Times were a lot different back in 1986 when the first Top Gun was released. There was no “woke.” Men were men and women were women. And people weren’t as sensitive over things like patches in movies.
Cut to 2019 when the trailer for Top Gun: Maverick was released. Instead of patches of the Taiwanese and Japanese flags on the character Lieutenant Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell’s leather bomber jacket, there were just random patches. The reason: Hollywood didn’t want to offend China, which doesn’t recognize Taiwan as an independent nation, because they wanted their money.
When the movie was released last week, however, fans noticed that the Taiwanese flag was back. This was after Chinese film distributor and production company Tencent Pictures, backed out on their promise to help finance the film, reports the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail also reported that “Tencent ended up pulling out of the film, fearing the film’s themes and closeness with the US military could upset the ruling Communist Party, and the production company is uncredited in the sequel.”
SETN reported that fans in Taiwan were quite pleased and even cheered when the saw their flag, which even got a close-up in the film, said the Daily Mail. China, on the other hand, is not so pleased, with one fan posting: ‘Fine, don’t take our money. We will watch the pirated version,’ reports the Daily Mail.
Soloman Yue, Vice Chairman & CEO at Republicans Overseas, RNC Member since 2000, Co-founder of RNC Republican National Conservative Caucus & Conservative Steering Committee, tweeted: “I said that I would have boycotted the movie if the [Taiwanese] flag had been deleted. ‘We can’t allow the #CCP to buy Hollywood & dictate what we Americans should watch in our movies,’ Mr. Yue said. ‘I am glad that Paramount stood up to Chinese censorship in [America].”
Read about the verdict in the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial
It looks like Hollywood liberals are at least done pandering to communist China. China has long edited/censored movies to comport with its communist regime and Hollywood has let it happen, in order to get their funding. It remains to be seen what Hollywood will do if China wants to censor something, yet still provide funding, which does not seem to be the case with Top Gun: Maverick. What do you think would happen then?
