The first ten minutes had me worried. Lucas is basically King Midas of shitty dialogue, and I felt it was especially egregious in the beginning of the film. He was showing and telling at the exact same time, like the film was supposed to be for 5 year olds, and setting things up so hamhandedly that I was all ready to go: "...god damn it, Lucas, why do you do this to us?" (with appropriate raegface).

Then it got awesome, mostly due to the incredibly talented cast. By the end of the movie, I was sick from sobbing and too much popcorn - the best kind of sick to be, honestly. It packed one hell of an emotional wallop, even though 75% of the time I knew what was coming.

I have my quibbles with it - the Sofia storyline was cheap emotional manipulation; in a movie full of well-rounded characters, the lone woman had less humanity than a Disney animal sidekick; and the music could be eye-rollingly overwrought - but the rest of the movie is strong enough that they really are just quibbles. If I had friends who lived less than an hour away, this is totally a film I would drag them to see in theaters.


My only regret seeing in the theater was the previews. Normally? My favorite part of the movie. But when you're a pacifist anti-racist feminist going to see a war movie...yeeeeeeah. One had an interesting sci-fi premise except the lone female character's role was princess in the tower futuristic space prison. Another had humor and an all-black cast, but was premised on such hetero/sexist ideas that I wanted to barf ("Act like a woman. Think like a man.). There was the preview for Battleship, where a Hispanic woman shared the Mystic Foresight of her grandfather in a wonderful show of romantic racism. And then there was a film whose sole selling point seemed to be real Active Navy SEALS were the actors, and had a bunch of white guys blowing shit up to save a captured female soldier and beating up a (brown) terrorist and I honestly have no fucking idea what the plot is except BLOW SHIT UP and TERRORISM and YAY WHITE AMERICAN MEN.


So seriously, everyone, go see Red Tails. We need more films like this in the world, and less films like everything else they fucking advertised.


This is Avatar Korra, and she approves of this message.