Red Tails new film

As for Red Tails it’s in the same vein as the old Victor and Commando comics, historically accurate to a point but also there to provide light entertainment.
The real problem is that too many people do not have sufficient historical awareness to differentiate between solid fact and fiction, hybrid films just confuse them even more.

That’s my point. It bad enough Hollywood/Pinewood/Bollywood, etc has b@stardized history for the last 100 years..but to have it intentionally done as a “feel good” lesson in race history, I find a bit disconcerning.

Stephen, I don’t disagree with the goals of the program you’re involved with, but I’m not sure stretching the facts is the way to do it.
Yes, fatherless black boys need role models, but I’m not sure having a generation thinking the Tuskegee airmen were the super-group of WWII aviation is the way to do it.

dogfights between ME262 and P51’s?

At least one Tuskegee Airman shot down an Me-262, and I believe it was Lee Archer.

My view remains the same. Why insult the men of the 332nd Fighter Group (or for that matter the intelligence of today’s young audience) with comic book heroics..?
if you need to enhance what those blokes really did with false heroics–climbing into the cramped cockpit of a P-51 and sitting on something as comfortable as a parachute pack, surrounded by high octane petrol, taking off from a PSP runway and trying to keep the damned overloaded thing straight, then flying for the best part of four hours over sea and the Alps, then fighting a prepared enemy at 25,000 feet, always watching fuel, ammunition (and your back–plus your leader’s back), plus trying to keep the enemy away from the bombers, then doing a bit of ground strafing to finish off the ammo, then flying home for another four hours across the mountains and sea again (always watching the fuel gauge) and finally landing back on the same PSP strip–assuming the aeroplane isn’t damaged in some way–and all with the prospect of doing it again tomorrow–and the next day–and the day after that–and so and so forth–then you’re telling the story incorrectly, and it doesn’t matter who the audience is.
If however you’re trying to make war seem glamorous or glorious and/or exciting, either for the purpose of turning a buck or pushing a political point then I suppose a situation may arise where enhancing the truth may become necessary.
All I can say on that is that I consider myself lucky that I’ve never been in a war. In my experience of meeting, talking and listening to those who have, they think those of us who’ve lived a life in peace are indeed lucky too.

I’ve seen it and I liked it. Ok the CGI can be better in some scenes. Watching one of the last scenes I was wondering of there were dogfights between ME262 and P51’s?

I watched the movie en route to the USA on a flight from AMS. so very small screen!!

Since when has history ever been unbiased?

As for Red Tails it’s in the same vein as the old Victor and Commando comics, historically accurate to a point but also there to provide light entertainment.

The real problem is that too many people do not have sufficient historical awareness to differentiate between solid fact and fiction, hybrid films just confuse them even more. The recent case of people being genuinely astounded to find out that the Titanic was a real ship that actually went down, not just some jolly film by Cameron is a perfect example.

Would those who complain rather the film wasn’t made in the first place?

DCK has pretty much hit the nail on the head though.

Very nice. The film’s intended audience is not elderly anoraks but teenagers, specifically male African-American teenagers who badly need role models, since they are far too often children without fathers, in a single-parent household.

A laudable goal.
But I do hope they realize what they saw was an enhanced (Hollywood or comic book) version of history, not univdersity-level (Harvard and USNA included) unbiased history.

cartoon rubbish CGI with a script that makes it clear that the film’s intended audience is the mentally sub-normal.

Very nice. The film’s intended audience is not elderly anoraks but teenagers, specifically male African-American teenagers who badly need role models, since they are far too often children without fathers, in a single-parent household.

For three hours each week, in my local Tuskegee Airmen chapter’s Lee Archer Red Tail Flying Program, I teach and mentor exactly such a group of “mentally sub-normal” individuals. This year and last year, one each of our mentally sub-normal minority students, out of a class of a dozen and a half, was accepted to a U. S.college called Harvard. This year, another has been accepted to the U. S. Naval Academy, better know to the mentally sub-normal among us as Annapolis.

All three of them, as well as all the rest of my students, were thrilled to see “Red Tails.”

For CGI’d historic aviation, i finally got around to watching The Red Baron. I rather liked it and found it reasonably accurate (if you discount MvR and Brown having met a couple of times).
Hopefully, it will prompt some interest in aviation history.

PS. And the evil Queen from Game of Thrones was in it…a surprise.

I actually saw Iron Eagle 3 as an 8 year old and found it damn thrilling.

I quite liked Iron Eagle 3…. :diablo:

I have seen the first 30 minutes of Red Tails. I couldn’t take any more.

By far the most gash attempt at WWII action ever committed to celluloid (or USB stick). Michael Bay style cartoon rubbish CGI with a script that makes it clear that the film’s intended audience is the mentally sub-normal.

Compare to this Pearl Harbo[u]r was a cinematic tour de force. And at least that had some nice grey ships in it.

