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Maybe it's just me, but isn't dogfighting really cool. Yet in this day of CG blockbusters, we haven't had a good WW2 dogfighting movie. The best we got was a so-so WWI movie with James Franco. Well, George Lucas wrote a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.

HBO did their own Tuskegee Airmen movie back in 1995, which had Cuba and Laurence Fishburne in it. It was good. But it didn't have a big budget to have really good aerial combat in it.

Here's the new trailer for Red Tails, due to out in January 2012.

http://youtu.be/gD87-fV3otI

The first line of your post really threw me off, Pudge. I was thinking, "Man, he's getting a little obsessive in his Vick hatred these days!" Those Tuskegee Airmen flicks were pretty good. I've been to the airfield that they use in Skegee to talk about the TA but the real one is further away from town out in the wilderness somewhat and is, more or less, abandoned. Tuskegee is a sad place now...given way largely to crack and crime. Looks like a ghost town. The guy who plays sax with me lives there and describes it as being like an Indian reservation. It wasn't really a dog fighting movie but the Memphis Belle had some good scenes of aerial combat, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, Memphis Belle is another good one. But that was 20 years ago.

Maybe it's me, but it just seems like this genre of movies, the WWII aerial war/action movie is tailor-made for modern audiences to get into. You put some young up and coming male lead in the movie, put in some barrel rolls, dives, and a lot of planes getting blowed up, and you should have a nice hit.

I recall Pearl Harbor, that Michael Bay farce, the actual scenes depicted planes shooting at each other or ships was the best part of the movie.

I know the WW2 war movie has been done a 1000 times over, but I think the ones that depict dogfighting and aerial combat are pretty under-represented, especially nowadays when CG effects have gotten so good. We've come a long way since movies like Top Gun, Memphis Belle, and Iron Eagle that were reliant on showing actual planes flying.

I guess that is true. Personally, I hate special effects laden movies but that is sort fo the way of the world now. I have always loved WW2, westerns, gangster, etc., but those seem a bit out of vogue now. Maybe they require some understanding and appreciation of history and that is also sort of out of vogue now?

Yes, I would agree with you.

Most movies today are adaptations or sequels. Studios look for their next big 3-movie franchise that is going net them over a billion $$$ worldwide, and it's pretty hard to sell a WW2 or any historical film as such.

I think there is an appetite for these types of movies. Saving Private Ryan was a hit. Pearl Harbor, while it wasn't very good, made money. Even Valkyrie and U-571 were WW2 movies that made their money back. Gladiator, Braveheart, Black Hawk Down, these war movies don't lose money.

It just seems to me to be an untapped market. And it seems clear the studio releasing Red Tails isn't too optimistic about it thus why it's getting released in January, as opposed a few months later or after. January and September are the two lowest-grossing movie months in Hollywood. It's not exactly "dumping" a film, but it's certainly not giving it the best chance to succeed.

Hollywood is a copycat. We'll see more of these movies once somebody makes a hit. I don't think that's going to be Red Tails, but it's at least a step in the right direction.