davis kept them on the straight and narrow, and the men were too self-respecting to fall apart.”
During a recent screening of the movie sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists, I sat with Morris and several other Tuskegee Airmen. The men were pleased that the history of the black pilots, gunners and mechanics was getting so much attention, and they were grateful to Lucas for using $93 million of his own money to help bankroll the film.
Nevertheless, they saw little of themselves on the screen. Davis would not have tolerated the fist fights, aerial stunts, drunkenness and insubordination. For my money, Lucas could have depicted the pilots as they were — as distinctive as the squad led by Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” or the group of soldiers in the television series “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.”
He could have at least made them appear credible as pilots.
The question that loomed largest over the 332nd Fighter Group was whether they were intelligent enough to fly. The doubts, deeply rooted in racism, persist to this day. Of 14,130 Air Force pilots in 2009, just 270 identified themselves as black — fewer than 2 percent — according to the Air Force Personnel Center.
So it was particularly egregious to have those black pilots clowning in the cockpit, engaged in dogfights that weren’t just fiction but science fiction. Rather than showing how the black pilots actually fared in combat, the film shows them magically flying propeller-driven planes fast enough to catch German jets that were 100 miles per hour faster.
They could turn on a dime, too, as if piloting Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon at warp speed in one of Lucas’s “Star Wars” episodes.
Unbelievable.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/red ... story.html
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‘Red Tails’ a disservice to Tuskegee Airmen
By Courtland Milloy, Published: January 29
The movie “Red Tails” could not possibly have been “inspired by” the Tuskegee Airmen, as billed, for it is little more than a black comedy about guys who clown and connive their way through World War II, supposedly as combat pilots.
Disheveled, undisciplined, crude and uncouth, they are the exact opposite of the real men who served in the all-black fighter group in the 1940s.
In this movie — which has raked in millions of dollars at the box office and even got a thumbs up from President Obama — the squad leader finds courage in a bottle of booze while his wingman’s lust for an Italian woman leads to insubordination. During dogfights with the German Luftwaffe, the black pilots behave like kids in a video arcade.
“Stop fooling around,” the booze-head captain tells his womanizing lieutenant, who has disobeyed orders to engage a more experienced enemy.
“I’m just playing with him,” the lieutenant replies.
This is not just a bad film; it is ridiculous. It caricatures the black airmen with the very stereotypes they fought so hard to dispel in real life.
“I wanted to make it inspirational for [African American] teenage boys,” producer George Lucas said in an interview with John Stewart on “The Daily Show.” “I wanted to show that they have heroes that are real American heroes that are patriots that helped make this country what it is today.”
So he turns the story of the famed Tuskegee Airmen into the first-ever happy-go-lucky hip-hop war movie.
The cast includes several actors from the HBO TV series “The Wire,” two of whom played street-corner killers and one who was a heroin addict. One combat pilot talks like Bubba, the black country bumpkin in the movie “Forrest Gump,” while another sounds like a jive-talking Chris Tucker, the squealing comic who co-starred with Jackie Chan in the series of “Rush Hour” action comedies.
“If somebody asks me something about the war,” a black airman says, “I’m going to make something up.”
A real laugh riot, this movie.
In reality, the Tuskegee Airmen placed a premium on discipline, precision, order and military bearing. After all, they were under the command of Benjamin O. Davis Jr., a black man from the District, whose rank as an Air Force general and whose education — 35th out of 276 at West Point, class of 1936 — was awe inspiring.
Davis stood 6-foot-4 and weighed in at a trim 200 pounds. Terrence Howard, who sang “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” in the movie “Hustle and Flow,” hardly fills those shoes.
“The men knew that their all-black fighter group was an experiment that many people wanted to see fail,” J. Byron Morris, past president of the East Coast chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, told me. “They wanted us to self-destruct. But B.O. Davis kept them on the straight and narrow, and the men were too self-respecting to fall apart.”
During a recent screening of the movie sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists, I sat with Morris and several other Tuskegee Airmen. The men were pleased that the history of the black pilots, gunners and mechanics was getting so much attention, and they were grateful to Lucas for using $93 million of his own money to help bankroll the film.
Nevertheless, they saw little of themselves on the screen. Davis would not have tolerated the fist fights, aerial stunts, drunkenness and insubordination. For my money, Lucas could have depicted the pilots as they were — as distinctive as the squad led by Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” or the group of soldiers in the television series “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.”
He could have at least made them appear credible as pilots.
The question that loomed largest over the 332nd Fighter Group was whether they were intelligent enough to fly. The doubts, deeply rooted in racism, persist to this day. Of 14,130 Air Force pilots in 2009, just 270 identified themselves as black — fewer than 2 percent — according to the Air Force Personnel Center.
So it was particularly egregious to have those black pilots clowning in the cockpit, engaged in dogfights that weren’t just fiction but science fiction. Rather than showing how the black pilots actually fared in combat, the film shows them magically flying propeller-driven planes fast enough to catch German jets that were 100 miles per hour faster.
They could turn on a dime, too, as if piloting Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon at warp speed in one of Lucas’s “Star Wars” episodes.
Unbelievable.
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Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 12:43 pm
Baldeagle wrote:Opinion piece in today's Washington Post
About sums it up for me. Noble effort but IMHO if you can't, or won't, do it right. Why do it at all? ... $$$
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 2:34 pm
mustangdriver wrote:I ended up seeing it again with another friend. Just like I say about Pearl Harbor, if it gets veterans attention, then great. If it teaches a younger generation about a subject that they have never heard about, then awesome. It served it's purpose. I will more than likely get it on DVD as my daughter who is 7 loves the red tails. She hasn't seen the movie (I think she is just a bit young for it yet), but she has been told stories and has a diecst red tail in her room. She also has a Corsair after I told her about the Blacksheep. Take that barbie!
