Red Tails Revisited
Dec. 8th, 2018 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhile I've tried for a while to limit my purchases from amazon.ca, I did wind up wanting to buy a non-anime Blu-Ray the movie store in the area mall couldn't seem to get, and resorted to online shopping at last. That led to something familiar enough, including something else in the order to get free shipping. It didn't take me long to think of a second title; the thought had been coming to me that so far as "Lucasfilm productions involving 'escorting bombers'" go, Red Tails had seemed more personally satisfying than The Last Jedi...
Finishing my annual trip through the six movies of my Star Wars saga Blu-Ray set last week, I resolved to get around to Red Tails in turn. It had been a while since I'd seen that film at the movies, and at the time I hadn't got around to buying a copy for later viewing. Returning to it, though, had me thinking I could still get caught up in the World War II aerial action, even with an awareness of three "trying to get an injured flyer back to base" moments over the course of the film. It did also turn out one subplot had escaped my memory altogether, anyway. I do have to admit all the same that I stepped away from too many judgments and evaluations of its central "race relations" theme with the careful thought I might not be all that "qualified" to comment; then, in looking back at the journal post I'd made after going to the movies, I realised I'd said the same thing back then. (I can think a bit too of seeing the movie Hidden Figures, although there my admission might be noticing inaccuracies of appearance and detail in the parts of the Mercury program I was already familiar with.) In any case, there is the thought returning to this movie was a bit more personally satisfying than returning to Rogue One had seemed.
What I did get to thinking, though, was to wonder if the movie had been intended to test methods of filmmaking in preparation for the "new Star Wars movies" news of which shook up the world later that year. To go on from there might spark theories that widespread reaction to this movie (and the 3D re-release of The Phantom Menace just a month or so later) led to grim conclusions that too many people had become too ready to jump all over George Lucas's name, and that a larger company would have to take things over. That just has me wondering about how many rumours get passed around, and who might be trying to advance agendas by proposing them, blurring "George Lucas was getting new ideas" into "he'd had enough and just wanted the people working for him to keep working under new management" (with whispers that "hey, the ideas now were pretty much his.") A thought of my own, though, is that for all that I can contemplate the possibility the ideas Lucas might have started coming up with while being involved with the Clone Wars computer-animated series might have wound up seeming "self-indulgent" to others, there do seem absolute ambiguities to buying his company even with the beginnings of the supposition "he can either sign off on our modifications or just leave."
Finishing my annual trip through the six movies of my Star Wars saga Blu-Ray set last week, I resolved to get around to Red Tails in turn. It had been a while since I'd seen that film at the movies, and at the time I hadn't got around to buying a copy for later viewing. Returning to it, though, had me thinking I could still get caught up in the World War II aerial action, even with an awareness of three "trying to get an injured flyer back to base" moments over the course of the film. It did also turn out one subplot had escaped my memory altogether, anyway. I do have to admit all the same that I stepped away from too many judgments and evaluations of its central "race relations" theme with the careful thought I might not be all that "qualified" to comment; then, in looking back at the journal post I'd made after going to the movies, I realised I'd said the same thing back then. (I can think a bit too of seeing the movie Hidden Figures, although there my admission might be noticing inaccuracies of appearance and detail in the parts of the Mercury program I was already familiar with.) In any case, there is the thought returning to this movie was a bit more personally satisfying than returning to Rogue One had seemed.
What I did get to thinking, though, was to wonder if the movie had been intended to test methods of filmmaking in preparation for the "new Star Wars movies" news of which shook up the world later that year. To go on from there might spark theories that widespread reaction to this movie (and the 3D re-release of The Phantom Menace just a month or so later) led to grim conclusions that too many people had become too ready to jump all over George Lucas's name, and that a larger company would have to take things over. That just has me wondering about how many rumours get passed around, and who might be trying to advance agendas by proposing them, blurring "George Lucas was getting new ideas" into "he'd had enough and just wanted the people working for him to keep working under new management" (with whispers that "hey, the ideas now were pretty much his.") A thought of my own, though, is that for all that I can contemplate the possibility the ideas Lucas might have started coming up with while being involved with the Clone Wars computer-animated series might have wound up seeming "self-indulgent" to others, there do seem absolute ambiguities to buying his company even with the beginnings of the supposition "he can either sign off on our modifications or just leave."