"Red Tails"

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• AdenDreamsOf says:

  January 20, 2012 at 4:04 am

  This film has looked both dull and bland from the first trail­er I saw months ago. I agree with you and many oth­er people that these real-life his­tor­ic­al her­oes deserve to be cel­eb­rated, but I’m not sur­prised to hear that you dis­like the film. I can­’t judge the movie because I haven’t seen it, but the Lucas brand has screamed ‘Effects before all else’ for so long that it’s not funny any­more. It just is what is, and he no doubt will con­tin­ue to make and be involved with wooden, super­fi­cial movies.
  Fortunately for me, I have a week­end of more prom­ising fare planned: Fiennes does Shakespeare, new Soderbergh, and hope­fully ‘Pariah’.
  Also, I finally saw ‘Shame’ last night, and agree with every word you wrote about the film in both your review and ‘For Your Consideration’ piece.

• BobSolo says:

  January 20, 2012 at 5:26 am

  I love how – in the pro­mo­tion­al inter­views for REDTAILS – Lucas is sud­denly pos­it­ing him­self as a civil rights cru­sader in racist Hollywood.

• Oliver_C says:

  January 20, 2012 at 6:04 am

  Goodbye Mr Lucas. Don’t let Greedo’s blaster singe your popcorn-stuffed colon on the way out.

• lazarus says:

  January 20, 2012 at 12:43 pm

  Nice to see mil­it­ant, anti-Lucas fan­boy­ism does­n’t just exist on Ain’t It Cool News…

• MW says:

  January 20, 2012 at 1:44 pm

  I wish Lucas had listened to Hemingway’s ini­tial instincts. From the NY Times:
  “I always felt it was much more of a mature film,” Hemingway said. “I felt if you’re going after kids, you have to go through the back door.” But Lucas per­suaded him that if they made “Red Tails” as a kids’ pic­ture, at some prim­al, emo­tion­al level, they would con­nect with the adult fanboys.

• Owain Wilson says:

  January 20, 2012 at 2:22 pm

  To think that this is the man who made American Graffiti!

• James Keepnews says:

  January 20, 2012 at 4:04 pm

  Let’s not for­get the oth­er screen­writer is Aaron McGruder, Mr. Boondocks him­self who will­ingly walked away from such facile pay­days once upon this cen­tury. Between him, Ridley and the tal­en­ted Mr. Hemingway, you’d think all of Lucas’ “let’s make a Negro FLYING LEATHERNECKS” infan­boytil­ism might have been held at bay, and not as in “Bay, Michael”. And, by most accounts, you’d be wrong. Too bad – I adore U‑TURN and think Ridley’s script puts most of Ollie’s over­wrought screen­plays to bloody-mouthed shame.

• John M says:

  January 20, 2012 at 4:14 pm

  George Lucas, among oth­er things, has­n’t under­stood kids in quite a while.

• lazarus says:

  January 20, 2012 at 4:39 pm

  So kids did­n’t like the Star Wars pre­quels? Didn’t demand a lot of the mer­chand­ise for it?
  Interesting theory.

• BobSolo says:

  January 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm

  In my view, Lucas has always been a shit film­maker. Fanboyism or anti­fan­boy­ism has noth­ing to do with it. Not my bag, man. I can see why people like the Star Wars stuff (and I don’t really see a dis­cern­ible dif­fer­ence between either tri­logy oth­er than CGI; six dumb scripts). Just not my thing. The first Indiana Jones movie is per­fect though.

• Gordon Cameron says:

  January 20, 2012 at 6:29 pm

  >In my view, Lucas has always been a shit filmmaker.
  In my opin­ion, Lucas’s ’70s debut was pretty darned impress­ive. Three com­pletely dif­fer­ent films, in com­pletely dif­fer­ent genres, and each thor­oughly suc­cess­ful on its own terms.

• lazarus says:

  January 20, 2012 at 6:35 pm

  From a visual/compositional per­spect­ive, the pre­quels have a lot of mer­it as cinema. Certainly moreso than any of the Indiana Jones films, even if Raiders is “per­fect” enter­tain­ment (and let’s not for­get than there are many high­brow crit­ics who find that series as equally vap­id as Star Wars). Try watch­ing the music-only track, and I think without the dia­logue it’s vivid storytelling.
  Or to put it anoth­er way, the script for Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic ain’t exactly Shakespeare.

• Jaime N. Christley says:

  January 20, 2012 at 7:15 pm

  I think Lucas is pretty under­rated as a visu­al guy. I get a lot out of REVENGE OF THE SITH. To put it in per­spect­ive, I tend to apo­lo­gize for lik­ing THE PHANTOM MENACE* but ROTS is genu­inely good. The first STAR WARS is pretty crisply made, too.
  * If any­one feels like giv­ing me a “you should­n’t have to apo­lo­gize for lik­ing so-and-so, there’s no such thing as a guilty pleas­ure,” mini-lecture, let me stop you right there.

• John M says:

  January 20, 2012 at 7:22 pm

  “Didn’t demand a lot of the mer­chand­ise for it?”
  Interesting defense, lazarus.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  January 20, 2012 at 7:28 pm

  “Lucas is sud­denly pos­it­ing him­self as a civil rights cru­sader in racist Hollywood.”
  White people love to “give” black people what’s already theirs.

• Aden Jordan says:

  January 20, 2012 at 8:45 pm

  @ Lazarus , Having read Ain’t It Cool News for long a time when their site was first pop­u­lar, I do know what you mean by the mil­it­ant fan­boy men­tal­ity of intensely dis­lik­ing Lucas, but there are also plenty of people who just aren’t that into his body of work and were not fans to begin with. I per­son­ally nev­er had any real con­nec­tion with the ‘Star Wars’ films but did enjoy the Indiana Jones films, and I was mostly con­fused and under­whelmed the first time I watched ‘THX 1138’ a year ago. I haven’t seen ‘American Graffiti’ so I can­’t include it in my assess­ment of his body of work.
  I think you’re cor­rect in point­ing out how pas­sion­ately Lucas’ work is judged and dis­liked, and I agree that the anti-Lucas fan­boy­ism is not neces­sar­ily con­struct­ive dis­course. On a pos­it­ive note, he does deserve cred­it for being able to so routinely find ways to self-finance his pro­jects and I think the ‘Ewoks’ movie is so dis­turb­ing that it’s prob­ably one of the ball­si­est fam­ily movies out there.

• lazarus says:

  January 20, 2012 at 11:38 pm

  For the record, when I referred to “mil­it­ant anti-Lucas fan­boy­ism” I was speak­ing spe­cific­ally of Oliver C’s post above, where the sug­ges­tion of scato­lo­gic­al viol­ence inflic­ted on the dir­ect­or was the type of thing com­mon on AICN.
  @ James: glad I’m not alone here. I’d also say that the noir atmo­sphere con­jured up by Lucas and John Williams in Attack of the Clones is just as palp­able as the sim­il­ar vibe found in The Empire Strikes Back.

• BobSolo says:

  January 21, 2012 at 12:30 am

  So Star Wars is good with the sound off because Fritz Lang’s Indian epic is not Shakespeare. And it’s also good because a lot of kids bought toys for it.
  Again, not my bag. And these argu­ments aren’t help­ing. Just con­fus­ing this poor old man.

• Tom Russell says:

  January 21, 2012 at 1:24 am

  I don’t think Lazarus’s argu­ment re: toys was that kids want­ing toys based on the movies made the movies good; I think his argu­ment was that it showed that Lucas isn’t out of touch with what kids want. Because, y’know, that’s the accus­a­tion that his com­ment was actu­ally respond­ing to.
  And I can testi­fy from anec­dot­al evid­ence that, yes, kids go crazy for the new Star Wars films, moreso (sadly) than the first two, and the tele­vi­sion series, which I’ve heard is appar­ently actu­ally not bad for what it is.
  Going with the Joyce Carol Oates met­ric– that you’re always as good as your best work– Lucas is a great film­maker based solely on THX. He’s been threat­en­ing for a long time to make weird, per­son­al, ali­en­at­ing, low-budget films, and I’m hop­ing he actu­ally does, because I’d love to see more from the guy who made THX– the guy who (accord­ing to Easy Riders, Raging Bulls– which might not be the most reli­able source, I’ll grant you) likened mak­ing the much-loved American Graffiti to “strangling a kit­ten” (i.e., cheaply manip­u­lat­ing the audi­ence rather than chal­len­ging them).

• Oliver_C says:

  January 21, 2012 at 3:43 am

  I don’t even fre­quent Ain’t It Cool News; can­’t remem­ber the last time I went there.
  Defending Lucas’ belated, pixelated piss­ing on (and piss­ing away) of his ori­gin­al tri­logy on auteur­ist grounds is as per­ni­ciously mis­guided a decision as Bernice Albertine King choos­ing to march along­side boy-buggering Bishop Eddie Long.

• Markj74 says:

  January 21, 2012 at 5:01 am

  Lazarus is spot on. Whilst the pre­quels are lack­ing in the same areas the ori­gin­al tri­logy was lack­ing in (act­ing, script) they cer­tainly make up for it on the pure cinema side of things. Lucas is a stu­dent of film his­tory and lit­ters the pre­quels with ref­er­ences to bygone cinema (some­thing Glenn him­self notes in his intro­duct­ory essay to “A Galaxy Not So Far Away”), ele­ments of exper­i­ment­al cinema (Jinn and Maul’s ini­tial lightsaber batle in the desert in ‘Menace’, the cross-cutting between Anakin and Dooku’s lightsaber blades after the power cables are cut near the end of ‘Clones’) and, as Lazarus right­fully points out, a bril­liant eye for composition.
  We all need to admit that the ori­gin­al tri­logy is not some kind of per­fect, holy rel­ic. It is flawed in the same way the pre­quels are. Has any­body seen Harrison Ford’s per­form­ance in ‘Jedi’ recently? One of the lazi­est screen per­form­ances ever. And Mark Hamill and Hayden Christensen are so alike in their per­form­ances it’s amaz­ing one was giv­en a pass and the oth­er was con­demned. Even ‘Empire’ isn’t the great, flaw­less mas­ter­piece it’s made out to be, espe­cially the 30 minute stretch aboard the Millenium Falcon.
  There is a lot going on in the pre­quels if you drop the lazy ‘Lucas raped my child­hood’ schtick and actu­ally look at what is going on in them. For my mind the last half hour of ‘Clones’ (along with the last half hour of ‘Avatar’, which fun­nily enough shares the same flaws)is the best block­buster action of the past dec­ade. Yes they’re not per­fect but per­haps we need to stop com­par­ing them to the adult cinema of Kubrick, Mann and Lynch that we ori­gin­al tri­logy fans moved on to after the mid 80s and ana­lyse and observe them on the level that Lucas is mak­ing them on.

• BobSolo says:

  January 21, 2012 at 8:37 am

  “He’s been threat­en­ing for a long time to make weird, per­son­al, ali­en­at­ing, low-budget films”
  That’s an odd met­ric for quality.
  All the films he’s made have been weird, per­son­al, and ali­en­at­ing, if high-budget. Especially the Star Wars pre­quels. That does­n’t trans­late to “good”.
  I could walk around my apart­ment, bril­liantly com­pos­ing shots of mundane house­hold objects. You’d be ali­en­ated and find it weird and it would cer­tainly be personal.
  THX is as bland a film as his oth­ers. On paper, it’s a great idea. On the screen, it’s Lucas ham-fistedly aping the films he saw in some exper­i­ment­al cinema class he had to sit through.
  That’s ulti­mately what I don’t like about Lucas: everything is a sloppy, heart­less copyc­at­ting (or “homage” if you want to give him more cred­it). Those last three Star Wars pic­tures were him copy­ing all the mater­i­al (video games, Summer block­busters, sci fi TV series) that his ori­gin­al Star Wars films spawned. It was like watch­ing a bloated snake eat its very long tail, very slowly.
  “we need to … observe them on the level that Lucas is mak­ing them on.”
  Even as kid’s films (the level that they all were made on) they are not very good com­pared to the likes of sim­il­arly fanci­ful block­busters from Spielberg/Zemekis/Donner/Burton (first tri­logy) or Pixar (second trilogy).
  As cinema, I’ll give you a few of the set pieces from the first few films (sand people attack, Mos Eisley; the Hoth sequence; the Jabba palace open­ing to Jedi). The second tri­logy is such a slick mess, it’s hard to parse for me.

• Stephen Whitty says:

  January 21, 2012 at 9:24 pm

  Favorite email of the day? The one from the read­er who, noti­cing I liked “Haywire” more than “Red Tails,” promptly declared me racist. Because what OTHER reas­on could you have for not pre­fer­ring “Red Tails”?

• D says:

  January 21, 2012 at 11:11 pm

  I also enjoyed ROTS – so much so that I bought it on dvd and have watched it and enjoyed it upon repeat view­ings. I can­not say that I had such pleas­ure with any oth­er Lucas movie – or even come close. One day I will watch it with the music track on.

• John M says:

  January 22, 2012 at 1:14 am

  One might draw a dis­tinc­tion between “know­ing what makes 6‑year-olds go crazy” and under­stand­ing children.
  Kids buy up lots of crap. Teletubbies, Hannah Montana, etc. I sup­pose it’s a tal­ent to aim some­thing squarely and cyn­ic­ally at a drool­ing, dis­trac­ted child and have them bite, but it’s not a very admir­able or pro­found tal­ent. Lucas’s approach to kids is shal­low and mer­cen­ary. (This argu­ment might very well well begin and end with Jar-Jar Binks.)
  Of course, I did­n’t see much “pure cinema” in the 3 most recents Star Operas, so maybe I’m just not under­stand­ing the cri­ter­ia here. Unless fever­ish cross-cutting is pure cinema.

• Markj74 says:

  January 22, 2012 at 8:52 am

  “Even as kid’s films (the level that they all were made on) they are not very good com­pared to the likes of sim­il­arly fanci­ful block­busters from Spielberg/Zemekis/Donner/Burton (first tri­logy) or Pixar (second trilogy).”
  Spielberg: I’m a big Spielberg fan, but what block­busters of his are you say­ing Star Wars and Empire aren’t as good as?
  Zemeckis: The only Zemeckis film I really rate is the ori­gin­al Back to the Future, and that’s more to do with the script than any dir­ect­ori­al prowess on Zemeckis’ part. He’s a very bland film­maker, I find that he does­n’t have any par­tic­u­lar dir­ect­ori­al vis­ion that makes his work stand apart.
  Donner: The only ‘child­ish’ block­buster he made is Superman, of which the open­ing 45 minutes is magis­teri­al – but then let down by a rather goofy final hour. Unless you’re say­ing The Goonies and Ladyhawke are bet­ter than Star Wars?
  Burton: Can’t think of any Burton films bet­ter than Star Wars and Empire. I love Beetlejuice but it’s not really a kids film is it?

• BobSolo says:

  January 22, 2012 at 10:20 am

  The films I had in view:
  Spielberg – RAIDERS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, JAWS
  Zemeckis – BACK TO THE FUTURE, ROGER RABBIT
  Donner – The first two SUPERMEN
  Burton – PEE WEE, BEETLEJUICE (I saw it as a kid), BATMAN
  Pixar – pretty much everything
  As chil­drens pic­tures, I find all of these films more inter­est­ing – dir­ect­ori­ally and oth­er­wise – than the first (or 4^th and 5^th or whatever) STAR WARS movies.
  But this is a zero sum game since STAR WARS clearly remains power­ful and sig­ni­fic­ant to you in your adult life. For me, they did the trick as a kid but I’ve moved on. So I’d like to respect­fully bow out of this discussion.

• BobSolo says:

  January 22, 2012 at 10:28 am

  Put anoth­er (and, I hope, less-condescending) way:
  As a kid, I would spend days in my room build­ing enorm­ous worlds out of Legos. After col­lege, I back­packed across Europe. Both were extremely reward­ing activ­it­ies at the time and are burned into my memory as sig­ni­fic­ant events. But, giv­en the choice now, I can tell you which one I’d rather relive/revisit/attempt again. I feel the same way about your Star Wars vs Lynch/Kubrick/Mann (false) dichotomy.

• Asher says:

  January 22, 2012 at 6:46 pm

  I’m pretty sure your enorm­ous Lego worlds had more artist­ic value than the Star wars trilogy.

• TronCaliJag says:

  January 23, 2012 at 5:50 am

  It’s sad that Lucas gets in his own way. Something like this could have been fun but the trail­ers pretty much con­firmed that he’s up to his old CGI-sheened phoniness.
  re: Star Wars. Those films are to my gen­er­a­tion (someone who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s) what the Harry Potter films are to the kids who grew up over the last 15 years. Same dif­fer­ence. I’m sure twenty years from now, some com­box will be lit up with defenses of the pure cinema of Chris Colombus.