Top Gun: Maverick Makes Waves in the Taiwan Strait

In a shocking assertion of their ostensible, vertebrate taxonomical classification, Hollywood executives have released the much anticipated, Top Gun: Maverick film with images of the Taiwanese flag intact—thereby angering Chinese Communists. 

In his update to the 1986 smash-hit Top Gun, Tom Cruise’s character, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell sports a bomber jacket emblazoned with the Taiwanese flag—an image Communist authorities deem an affront to their assertions of sovereignty over the island nation.     

The flag was either missing from or obscured in a 2019 trailer for the film, which prompted speculation about whether it had been removed to placate Chinese censors. Keen observers noted, however, that the flags made a comeback in the film’s theatrical release—along with the Japanese flag, to which Beijing takes umbrage. 

During an advanced screening in Taiwan, audiences reportedly cheered upon seeing their nation’s flag on Cruise’s jacket and applauded several times throughout the film. 

The Wall Street Journal reports Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. withdrew from the $170-million Paramount Pictures production over concerns its affiliation with a movie celebrating the U.S. military might anger its Communist overlords. 

In 2018, forty airlines—to include Air France, KLM, and Lufthansa—removed references to Taiwan from their websites for purpose of mollifying Communist objections to the notion of Taiwanese independence. 

The decision to keep the image of Taiwan’s flag on Maverick’s back marks a divergence from Hollywood’s contemptible tradition of kowtowing to Chinese totalitarianism, and suggests that at least some filmmakers have had their fill of overreaching, cultural censorship. 

FMI: www.topgunmovie.com