“I guess it all started after I saw Iron Eagle 3. It was a really silly movie, but it sure made me interested in bad films involving historic aviation”.

One thing thta has bugged me when i have watched the trailer, if a B-17 were hit and was going down, would the captain get on a radio and shout “Mayday, mayday”? Would it not be the radio operator on the wireless telegraphy set tapping out a Morse message about their peril? Did the B-17’s even have voice radio for the captains? I’m not criticising, I’m genuinely curious.

I actually saw Iron Eagle 3 as an 8 year old and found it damn thrilling.

“I guess it all started after I saw Iron Eagle 3. It was a really silly movie, but it sure made me interested in bad films involving historic aviation”.

One thing thta has bugged me when i have watched the trailer, if a B-17 were hit and was going down, would the captain get on a radio and shout “Mayday, mayday”? Would it not be the radio operator on the wireless telegraphy set tapping out a Morse message about their peril? Did the B-17’s even have voice radio for the captains? I’m not criticising, I’m genuinely curious.

Just saw it:

About CGI: Nearly there, give it another 10 years and it will be close to perfect. Another Battle of Britain movie? Do it in 2020.

About the film: Decent to not very good at all. As shown in the promo, that P-51 flick-over-stall-loop – fancy flying while shooting down a 109 was plain stupid. I saw it in context now, and can confirm the stupidity of it. The German 109s were dropping like flies, and of course they had their own German nemsis, a chap which I’ve seen so many times in Commando comic books. Stupid. They escorted bombers to Berlin and managed to at least shoot down four Me 262’s. Stupid once again. The planes looked good though, the P-40’s sexy too and the P-51’s were shiny and cute.

Watch it, but here’s how you do it; Forget history, realism or anything like that. Just go if you want to see George Lucas playing around with CGI and finding out how good he can make it. Treat it like that Avatar movie, only this one in aviation-mode.

But here’s how it DOES work.

This movie, which all of us will find just stupid, will trigger SO many young minds, just like Memphis Belle did to me and the generation before me with Battle of Britain. For that it’s near perfect. This movie it’s not made for us. It’s made for teenagers who don’t know anything about history. It will trigger their little heads and I am 100% certain about one thing; in 10 years some guy will show up somewhere, either as a warbirds pilot, as an aviation author or something else and he will say;

“I guess it all started after I saw Red Tails. It was a really silly movie, but it sure made me interested in historic aviation”.

UK release date is set for June 6th.

For the DVD, or is there to be a cinema release?

UK release date is set for June 6th.

still no mention of a UK release date as yet. Shame as i was looking forward to watching this.

We’ll be having perhaps as many as 10 of the surviving Airmen at our annual Tuskegee Airmen chapter dinner in New Windsor, NY (just down the road from our HQ at KSWF) on 4 February. Probably including Roscoe Brown, who usually attends. If anybody reading this happens to be from the area, you’re invited: go to www.tai-ny.org to buy tickets. (It is a fund-raiser for our scholarship program.)

O.K. Guys, Forget whats been put on here, but I recieved this today from a friend in the States.

Lt Col Weathers 90 yrs young, was, on the 20th of this month, buried with full Military Honours at Arlington Nation Cemetary, Ironicaly the same day the film Red Tails was released over there.
He was one of the few remaining Tuskegee, pilots left.:(

Where would we be today had it not been for the likes of his sort?.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

A reality chack guys, Featurs films are entertainment for the masses designed to make money. They are not documtary’s. I dont like the CGI and I hate it and scream at the scren when the film makers get it wrong but as the poster above says if it sparks just one interest in history and old aeroplanes then it aint all bad. Will I go and see it?? Probably wait for the DVD.

Well, as expected a movie such as this was bound to provoke comment and controversy. If, as has been suggested, that this film is aimed at a particular market and it has succeeded in that market then it has done a good job but let’s not forget why movies are made in the first place. Entertainment. Pure and simple entertainment.

The CGI involved is a case in point. Sadly those of us in the UK have only been able to watch the trailers and in those I can see very little to complain about. If the effects make the action look dramatic and exciting then that surely is the point. If there are more rivets than there should be or markings are the wrong colour then who cares? We didn’t bother when almost every other war movie ever made has some historical or factual inaccuracy. Why is this one different?

As far as being “revisionist” history is concerned, what movie isn’t? Name one war movie that hasn’t altered facts or changed the order of events to make a better or clearer narrative.
If it is “revisionist”, is it any more revisionist than the countless war movies that simply removed black people from history entirely?

I am frankly staggered that some can have such a strong opinion on movie that they have never seen. Unfortunately such blinkered views seem to be prevalent nowadays; perhaps following the crowd and being swayed by other’s opinions rather than forming one’s own informed opinion is too much to resist at times.
I have no idea whether I will like it as a film or not but I will refrain from saying so until I’ve actually seen it. My opinion will then have some credence.

This is a story worth telling and if it stimulates the younger generation to at least consider what has gone on in their history then it has succeeded.