Top Gun: Maverick is a military propaganda movie. I fell for it.
- Thread starter Punchline
- Start date
- Status
Nationalist militarism is pretty much proto-fascism, so I don't think it's an unreasonable link to draw. I don't think the concepts championed in Top Gun are far removed from the "man on the wall" rhetoric that makes abuse of military power so easy to justify - that the world is a scary place, and sometimes good people need to break the rules to protect good and decent people.
Any media that creates fake, fictional straw-enemies for real-world nations to knock over is playing into that same space.
Any media that creates fake, fictional straw-enemies for real-world nations to knock over is playing into that same space.
Every review I've seen about this from Ex Military guys is basically calling this Recruitment for the Navy.
lol we get it, OP doesn't get what fascism means
and yeah, it's 100% a propaganda movie. still awesome though
Has "Fascism" become like "Neo-Liberal" where the person has no idea what the fuck what the ideology actually is and just uses the word to insult anything/anyone they don't agree with????
best blockbuster since Mad Max Fury Road. Fighter Jets are cool as shit and so unfortunately by showing them in all their glory it will likely lead to an uptick in navy recruitment.
but honestly I thought they did a good job of depoliticizing this movie (as much as humanly possible as you can for a film about the US Military). unnamed enemy combatants, country, you don't even see their faces either.
but honestly I thought they did a good job of depoliticizing this movie (as much as humanly possible as you can for a film about the US Military). unnamed enemy combatants, country, you don't even see their faces either.
This is a silly thing to say when there are pictures out their of military recruiters waiting to catch people as they walk out of screenings of Top Gun" Maverick.
No, not in Nevada. However, I'm sure you can just buy some fighter jets in Texas as long as they are only for home protection or like duck hunting or something.
who is defending tho? it's propaganda and we all know it, it's just a fun movie.
Is Sony part of the fascist propaganda machine too? Way to read the thread.
lol
You can say the same thing about any military-themed blockbuster. This is the opposite of a hot take.
I don't even find Top Gun that egregious. There's much more troubling examples more worthy of an essay. American Sniper, the TV series 24, the Call of Duty games...
Hell, the first Top Gun is basically a recruitment ad. Not sure how you're just realizing this with the sequel.
Who exactly is defending it? There's about as much defense of the movie as there is blind Sony love. Where do people come up with this stuff?
Last edited:
it is a legal requirement to get approval from the US Government (DoD) if you show anything about or involving the US Military. the DoD just has a film office and a good relationship with Hollywood to make the process a lot smoother for everyone involved. Hollywood likes action and war movies because people like seeing them and the US Military likes getting paid and getting recruits.Technically every movie that features the US Military in some official capacity is propaganda because the US Military puts out explicit guidelines to follow since their interest is recruitment.
at least you got to make this about console wars for some reason.
I understand TC sentiment, but I honestly don't think its any of that. I LOVE the movie, buts its really not making a statement about anything so weighty. Its just a movie meant to appeal to people, who like cool planes, cool action, sexy and bold heros/heroines etc. It doesn't have the balls to name drop who the enemy is, lol, because they don't want to play any kind of politics at all.
People can take it as propaganda for the Navy or whatever, and that's understandable, but I really don't think there is any actual intent from the filmmakers to do that.
People can take it as propaganda for the Navy or whatever, and that's understandable, but I really don't think there is any actual intent from the filmmakers to do that.
I mean yeah, didn't you watch the first one? Also please look up the definition of fascism. You're using it incorrectly.
They literally okayed a suicide mission before Maverick proved that his plan was plausible by doing it himself in a test run.
I'd say you're spot on.
Also, aren't fighter pilots really a dying breed anyway?
How big are fighter pilot classes? Can't be too big since we're moving away from that type of warfare no?
Very good movie but it's undoubtedly military bootlicking. Also a Star Wars remake.
If you make something that's supposed to be a fun, apolitical action movie in a culture where the baseline for that type of film is propaganda, you wind up making more propaganda.
We Americans happily and uncritically watch Marvel and Michael Bay movies with scripts that had to be approved by the Pentagon while acting like propaganda is something that only exists in bad foreign countries like China.
If you make something that's supposed to be a fun, apolitical action movie in a culture where the baseline for that type of film is propaganda, you wind up making more propaganda.
We Americans happily and uncritically watch Marvel and Michael Bay movies with scripts that had to be approved by the Pentagon while acting like propaganda is something that only exists in bad foreign countries like China.
Everything Everywhere All at Once takes that title. Maverick is certainly up there though.
(We also still have Nope and Glass Onion coming later.)
know your audience OP, like the movie dudes do. lol
so the pop-offs are weird.
i mean, Eco offers a long list, referencing political and social fascism as well as fascist attitude and thought; that strong-weak thing everyone latched onto is only one of many points. and it's literally just one of many definitions, and in greater context there is not a small number of people raising warning signs of the slippery slope of our politics falling into fascism
so the pop-offs are weird.
Last edited:
Pretty sure that just means no real military assets without approval, which you know, you couldn't use anyways without their approval. Plenty of movies have used special effects or stock footage when the producers wouldn't agree to the military's demands.
Check out the points there, true fascism needs to have most of them. I agree that the movie is propaganda but we're not quite there yet. America has the tendencies but we're not doing mask off yet.
This is a good post. Essentially all military propaganda pieces are functionally military nationalism adjacent at the very least which is a component of fascism but isn't necessarily fascist in totality. If it were, we could argue that all nationalism/patriotism is fascist in nature (although there is, admittedly, an argument to be made there).
I read this comment and completely agreed with it at first, but there are people in the thread literally saying a movie is just a movie. Propaganda that you enjoy is still propaganda people.
The people who made the movie went to Lockheed to design the Darkstar to give them something realistic looking. The movie makers initiated the contact. Why wouldn't they have fun and put Skunkworks stuff all over it?
***
Will the OP come back to defend the blistering replies?
***
Will the OP come back to defend the blistering replies?
Thats why we need to make Ace Combat into a movie franchise. Can't be propaganda when they're fictional nations.
As long as they're not Belka. God damned Belkans.
You folks think OP will be back after their thread went horribly wrong? They expected a circle jerk of "hell yeah you're right" and instead got... this.
Very few recruitment ads are at all true to the military experience, they just want to get you in the door. They couldn't care less about specifics of the message as long as it makes serving look cool to young people.
And the last one.
I honestly wonder if folks are merging basically racist shit like Iron Eagle (where the enemy was clearly Arab) and Top Gun (where the enemy was just some helmets).
Yes, this was the point of Badmiral Cain in the first sequence of the movie. He wanted Darkstar to fail so that he could move funding to drones that don't care about heavy Gs blacking them out.
You mistake the connecting abilities of people who write articles.
But that doesn't make it fascism. Propaganda isn't inherently fascist.
I'm just posting in this legendary thread to demand that the title is reverted back to the original. Very rarely are we all united in something. Giving the thread title a giant big "Huh?" was one of them.
Why rob us of this simple joy?
Why rob us of this simple joy?
- Status