Apart from Star Wars, what other planes did Lucasfilm fought?

Francisca 2022-01-10 08:01:33

In Hollywood, Lucasfilm is simply a magical existence.

This company, since the 1990s, has basically survived on two films, one is "Star Wars" and the other is "Indiana Jones". The work is so singular that it is still alive and well, and there is no one.

"Star Wars" has reached the eighth episode, plus a side story "Rogue One". Next, there will be the ninth and side biography "Han Solo Biography", and then there will be a new trilogy in the plan. Only one IP can be developed for N years, which is really a miracle. After all, the company’s other IP, "Indiana Jones", since the release of "Indiana Jones 4" in 2008, the movement of the fifth part has not been seen again, and the new restart does not know when. Therefore, it is said that there are two major IPs, but they are basically maintained by the "Star Wars" one.

Of course, in Lucasfilm's nearly 30-year production list, in addition to the "Star Wars" series and the "Indiana Jones" series, there are also other productions. There are two movies in total, one of which is the cartoon "Midsummer". "Night Magic", one is the World War II film "Red Tail". However, these two films are not very influential.

"A Midsummer Night's Magic" is inspired by Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". It seems to be ambitious, but the finished product is far from the original. It can be ignored in terms of reputation and box office. And another war film "The Red Tail" is worth talking about. Today, let’s talk about this film.

There is the "Star Wars" series as the bottom line, the main air combat "Red Tail", there is naturally nothing to say on the screen, cool and superb, the air combat scenes are as immersive as the scene, and the camera feels full. Moreover, there are so many air combat scenes in this film, which are enough to feast the eyes of war fans and airplane fans. But the shortcomings of this film are also particularly clear, that is, the air combat is very beautiful, and once it reaches the ground, the storyline quickly collapses, the warm water is generally incomprehensible, and the clues that promote the development of the plot are too weak. This makes the final score of the film not too high, falling into the ordinary.

In this way, after Lucasfilm launched "Red Tail" in 2012 and "Midsummer Night Magic" in 2015, the two films seemed to be smashed, silently, Lucasfilm hit After retreating, I have never released any works other than "Star Wars".

In other words, the cast of "Red Tail" is still quite good, almost all the young and middle-aged black actors in Hollywood at that time. The two middle-aged black actors who are the leaders in the film are Oscar winner Cooper Gooding Jr. and Oscar actor nominee Terrence Howard. The leading stars include Knight Piper ("The Birth of a Nation") ), David Oiro ("Selma"), Michael B. Jordan ("Quadi"), etc., after they appeared in this film, they all produced excellent works. Other supporting roles in "Red Tail" also include the old white Brian Cranston and Robert Kaczynski. These leading and supporting roles are all first-class masters. Bringing them together in this film, Lucas’ mobilization ability and cohesion are still quite impressive, and the performance of these actors is also quite good, especially David Oiro, who performed exceptionally well, bringing the humor of a super pilot , Bravery and tragic, have all performed in splendor. With this film, David Oiro quickly took over many films and embarked on a stable path of strength.

This film is adapted from historical reality and tells the story of the 332nd Fighter Group of the US Army Air Force in World War II. Because this flight group is composed entirely of blacks, and their airplane tails are uniformly painted red, it is known as the "red tail" (red tail). Because of their existence, the U.S. Air Force lifted the apartheid system. This enabled blacks to have an equal status with the first whites in World War II. After the war, this spirit of equality was also conveyed to American society, opening up opportunities for the affirmative movement of black Americans.

"Red Tail" shows this process. However, if you look at it as a movie of the black affirmative movement, you will surely be disappointed. Many people watched this film and regarded it as a work of affirmative action by black people a priori, and the result was unexpectedly disappointed.

