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There’s a moment in Top Gun: Maverick where you forget you’re watching a movie, and instead realize you are watching the words of poet Alfred Lord Tennyson come to life:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, enemies turned wingmen/lifelong friends in 1986’s Top Gun, have aged 30 years. Tom Cruise’s iconic Maverick is a Captain, considered the best pilot the Navy has since he shot down three MIGs in the first movie, who has spent his years as test pilot, refusing to accept promotion because it would ground him. Val Kilmer’s blond hair/blue eyed Iceman, right, is now an Admiral, in charge of the Pacific Fleet.
Iceman has used his position and power to protect Maverick since the events of the first movie and has given him one final order: train a group of the top graduates of Top Gun—the school where the top one percent of Naval Aviators go to see who is the best of the best—for what amounts to a suicide mission: destroying the fortified military base of a rogue country (strangely never identified), where it’s seeking to enrich uranium.
It’s highly probable that none of the young aviators Maverick is tasked with training will return from this deadly mission. To heighten the drama, one of the aviators is the son of his dead RIO—Radar Intercept Officer—Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, killed in the first movie trying to eject from a malfunction in the F-14 that Maverick was flying.
All these years later, Maverick still blames himself for his best friend’s death, believing it to be his fault, and he has tried to protect Goose’s son from seeing aerial combat, even making a promise to his late mother to keep him out of the Naval Academy.
The emotional weight of this scene is made all the more powerful by the fact Cruise’s Maverick looks like he has barely aged, while Kilmer’s formerly chiseled physique has been battered not just by time, but by cancer (tragically, in real life Kilmer has throat cancer and can barely speak). He is forced to listen to Maverick speak and type his curt responses into a computer.
In this scene, two of the most iconic characters in movie history reminiscence about life, duty to country, family, friendship, honor, and Maverick’s dogged refusal to quit flying.
And of course Maverick is still haunted by Goose’s death. Now, he is training the son of his best friend for a mission he isn’t sure he’ll survive.
I had the chance to see an early screening of Top Gun: Maverick—it’s being released today, May 27 —and this was this scene I was least prepared to watch, as I had read about how Cruise would only agree to make this sequel, hotly demanded by fans, if Kilmer was in it. His struggle to get well for only a few minutes of screentime to reprise the role of Iceman is probably the Number One reason this movie surpasses the original and represents the ultimate love letter to aviation ever filmed.
I’m not ashamed to say a few tears were shed by me, not just during this scene, but in many throughout what is easily the most enjoyable movie I’ve ever watched in theaters. Weakened by “time and fate,“ Iceman goes on to die of his cancer in the movie, and Cruise’s Maverick ends up being relieved of his duties as instructor of the top, Top Gun pilots only to steal an F-18 and prove his proposed tactics to destroy the unnamed enemy’s uranium enrichment facility by performing the aerial assault in simulation. For this act, he then gets tasked with leading the actual assault and ends up selecting Goose’s son, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, to be one of the four pilots as part of this dangerous mission.
Go see the movie to experience what happens next. Suffice it to say I left the theater wishing the men and women who were depicted as protecting our country actually existed in real life.
Americans deserve a military that puts our citizens and interest as a nation. And for little more than two hours, Top Gun: Maverick delivers a brief window into what that military would be like.
The movie, filmed in 2018 and 2019, with a release date delayed twice, in 2020 and in 2021, due to COVID and Cruise’s refusal to allow the movie to stream (as he wanted fans to experience it in all its glory in theaters) is blessedly free of politics, Left or Right. It’s just a story about Naval Aviators doing their duty, and Maverick’s personal quest to finally find peace in Goose’s death and allow his best friend’s son, whom he’s protected his entire life, to become his own man.
Oh, and Maverick gets to reignite a touching relationship with an old flame, played by the beautiful Jennifer Connelly.
In an era where every piece of mass media we consume, from Main Stream Media to sitcoms, to movies, to commercials to even cereal boxes, is saturated with 24/7/365 Wokeism and is increasingly overtly anti-white, Top Gun: Maverick possess absolutely zero Wokeness.
Yes, the aviators selected to compete for the mission are little more diverse than the nearly all-white flyers in 1986 Top Gun, but even this decision is actually based in reality as our own military has plans to try and make aviators less white in the present and future:
The new “Top Gun: Maverick” pilot class is more diverse than the predominantly white, male crew of the 1986 original. Along with the showcase pilot roles of Miles Teller’s Rooster and Glen Powell’s Hangman, Tom Cruise‘s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell trains two Black pilots and the two films’ first Latin American and female pilots.
“The first ‘Top Gun’ reflected what the Navy was like in 1986,” Kosinski says. “We wanted ‘Maverick’ to reflect what it’s like today.” [Who are ‘Top Gun: Maverick’s new pilots? Meet Rooster, Hangman and the rest of the elite crew, by Bryan Alexander, USA Today, May 25, 2022]
Spoiler alert: nevertheless, the best pilots are Maverick, Rooster and Powell’s blond hair/blue eyed Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin are all white men, and at the end of the movie, these three white guys are the heroes of the movie, having vanquished the uranium enrichment facility, shot down multiple enemy 5th generation fighters, and Hangman having one of the most enjoyable Deus Ex Machina moments in cinema history to save Maverick and Rooster.
For decades, our military leaders have lambasted the whiteness of the pilots in the cockpit. Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick inadvertently celebrate the implicit whiteness of aviation, but the Pentagon is explicitly trying to replace with diversity [Despite recruitment efforts, few black pilots land in Air Force, Navy cockpits, by Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes, June 22, 2003]
In our world, replacing white men as aviators in the Navy and Air Force is a primary objective of Pentagon brass and elected officials [To grow new, diverse generation of pilots, Air Force, lawmakers eye flight training for JROTC, Air Force Times, April 4, 2019]
To the New York Times, having too many white men be pilots is a sign of implicit bias, white privilege, and structural inequality. Diversity, fewer white pilots, is the ultimate goal [The End of the All-Male, All-White Cockpit: Airlines are struggling to find enough pilots and to diversify a profession that has been very resistant to change., by Niraj Chokshi, April 23, 2022]. Our own Pentagon laments the overwhelming whiteness of pilots in the military [Air Force trying to diversify its largely white, male pilot corps with new strategy, by Scott Maucione , Federal News Network, March 30, 2021], and our top military leaders consider diversity a “wartime imperative”? [Goldfein: Embracing Diversity Isn’t About Being Politically Correct, It’s a “Warfighting Imperative”, Air Force Magazine, March 1, 2019]
Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, the commander of Air Force Recruiting Service, wrote an op-ed lamenting the fact that white men constitute nearly 9 of every 10 of our Air Force Pilots [86% of Air Force pilots are white men. Here’s why this needs to change., Yahoo News, October 20, 2020]
One of the first acts of President Biden’s black Secretary of Defense (former 4-star General Lloyd Austin ) was to stand down the military and have a struggle session to address so-called white supremacy and extremism within the ranks of our fighting men and women [Pentagon, stumped by extremism in ranks, orders stand-down in next 60 days: The decision to a hold a stand-down was made by Lloyd Austin, who made history by becoming the military’s first Black defense secretary after a long career rising in the ranks of the Army, The Jerusalem Post, February 3, 2021]
So we should celebrate a movie where merit is at the heart of career success. Top Gun: Maverick and its predecessor are movies that show us exactly the type that made America great. And yes, they were overwhelmingly white men.
Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t seek to glorify white men, but it inadvertently delivers a knockout punch to Wokeness and Critical Race Theorists everywhere, by showing a group of primarily white aviators interacting positively with a few minorities (who harbor no animosity toward whites or base their identity on being black or brown) and a white female pilot.
Unfortunately, in a world made up of the best of the best, the push by our elite in the real world to ensure fewer white men are pilots is a reminder race does matter. Very much.
Top Gun: Maverick will break many box office records and hopefully remind young white kids there are better things to aspire to be than a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Indeed, one reviewer is acutely aware of just how un-woke this movie is, and why its popularity spells trouble for a society trained to cower before any accusation of racism:
While most critics obviously liked the movie, the politics of the film created a sense of unease for more than one. Writing that the original had “all the narrative complexity of a music video crossed with a military recruitment reel,” The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney said the queasiness (despite the film’s multiracial cast) has only intensified in the post-Trump age, “with patriotism curdling into white supremacy” [T om Cruise, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and the Uneasy Echoes of Hollywood Past, by Kim Masters, Hollywood Reporter, May 25, 2022]
Top Gun: Maverick might celebrate an America that is being Replaced. But it’s an America that is still very much alive in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans who wish the country they see celebrated, as Top Gun and its long-awaited sequel do.
And yes, that means acknowledging the white men who pilot the jet fighters giving us air superiority over every other country, in real life or as envisioned in Top Gun.
People are tired, very tired of wokeness. A movie like Top Gun: Maverick shows the type of country and nation that Americans aspire to not merely to return to, but to maintain—for their posterity.
