George Porter didn't need to see "Red Tails," the new Hollywood action movie about black pilots in World War II, to know how it ends.

He lived it.

But as one of a handful of aging Tuskegee Airmen who served as technical advisers to renowned filmmaker George Lucas, the Sacramento resident has already seen the film.

The question – as the movie opens nationwide today – is how many other Americans will see it? Many in the black community say it's important that the film attract a large audience.

Formed in 1942 amid controversy, the Tuskegee Airmen became a highly regarded all-black squadron. Its nearly 1,000 pilots flew 15,000 missions during World War II, shooting down 150 enemy aircraft and destroying another 250 enemy planes on the ground.

Lucas, of "Star Wars" and Indiana Jones fame, has openly discussed the difficulty getting Hollywood to back his historic adaptation, even with his name attached.

"It's because it's an all-black movie. There's no major white roles in it at all. … I showed it to all of them, and they said, 'No, we don't know how to market a movie like this,' " Lucas told host Jon Stewart during a recent appearance on "The Daily Show."

The movie, and chatter about Hollywood racism, have prompted a huge response from the black community. Facebook event pages and mass emails ask people to support the film.

"It is CRITICAL that everyone goes the first weekend (Jan. 20) because that is how and when the movie industry counts its $$$ and therefore its importance, to them as they think of funding other films," reads one message from an unnamed author.

Sacramento communications professional Derrick Alan Miller and his brothers, under the Millerizm name, have been successfully promoting parties for the African American audience for years.

"Red Tails" has prompted them to use their vast email network and paid advertizing products to promote a viewing of the film tonight.

The Miller brothers won't make any money from their efforts, but Derrick Miller said it's important that people – especially young people – see what these heroes did.

The Solano Valley chapter of the predominantly black sorority Delta Sigma Theta will host a viewing in Fairfield. The showing will feature Lt. James Warren, an original Tuskegee Airman and Vacaville resident who also was a technical adviser to the film.

The Deltas and the Miller brothers share a goal.

"We are bigger than just rappers and singers and jocks," Miller said. "There is a lot more to us. These are people that fought in wars. I'm hoping we broaden horizons."

Broadening horizons is the full-time mission for the Youth Aviation Academy at Harmon Johnson Elementary School in the Twin Rivers Unified School District.

The program's 30 cadets and graduates will wear their flight suits tonight to watch the movie.

"The entire event cements what they have been learning," said Terry Press-Dawson, a program adviser.

Warren, 88, said the film is important history, but 20 years too late.

"Most of the fighter pilots are dead," he said.

Even before there was trouble financing the film, there was trouble writing the script. With so much history and so many rich stories, Lucas said this film could be the middle piece of a three-movie trilogy.

Warren said the movie bypasses realities of the Jim Crow South to tell a more narrow wartime hero story.

"A lot of the cadets had never experienced that blatant 'whites here, blacks there' discrimination," said Warren, a pilot who also served in Korea and Vietnam.

Returning to the United States was also a shock, Warren said.

"When the white boys came back they gave them a ticker-tape parade. We didn't get a ticker-tape parade," said Porter, an airplane mechanic who retired after a 23-year military career.

Porter, 90, was among nine airmen who spent a week at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in 2005, sharing their wartime stories. He called the movie outstanding but also wants people to know the context in which he and his fellow fliers gradually earned the respect of their white counterparts.

Porter noted that a military report issued during that period said blacks were incapable of being good airmen.

He said those in the program were driven to succeed even if others around then didn't think they could or wanted them to fail.

"When we didn't have parts we fixed them," said Porter, who helped keep the training program's undersupplied planes in the air so pilots could earn their wings and get into combat. "We succeeded when we were supposed to fail."

A lot of people in the black community hope the movie will succeed too.

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