Introducing Red Tails 2.0: The "Sassy Black Sistas Special Edition" Courtesy of George Lucas

Red Tails, George Lucas' long awaited World War 2 love letter to the storied Tuskegee airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group has finally been released in theaters across the country. As I pointed out in my review some months back, the movie is a throwback to the golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. For some viewers this makes for a good, old school, nostalgia heavy, and fun, movie going experience. The critics are a bit more negative, with their consensus being that Red Tails is a horrible disappointment.

There has been much talk about Red Tails online, with George Lucas receiving both praise and condemnation for his honest sharing about the difficulties of getting Hollywood to make a "black" film in which white actors are not central to the story. Across the black blogosphere, the upset at Red Tails has been at the apparent omission of black women from the Tuskegee airmen's story. Clutch Magazine for example, has featured a series of posts on this question, where the feeling is that the lack of black women in Red Tails is a reflection of their broader status as second class citizens.

In the digital age, there are no final edits. To point, George Lucas has a habit of tweaking with, fixing, and updating his films. The epic Star Wars trilogies have been continually updated by George Lucas. There is little reason to believe that Red Tails will not receive the same treatment. Readers of We Are Respectable Negroes know that I love to play script doctor. Given that popular films are a playground for the imagination, I am going to run with the concerns expressed by some in the black blogosphere about the role of African-American women in Red Tails.

As always, populism is both liberating and fun.

What follows are my casting choices for the inevitable update of Red Tails, what I am calling "Red Tails 2.0: The Sassy Black Sistas Special Edition":

Red Tails is pretty standard World War 2 action fare. It features masculine comradeship, fast machines, explosions, the obligatory prisoner of war scene, a foreign love interest, and a pretty linear and predictable plot where the Tuskegee airmen struggle against white racists, win the approval of their superiors (and white peers), and go on to triumph over unbelievable odds. Adding some roles for black women in keeping with the Hollywood tradition could open up some interesting possibilities. Let's free our minds and have some fun.

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Red Tails needs more comic relief. The film could benefit from a motherly figure who has been in the U.S. Army for some time as either a Secretary or Stenographer (perhaps a Buffalo Soldier?). She is now a trusted adviser to the senior officers in the 332nd. This character doesn't take any back sass from the young lions in the unit who are cocksure and a bit overconfident. This character also dispenses folksy wisdom, as well as a shoulder to cry on when matters get too dire, and friends are lost in combat.

Tyler Perry's Madea fits the role perfectly.

The Tuskegee airmen could not win World War 2 alone. There were many support personnel, mechanics, and the like who kept the P-51 Mustangs, "the Cadillac of the sky," up and running at peak performance. This actress should be attractive, but also comfortable with machines and tools. It would be a bonus if she complicated gender stereotypes about black femininity. She is a "strong black woman." She is also vulnerable. Her body and habitus should suggest athleticism, confidence, and a no nonsense attitude balanced with a need to love someone--be they male or female. Queen Latifah (or perhaps the movie Pariah's Adepero Oduye) is a great choice for the part of Master Sergeant Mechanic for the 332nd airgroup:

Red Tails has been criticized because one of the Tuskegee airmen in the film has an Italian love interest. According to its critics, this is a slap in the face to black women. They offer the following: How come they cannot have a woman of color, either a wife or girlfriend at home (or one they meet overseas) who is the object of their affection? As a corrective, there are many possibilities from which to draw for the movie--and still remain historically grounded. My suggestion is that Red Tails should feature one of the many multiracial blacks who could be found throughout Europe during World War Two.

There were Afro-Germans, French, Italians, Russians, and other nationalities across the continent. One of the pilots in the Tuskegee airmen should have an intense relationship with a character who is the child of a Black Sicilian and a white Northern Italian woman.

Hauntingly beautiful, she would be marginalized by the French in the small town near where the Tuskegee airmen are based. One faithful night she meets one of the black American pilots outside of a segregated U.S. Army club. They then proceed to dance the night away in an alley where he sings jazz classics in her ear and she provides the chorus in Italian. There relationship is a whirlwind of sexual bliss and intense, immediate love. She becomes pregnant with their love child, only to have her lover killed during one of the Tuskegee airmen's final missions of the war.

There is only one choice here: Halle Berry.

Rosie the Riveter is an iconic image from World War Two. Women served throughout the U.S. military. While they were not allowed in "combat" positions, they took great personal risks flying aircraft across the Atlantic to Europe, towing planes for gunnery practice, as nurses and spies in Europe and Asia. In fact, one of the most noted aviators of the 20th century was Bessie Coleman, an African American woman, who in the dark days of Jim Crow, flew across the United States solo. If history does in fact echo, Red Tails should include many more women of color in its narrative.

Truth is fiction; fiction is truth. The Tuskegee airmen were facing difficult odds. The War Department, in realizing that it was foolish to hold back talented war fighters from the front lines, have called up an elite group of female aviators. "The Black Banshees" are assigned to the Italian theatre of World War Two, where they appear in the last thirty minutes of Red Tails in order to save the day after the 332nd suffers heavy casualties on a particularly harrowing and poorly planned mission. At first, their presence is resisted by the Tuskegee airmen. Inevitably, The Black Banshees win over the Tuskegee Airmen, and each woman pairs up with their opposite number among the 332nd. At first the mutual attraction is resisted, but eventually each member of The Black Banshees marries a Tuskegee airmen after retiring from the service, pregnant of course with future aviators, who just like mom and dad, will be the cavalry of the skies in the jet age.

Members of The Black Banshees include Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Missy Elliot, Jean Grea, and MC Lyte. Their flight leader is Angelina Jolie channeling her earlier role as Cleopatra.

War is hell. Blood is spilled. Bodies are broken. Nurses in wartime are sisters, mothers, confidantes, objects of unrequited love, and skilled technicians who put broken bodies back together again so that they can go out to fight (and be broken) again. There is something almost Freudian and Oedipal about nurses in many World War 2 movies: they are sister-mother-lover figures. The love is many times quite chaste...until it surrenders to desperation...and lust. Red Tails needs this actress to be compelling, pathos filled, and sincere. Gabrielle Sidibe, of Precious fame, is the perfect young actress to play the role. She is a member of the U.S. Army's nursing corps who is transferred from Atlanta, Georgia to the European theater in order to tend to the young and homesick men of the 332nd air group.

Red Tails is not a perfect movie, few are. But, Red Tails is an opportunity to self-indulge and spread our proverbial wings. True, viewers may not get exactly what they want; but, they should also be honest about the good that is there...and the hellish possibilities that could have otherwise been. This is not a soft-bigotry of low expectations as a decision rule and rubric for judging Red Tails; no, it is just real talk.

In that spirit, what other actresses would you add to Red Tails and why? And how would you cast the obligatory big budget black actress of the last few years, she who is Miss Beyonce (who I intentionally left out of my hypothetical casting game), in the film? Would you include a dance number where all of the black women in the movie break out in song Dreamgirls style?