First Trailer For The George Lucas Produced Red Tails

After years of production and a handful of delays, the George Lucas-produced World War II film Red Tails is finally set for release January 20 next year, and has the trailer to prove it. It debuted at Yahoo! Movies today, and you can also watch it below for some inspirational speeches from Terrence Howard, some pretty dazzling looking aerial dogfights, and a lot of soaring music to get you through the lunch hour. Take a look below:

You can see the Lucasfilm influence pretty clearly in all those air fights, which look as impressive as any I've ever seen. But in a trailer that's operating with such broad strokes, it's hard to get a sense of the movie that might actually lie within. From what we've seen here I'm afraid this is one of those movies about a historic event that consists of people standing around and talking about how historic it is, every single scene focusing on how these black men had to overcome adversity and prove their courage in order to fight for their country. It's an inspirational story worth telling, sure, but you need a little bit more nuance in there for a two-hour movie to be worth sitting through. Is Terrence Howard playing a character or just a vehicle for forward-thinking rhetoric about courage and overcoming prejudice? I know the trailer is going to automatically emphasize the inspirational moments, but it's still kind of hard to tell here.

Still, with a cast that includes Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr., Bryan Cranston and up-and-comers like Brandon T. Jackson and Nate Parker, it's probably worth overlooking Red Tails' dismal release date and troublesome delays to check it out. Even if it's not that great, it can't be worse than most of the other modern movies to bear the Lucasfilm logo. Right? God, let's hope I'm right.