The hottest movie in years is “Top Gun: Maverick,” the sequel to the 1986 Tom Cruise flick that is destroying box office records from coast to coast.
One reason for the film’s popularity is the celebration of the American military. It appears movie-goers enjoy getting a positive message about the might of our military more than films forcing a woke message to viewers.
You know the film must be pro-American because it scared off a multi-billion-dollar Chinese tech company from financing it once they saw that it was about. In 2019, Tencent Holdings agreed to financially support the film for Paramount Pictures. Part of the agreement would include Tencent marketing the movie in China. For the $80 million investment, Tencent would receive 12.5% equity in the film.
Things went south after China’s President Xi Jinping launched an “anti-corruption crackdown” in his country. Any company that didn’t swear loyalty to the Communist Party was in deep trouble, and because of the pro-American vibe to the flick, Tencent Holdings ran away from the deal as fast as possible.
Currently, there are no plans for the movie to be marketed to China’s population of 1.4 billion, and as of now, the film will not be shown there.
Pleasing China is very important for Hollywood studios. Back in 2019, when an early trailer was released for the film, “Maverick” was wearing his bomber jacket, which had two significant differences from the original movie 36 years ago. Astute fans noticed that two patches on the jacket had shown Japanese and Taiwanese flags, but a couple of ambiguous symbols replaced them. Why? To appease China was the conclusion of many.
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