The pro-America, pro-freedom themes of “Top Gun: Maverick,” the new sequel to the iconic 80s blockbuster, reportedly scared off the movie’s onetime Chinese financiers.
SO WHAT
These colors don’t run.
WHAT HAPPENED
Tencent Holdings has withdrawn financing from the movie over concerns that “Communist Party officials in Beijing would be angry about the company’s affiliation with a movie celebrating the American military,” the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
According to the Journal’s sources, the company’s links to the movie “grew radioactive” amid burgeoning diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and China.
- Not long after Tencent signed on to co-finance the film in 2019, the government under Chinese President Xi Jingping began pressuring companies operating in the East Asian nation to swear fealty to the Communist Party.
- Meanwhile, the film has risked China’s anger by reinstating a Taiwanese flag seen on a jacket worn by Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the movie’s protagonist.
- When the movie’s trailer premiered in 2019, the Taiwanese flag patch worn by Mitchell in the 1986 original had been removed, sparking speculation that the move had come at the behest of Chinese censors.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
Conservatives have celebrated the release of “Top Gun: Maverick” as a welcome departure from Hollywood skepticism toward American pride and patriotism.
- In a review of “Top Gun: Maverick” for National Review, critic Armond White called the film “a significant gesture toward recovering a lost virtue — American nostalgia.”
- “Tom Cruise knows that if Hollywood is to recover its connection to America’s self-respect after the past decade’s sea change of international apologies and at-home racial protests, the answer might be found in entertainment that satisfies the need for speed,” White wrote.
- “It’s a really good movie, but it also hit at the perfect time: the vast majority of Americans are absolutely desperate to celebrate our country,” tweeted conservative pundit Clay Travis in response to reports of the film’s box office success.
“Top Gun: Maverick,” which premiered in theaters Wednesday, is the number one movie in America, vastly outgrossing the competition in its opening weekend.