The other side of the coin is this. Those saying that the folks that didn't like it are just rivet counting are missing what the others mean. Sure paint jobs and such are off, however outside of P-51's with red tails and black pilots, there really isn't any history in it. The acting was rough, very rough.
Now there are those that compare it to Pearl Harbor. Here is where Pearl Harbor was a much better movie. First off folks watching PH learned of folks named Doris Miller, Jimmy Doolittle, ADM Yamamoto, ADM Nimitz, Captain Mervyn Bennion who refused to leave the bridge and died in Miller's arms, and Lt. Miller who helped the Doolittle pilots. These are all real people that folks can look up and read about after seeing the movie. That is a huge tie in for learning. Watch the movie, then read about the real guy. There isn't one person that you can do that with in Red Tails.
Pearl Harbor used the wrong variant airplanes. That is very true. However they were real airplanes. Real P-40's and Zeros. Real B-25's and they even launched three of them from an aircraft carrier. CGI was used to enhance things, but not as the main focus. Red tails used the wrong type of planes at times, and they were all mainly CGI. Was the story cheesy? Yes during the love story, however they were attempting to show that people had lives and the war got in the way of all of that.
In closing my opinion is that Yes this movie is a good entertaining film. yes it is doing good things for veterans and introducing a story that was never known to more. Good to go and watch on the big screen. Where it missed the mark is to have ANY tie to the actual veterans. How can you tell the Tuskegee story without a character of B.O. Davis., Roscoe Brown, Lee Archer. People they can google after they get home to continue the learning.
The last thing is the comparison of this to Flying Tigers that starred John Wayne. Remember that John Wayne actually had the chance to meet and drink with some of the real Flying Tigers. He apologized to them about the movie.
I agree 100%. And if I didn't know anything about the history of Pearl Harbor or the Red Tails, and saw both movies, I would say Pearl Harbor is the better movie.
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Mon Jan 30, 2012 11:13 pm
I rolled my eyes so many time while ready that op-ed piece, I swear I was staring at my own brain for a moment.
Sure, the Tuskegee Airmen was true pathfinders in every sense. But for crying out loud, MUST we put them on some manner of pedestal? This is just like all the flak that the BBC caught when they aired the TV miniseries, “Piece of Cake,” where people went nuts at the portrayal of RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain as anything other than saint-like. They were just people, for crying out loud. Anyone who’s been around real fighter pilots from any generation can tell you that you’re likely to find all types in the air. I’ll agree that to a degree these characters were stereotypes from many other WW2 films. No question there. But generally, you DO find a lot of these types of people in the service. I know, because I served with people just like them, of all skin colors!
Putting them on some sort of lofty position does the veterans a great injustice. They were just young men who wanted to fly, from various backgrounds. You’d surely see the same cross-section of personality types in an all-black unit as any other in WW2. I agree the movie was more comic book than real life, but would anyone gripe if the exact same movie was done about any OTHER unit in WW2? I doubt they would. We should be grateful to all veterans of WW2 (or any other war for that matter) but we should accept them for all they were, warts and all.
Admitting that black pilots were subject to human faults and frailties doesn’t detract from their fine record in the air. And it might even show future generations an example they can emulate, far more so than a ‘perfect person’ image that nobody could possibly live up to!
Sure, the Tuskegee Airmen was true pathfinders in every sense. But for crying out loud, MUST we put them on some manner of pedestal? This is just like all the flak that the BBC caught when they aired the TV miniseries, “Piece of Cake,” where people went nuts at the portrayal of RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain as anything other than saint-like. They were just people, for crying out loud. Anyone who’s been around real fighter pilots from any generation can tell you that you’re likely to find all types in the air. I’ll agree that to a degree these characters were stereotypes from many other WW2 films. No question there. But generally, you DO find a lot of these types of people in the service. I know, because I served with people just like them, of all skin colors!
Putting them on some sort of lofty position does the veterans a great injustice. They were just young men who wanted to fly, from various backgrounds. You’d surely see the same cross-section of personality types in an all-black unit as any other in WW2. I agree the movie was more comic book than real life, but would anyone gripe if the exact same movie was done about any OTHER unit in WW2? I doubt they would. We should be grateful to all veterans of WW2 (or any other war for that matter) but we should accept them for all they were, warts and all.
Admitting that black pilots were subject to human faults and frailties doesn’t detract from their fine record in the air. And it might even show future generations an example they can emulate, far more so than a ‘perfect person’ image that nobody could possibly live up to!
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Tue Jan 31, 2012 6:29 am
If the fighter pilots of WWII were anything like the fighter pilots of today, then I'd say that the movie probably doesn't portray them professional enough in the cockpit, nor rowdy enough outside the cockpit!
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:28 am
Randy Haskin wrote:the movie probably doesn't portray them professional enough in the cockpit
oh contraire
Re: Ok I have to ask who saw Red Tails
Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:35 am
From Sicily and the mainland of Italy, they went to southern France and knocked out the German radar stations that supported the Normandy beaches. Without the success of this, there would not have been a D-Day.
http://www.nationalbcc.org/index.php?op ... c&Itemid=8
It is these little 'exagerations' that in fact, do detract from their legacy and actually serves them an injustice for all that they fought for.