Flyboys

George Lucas is apparently making us more Star Wars prequels, just not about the Skywalkers. I have a hard time being shocked or enraged about this, but I also have little hope that it’ll work. The folks who have filled out Lucas’s byblows, the people who gave true life and breath to Wedge Antilles, who created Corran Horn, who have filled in the past and the future of the universe Lucas gave broad outline and intriguing details to, are uniformly not George Lucas. And he hasn’t done exceptionally well creating new core characters himself. I can see, however, how he’d feel sort of stuck. If he can’t create a compelling expansion of a universe that was his idea in the first place, how scary must it be to try to live outside of his greatest success?That said, he did write an upcoming movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, Red Tails. I’m reasonably hopeful for this, if only because the cast includes Andre Royo, the insanely talented David Oyelowo, who was fantastic in Spooks, and Elijah Kelley, who should have been snapped up by everybody after Hairspray. They’re all in minor parts, but I could watch all three of them just about forever. And I think this is good subject material for Lucas. He clearly digs, and has a feel for, the camaraderie of fighter pilots. And frankly, I appreciate that he’s lending his name to something that’s going to get a lot of talented black actors work. For Lucas’s sake, for the sake of Star Wars nerds everywhere who need him to move on, and for the sakes of these three actors, I hope the movie is a success.