Because I’ve been on the road essentially for a month straight, I haven’t gotten a chance to see Red Tails yet. Fortunately, reader JCS, has, and has some thoughts.

By JCS

Red Tails is certainly not a great film. In fact, the critical consensus suggests that it’s not even a particularly good film. However, most of its critics proceed from a basic misunderstanding of its place in the combat film canon and the cultural work it does to restore African Americans to their rightful place in a history from which they often have been excluded.

This is not to suggest that the film is without its flaws. The overly long running time creates some pacing problems. The villains are devilishly cartoonish in the most Raiders of the Lost Ark way possible. The dialogue is often as corny as we’ve come to expect from any production that involves George Lucas. And, perhaps most jarring of all, the general atmosphere is more befitting a 1945 than a 2012 film, right down to the score. It is dated in many ways, but intentionally so.

Its throwback aesthetic to the World War II era combat film is a choice that structures the film’s other flawed components. Ignoring the historical conventions of this genre allows critics to judge Red Tails as the film they wish it was, instead of the film that it is. Take, for example, the clichéd characters of the 332nd fighter group. There’s Lightning (David Oyelowo), the maverick who plays by his own rules. His best friend, Easy (Nate Parker), is the by-the-book squad leader. There’s a “Joker” for comic relief, a devout “Deacon,” and even a couple of versions of “The Kid.”

These stock characters provoke some eye-rolling. But they represent a deliberate attempt by the screenwriters to place the Tuskegee Airmen firmly within the tradition of the combat film narrative. Archetypes like this have always been intrinsic to that genre’s formula. The filmmakers are educating contemporary audiences about African Americans’ role in World War II by placing them within a familiar popular cultural form. The actors’ exceptional performances make this possible. Specifically, the relationship between Lightning and Easy forms the film’s emotional core, getting the audience invested enough to forgive some of the production’s more hackneyed aspects. The entire cast is superb. The Wire alums (director Anthony Hemingway was an assistant director on 23 episodes) Tristan Wilds, Michael B. Jordan, and Andre Royo handle themselves with aplomb. Terrance Howard is as characteristically solid as Cuba Gooding, Jr. is uncharacteristically restrained. And Bryan Cranston and Gerald McRaney do well in minor roles as skeptical military brass.
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The Times Magazine’s profile of George Lucas is very interesting, particularly in its description of how his long-term girlfriend, Mellody Hobson, or as Al Sharpton calls her, “black America’s business princess,” has transmitted Lucas’s dedication to racial equality and channeled it more directly into politics, whether calling Obama a Jedi or showing up for the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. And it captures his determination to make Red Tails a truly black movie (he’s joked about Spike Lee making a prequel to it):

“They say, Now, who are you making this for?”

“I’m making it for black teenagers.”…

“And you’re going to be very patriotic — you’re making a black movie that’s patriotic?”

“They have a right to have their history just like anybody else does,” Lucas said. “And they have a right to have it kind of Hollywood-ized and aggrandized and made corny and wonderful just like anybody else does. Even if that’s not the fashion right now.” [...]

To execute his popcorn vision of “Red Tails,” Lucas turned to Anthony Hemingway, a 36-year-old director who made his name on TV shows like “The Wire.” Hemingway, who had never directed a feature film, comes from the church of David Simon, which values moral murkiness over naïveté, documentary detail about East Baltimore over an ethnography of the Ewok village. It was like hiring a “Hill Street Blues” veteran to direct “Return of the Jedi.”

But from the beginning, Lucas wanted “Red Tails” to have a black director. “I thought, This is the proper way to do this,” he said. Indeed, to scan the credits in “Red Tails” is to see Lucas’s fidelity to African-American filmmakers. There are two black writers and a black executive producer. Terence Blanchard, a Spike Lee collaborator (“Jungle Fever,” “Malcolm X”), wrote the score, and Art Sims, another Lee veteran, designed the one-sheet.

I really hope Red Tails does well not simply to disprove the idea that black leads can’t open blockbusters or that black history is a niche genre. Lucas has said that this will be his last blockbuster. So if the movie makes bank, maybe Lucas could do for black artists what Tyler Perry hasn’t entirely done yet, and what Queen Latifah still might do: spread the wealth and give a financial springboard to projects that could be commercially viable if only they could find financing and support, and an imprimatur that would reassure distributors. The battle might be to get individual non-white (or for that matter, female) writers and directors credentialed and established. But the war is about getting a lot of them in the game.

By Tyler Lewis

George Lucas on the importance of Red Tails’ success:

“I realize that by accident I’ve now put the black film community at risk (with Red Tails, whose $58 million budget far exceeds typical all-black productions). I’m saying, if this doesn’t work, there’s a good chance you’ll stay where you are for quite a while. It’ll be harder for you guys to break out of that (lower-budget) mold. But if I can break through with this movie, then hopefully there will be someone else out there saying let’s make a prequel and sequel, and soon you have more Tyler Perrys out there.”

I understand what Lucas is saying here, but I really think people put too much pressure on films like Red Tails and Bridesmaids to magically change the way Hollywood does business.

Every time a movie about black people or white women comes along and makes a lot of money, black people and white women get all excited and think that finally things will change. It happened with Sex and the City…and again with Bridesmaids. And it happened in 2005 when Diary of a Mad Black Woman was a “surprise” hit. Needless to say, seven years later a Perry film is pretty much the only film for (for the most part), by, and about black people that gets made. For black women, it’s worse: People haven’t heralded a movie for sisters since Waiting To Exhale.

Real talk: I ain’t putting the future of my representation in the hands of George Lucas. Y’all remember Jar Jar, right?

Oh, I get it. It’s a sexy headline, of course. But I’ve seen far more articles online about this quote than I see commentary about the need for Tyler Perry to use his studio to give other black filmmakers, writers, and actors an opportunity or Oprah Winfrey to do the same with OWN – the two people who could actually do what Lucas is doing. In fact, let’s have this conversation when Perry or Winfrey finances on their own someone else’s vision and puts it out like Lucas.

We are so easily duped into having the wrong conversations or framing success and progress in ways that actually hurt us. The conversation about minority filmmaking has got to switch to redefining what a successful black, white woman or black woman, or even gay film means. Given our relative populations, should $100 million really be the threshold for success?

I’m reminded of the wisdom of Anthony Mackie:

In my mind, Mackie’s comments are the rallying cry. Not the likely success of Red Tails.

The bridge is yours.

-Omelas State University.

-Another movie about journalists in war zones.

-Fashion as art.

-Woo Miles Davis biopic.

-Increasingly excited for Red Tails: