News/Commentary

MSNBC editor trashes ‘insidious’ pro-military ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ on eve of Oscars

March 12, 2023 | | Print Article

Leftists are furious that a rousing, patriotic movie like “Top Gun: Maverick” was able to penetrate “woke” airspace by scoring a Best Picture nomination at this year’s Oscars, an inclusion that has one MSNBC editor raging about the film’s pro-military theme.

In a column published on the eve of the 95th Academy Awards ceremony which will be held tonight at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, the left-wing network’s opinion editor Zeeshan Aleem blasted the film for being “as insidious as it is entertaining” while bemoaning that the Tom Cruise vehicle, a sequel to the iconic 1986 classic “Top Gun” portrays the military as a “beacon of virtue” in his Substack screed which is dripping with bitterness and contempt.

“It’s a poisonous kind of nostalgia, one that smuggles love of endless war into a celebration of live action,” wrote Aleem who described “Top Gun: Maverick” as “literal propaganda” suggesting that the film’s pro-American message and support of the military verges on the brainwashing of viewers.

“In exchange for access to military aircraft, the producers of the movie agreed to allow the Defense Department to include its own ‘key talking points’ in the script,” the author claimed. “Perhaps equally important, the script had to be written in a manner that flatters the military in order to secure the buy-in of the Pentagon… This collaboration in jingoism is evident throughout the script.”

He also seemed to be perturbed that the film depicts the planet’s top exporter of terrorism in a negative light.

Just like in the first ‘Top Gun,’ the enemy is never identified as a specific country or organization, but the description of the mission hints at one real-life scenario: Iran’s nuclear program,” he wrote. “The subtext of bombing a nuclear enrichment site, which could very well be in Iran, is a striking choice that betrays a bellicose worldview.”

While acknowledging that “Top Gun: Maverick” was highly entertaining and a well-made film, Aleem wished it bad luck at the Academy Awards.

“I don’t object to anyone’s enjoyment of the film, but I hope it tanks at the Oscars,” he wrote. “It’s possible to make thrilling action without so brazenly priming the public for warfare.”

Aleem’s trashing of the movie opened him up to heavy fire on Twitter where users unloaded with both barrels.

In the decades-belated sequel to the first “Top Gun” movie, Cruise reprises his role as Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, no longer the reckless young hotshot of the original but an experienced aviator called back to the Top Gun flight school to train pilots for a dangerous secret mission.

The film also stars Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm and Val Kilmer who returns as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky. “Top Gun: Maverick” is directed by Joseph Kosinski.

(Video: YouTube: Paramount Pictures)

Few movies better defined an era than the 1986 original, a turbocharged patriotic masterpiece chock full of great action scenes, fine acting, a great plot and a hit soundtrack. In addition to Cruise and Kilmer, “Top Gun” starred Kelly McGillis, Tom Skerritt, Michael Ironside and Anthony Edwards as the ill-fated “Goose,” a character whose son is featured in the sequel.

It was a completely different era back then, a period when the media wasn’t dominated by America-hating “woke” communists and Hollywood still put out movies that were primarily intended to entertain rather than indoctrinate but times change, sometimes for the worse.

In addition to Best Picture, “Top Gun: Maverick” received a total of six nominations for the prized golden statue in multiple categories.

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Chris Donaldson
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