Compared with the black affirmative movement, "Red Tail" is more like "Pot Head". Its focus is not to explore the racial system, but to show how a group of soldiers live, how they participate in the battle, and how to get from the edge of the war. The process of walking into the core of the war and becoming a group of combat heroes is just that this group of soldiers are exactly black. Lower your mentality, lower your expectations, and have less political perspectives to discover the joy of this film. But the problem is that you are clearly telling the story of black people, but you don't work hard to explore the black affirmative movement. This alone makes the film stand in an awkward place. It also makes the film bear an unbearable weight, and it is difficult to finish well.

"Red Tail" has not received more praise, and there is no way. I won't say much in this article, let's talk about the background of the story shown in the film.

Although blacks were recruited into the army at the beginning of World War II, even earlier, from the American Civil War to the Indian Plains War, to the Spanish-American War and World War I, there were always blacks in the U.S. military, but most of them were The logistics unit is doing physical work or maintenance work. For example, in the U.S. Navy, the only thing a black can do is a waiter in a restaurant. (The young Cooper Gooding in "Pearl Harbor" is a cook on a warship.)

In 1925, the American Academy of Military Sciences concluded that black people have low IQs, because they are submissive by nature and dare not face danger, so they are not suitable for war. . (This sentence is the opening subtitle of "The Red Tail.") But until 1940, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Force, General Hap Arnold, still said: Blacks will be "like "Like white people" embody their value.

Even so, this apparent discrimination does not prevent blacks from participating in flying and fighting. In 1939, the door of the black road to flight was gradually opened. President Franklin D Roosevelt announced the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) in 1938, which will train 20,000 college graduates to become pilots every year. In May 1939, under the intervention of Senator Harry S Truman (Harry S Truman), the door of the CPTP project began to open to blacks. On October 15, 1939, Tuskegee Institute (a black university in Alabama) joined the project. Since then, a large number of black pilots have been trained, although they were only civilian pilots in the early days.

It was the election year, when President Roosevelt was running for the presidency, and he needed black votes to help re-elect. So he signed a policy statement on October 9, 1940, officially declaring that the number of blacks serving in U.S. military or non-combat forces should be commensurate with the proportion of blacks in the U.S. population, including aviation. Tuskegee base thus formally came into play.

A squadron trained at Tuskegee base was formed. The "Red Tail" mentions a "Tuskege Test". The test results show that black pilots are not suitable for combat and are only suitable for some supportive tasks. But in this test, the planes provided to blacks were old and semi-retired planes withdrawn from the front line. The results of this test were not convincing. In any case, the black flying squadron was set up for a long period of 9 months, the unit was left in Tuskegee, from September 1942 to April 15, 1943. But a blessing in disguise is that because there was no personnel change during this period, this squadron was unexpectedly united, more united and more stable, and they also used this period of time to further hone their flying skills.

They were officially put on the European battlefield on April 1, 1942, and were incorporated into the 33rd Fighter Group. However, in the early days, no one was willing to cooperate with them. The British bombers in the Allied Army even explicitly refused blacks to fight for them and refused their escort. The first time the black squadron participated in the battle was at Fadgiona on the Gabon peninsula in Tunisia. Later, he began to join the battle to attack Europe, with Italy as the main direction of attack.

Although the characters in "Red Tail" are fictitious, the story frame basically has a shadow of history. Like "Red Tail" (their plane was an old-fashioned P-40 in the early days, without a red tail, but later became a P-51 before it was officially painted with a red tail) bombed and strafed a German army on the island of Pantaleria, Italy The airport, the attack on trucks on the road, etc., all have history. Also, the movie heroes have a nickname, like "lightning", "relaxed", "coffee", "boy", "clown", and "smoke". In fact, almost everyone in the Red Tail Squadron at the time had it. A nickname, very similar to the wild heroes in the Water Margin.

