George Lucas has been talking about making a movie about the World War II African-American Tuskegee Airmen for decades, but I guess counting his massive amounts of money and adding unnecessary new digital effects to the original Star Wars took precedence. Jokes aside, Lucas finally has gotten around to making the film, titled Red Tails, as producer, with television Anthony Hemingway making his feature film directing debut. The film tells the story of how the airmen were able to get beyond the segregation and discrimination of their era and become war heroes. The trailer features impressive special effects, which we’ve certainly come to expect from Lucas.
Curiously, the film features Cuba Gooding, Jr., who was in the 1995 HBO movie The Tuskegee Airmen, and also stars Terrence Howard, who also previously starred as a Tuskegee Airman in Hart’s War. Hopefully Gooding does well in the film, as the Oscar-winner hasn’t done anything impressive in ages.
The film is set for a January release. The trailer follows the lengthy synopsis below:
1944. World War II rages and the fate of the free world hangs in the balance. Meanwhile the black pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program are courageously waging two wars at once — one against enemies overseas, and the other against discrimination within the military and back home. Racial prejudices have long held ace airman Martin “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker) and his black pilots back at base — leaving them with little to do but further hone their flying skills — while their white counterparts are shipped out to combat after a mere three months of training. Mistakenly deemed inferior and assigned only second-rate planes and missions, the pilots of Tuskegee have mastered the skies with ease but have not been granted the opportunity to truly spread their wings. Until now.
As the war in Europe continues to take its dire toll on Allied forces, Pentagon brass has no recourse but to reconsider these under-utilized pilots for combat duty. Just as the young Tuskegee men are on the brink of being shut down and shipped back home, Col. A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard) awards them the ultimate chance to prove their mettle high above. Undaunted by the prospect of providing safe escort to bombers in broad daylight — a mission so dangerous that the RAF has refused it and the white fighter groups have sustained substantial losses — Easy’s pilots at last join the fiery aerial fray. Against all the odds, with something to prove and everything to lose, these intrepid young airmen take to the skies in a heroic endeavor to combat the enemy — and the discrimination that has kept them down for so long.”
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