In order to cooperate with the battle, the "Red Tail" squadron participated in the battle to liberate the island of Pantaleria, which was also the first piece of land captured by the Allied forces solely by air power. Subsequently, he participated in the Sicilian landing battle. When the Allied forces established a beachhead in Sicily, the Red Tail Squadron began patrolling between Gela and Licata to prevent the Luftwaffe from harassing the landing fleet. This series of operations gradually made the U.S. military leadership realize the combat capabilities of the blacks, and gradually eliminated the racial discrimination that hovered in their hearts, and began to assign more important tasks to the blacks, and even assumed heavier tasks than the white pilots. Combat operations.

Later, in the landing battle of Anzio in Italy, Red Tail also participated in the battle. At that time, the renewed activity of the Luftwaffe caused difficulties for the Allied ground operations in Anzio. The squadron’s primary ground support mission was gradually supplemented by more and more patrol missions to prevent German planes from bombing the Allied ground forces. At that time, there were 700 Allied aircraft participating in the operation, and Red Tail undertook important tasks and achieved important results. The “Red Tail” squadron’s record of destroying enemy aircraft in the Battle of Anzio reached 17 while the total record of the other three squadrons of the 79th squadron was no more than 32 (15th from the 85th Squadron, 2 from the 86th Squadron, No. 87 Squadron 15). It was with the strong volunteers of the Air Force such as the "Red Tail" that the Allied forces finally won the Battle of Anzio in the arduous battle. After nearly five months of hard work, the Allied casualties were about 40,000 casualties, the German casualties were about 20,000, and about 10,000 were captured. In the end, the Allied forces broke through the strong German defense line of "Gustav" and captured Rome, the capital of Italy, laying the foundation for annihilating the German forces in Italy and liberating all of Italy. Moreover, this landing battle also laid the foundation for the Normandy landing to be carried out soon, becoming the biggest preview.

Since then, "Red Tail" has participated in more and more wars, and has developed a group of ace pilots. They participated in a series of important combat missions such as escorting the bombing of Yugoslavia, bombing Slovakia, and even bombing Berlin.

In "Red Tail", the escort mission of "Red Tail" also has an episode. In the film, fighters participating in escort missions often leave the formation when they see German fighters and kill them together with German fighters. This is also the motivation for the enemy to kill. But this has also become one of the German combat tactics, which is to first send some fighters to distract the escorting Allied fighters, and then dispatch the main fighters to complete the siege of the powerless Allied bombers. For the Allied forces, the mission undertaken by the bombers was extremely important, not only for direct strikes against the Nazis, but also for psychologically destroying the enemy. Blacks tend to be free and undisciplined. When escorting missions, they need to ignore interference and can’t attack when they see enemy planes. Instead, they must ensure that the escort mission continues. "Red Tail" saw the enemy plane from the beginning as if it was going to strike, and in the end insisted on completing the escort, and the escort effect was better, thus proving that the blacks are not only not inferior to the whites, but even stronger.

As for the film, the blacks easily got into the Italian girls, and the final highlight of the film, they fought the German jets with propellers, and also fought a wonderful victory. These are not enough, but for the drama and visibility of the film.

On the whole, through this film, people know that there was still such an all-black air force in World War II, and because of their existence, it became a bonus item for the black equal rights movement. Despite this, in the discussion of later generations, some have been overlooked. Everyone remembers Martin Luther King, but forgets the "Red Tail" earlier. Now, it's time to remember them.

View more about Red Tails reviews

Extended Reading
  • Rigoberto 2022-03-20 09:02:18

    The film has a stable driving balance in scenes, emotions, and thoughts. Seeing air combat movies, it is inevitable to think of Howard Hughes. If he were alive, he would definitely smash more swords and use brand-new computer special effects to create breathtaking aerial combat scenes.

  • Matilda 2022-04-23 07:03:32

    The plane is too backward, unqualified aerial combat film, or Top Gun is better →_→

Red Tails quotes

  • Lieutenant General Luntz: Colonel, the word is you're arrogant.

    Colonel A.J. Bullard: If arrogant is the only word people use to describe me now, I would say I think I am making progress.

  • Colonel A.J. Bullard: Politics is the art of postponing a decision until it is no longer relevant.