Paul Kersey [Email him] is the author of the blog SBPDL, and has published the books SBPDL Year One, Hollywood in Blackface and Escape From Detroit, Opiate of America: College Football in Black and White and Second City Confidential: The Black Experience in Chicagoland. His latest book is The Tragic City: Birmingham 1963-2013.
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Oh to be there to see the audience of Kersey and two autistic twelve-year-olds thrilling to propaganda for broke low-normal rednecks. And Kersey sniffling at tiny manlets zooming around in flying turds that peer adversaries will shoot down in four seconds.
I wonder why Kelly McGillis wasn’t asked to return
Well if there is anything we can say to please our American friends here, the first and foremost is that you guys really are the best when it comes to aircraft.
Although the helicopters that you are making were designed by a Russian dude.
But yes in terms of planes you are one step ahead of everybody. The F-35 is probably the best 5th gen plane right now and while the Russians are still working on theirs and the Chinese are in the testing phase too, you guys are already flying them.
The Russians are good at aircraft, but they were on a par with you with 4th generation models. Now you are one step ahead of them.
“our own military has plans to try and make aviators less white in the present and future”.
Why would they “try” and what does that entail? Affirmative action? Let all apply who want to and weed out the chaff.
Bcuz his “y” chromosome has become obvious with age… although it was fairly obvious to anyone with eyes looking backward.
yes, its a big mystery what country the planes were sent to attack. a distant mountainous foreign land, with a nuclear enrichment program that has to go. and they operate american f-14 tomcats! who could it be..?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F-14_Tomcat#Operational_history
Yikes
“Connelly was born in Cairo, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. She is the daughter of Ilene, an antiques dealer, and Gerard Karl Connelly, a clothing manufacturer. Her father was a Catholic of Irish descent. Connelly’s mother was Jewish, and was educated at a yeshiva; all of Connelly’s maternal great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia.”
The cock pit isn’t all white.
The fighting and flying in the original had nothing to do with reality. What a stupid bunch of people Americans are. What a pretty idiot girl man, that Tom Cruise. TG2 sounds aggressively stupid.
No. No. Nope.
The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is simply not a credible threat to the Su-57. nor Russia’s bleeding edge integrated air defense systems.
Try again, GAE.
She’s had a hard life. She was raped by two black guys when she was young: https://people.com/archive/cover-story-memoir-of-a-brief-time-in-hell-vol-30-no-20/
If that story were published today, it probably wouldn’t mention the race of the rapists.
First of all, he claims to have been raped by two black guys. He also claimed to have been a jet fighter pilot. This person is, after all, an actor.
Secondly, you are absolutely right about having had a hard life; for a boy ingesting handfuls of estrogen must be quite difficult.
I give you points for stubborness,T-man. Er,is there any famous female who is IYO a real woman?
Amber Heard??
First of all answer this question; looking at the picture of the old Kelly McGillis above, are you looking at a man or a woman?
It seems to me that Americans have exactly the military they deserve. If you elect the kind of people who hold office in the US, then you get the military America’s got: a mob of mannish women, ghetto riffraff, and low-IQ rednecks commanded by a cabal of fabulous homosexuals (see Kay Griggs testimony). If Admiral Iceman were real, then the likely cause of his throat cancer would be infection with the human papilloma virus from sucking cock. And not only that, but this military also costs far more than any other military while being incapable of defeating illiterate goatherders over 20 years of preposterously costly engagement. But, then again, Americans also deserve to be ripped off, and for the same reason.
The F-35 is as good a value in terms of aircraft as the Pentagon’s $900 toilet seats are in terms of bathroom fixtures. It’s amazing that it hasn’t occurred to you that its preposterous cost comes not from its being superior but from its being designed to enrich the largest possible number of military contractors by the largest possible amounts. There are F-35 contractors in every single congressional district, so as to make it hard for any member of Congress to vote for defunding the flying piece of shit. Wait, did I say “flying”? My mistake, because the Pentagon admits one third of its F-35 fleet is grounded at any given time for “maintenance”, and if those lying homosexual shitbags say one third, it’s got to be at least two thirds but really closer to three thirds.
She’s pushing 70, for crying out loud. You wouldn’t like it if people said “dude, you mom was smokin’ in the 80s but what happened?”
Well I saw this film yesterday morning — even ventured to the theater to see it.
Great fun and well done.
They made it work and had fun doing it and even though I missed Ms. Ryan, Tom Skerrit, Miss McGillis, Mr Ironside, I was able to settle in and largely pick up where I left off when I first saw it as an old marine . . . ages ago.
I had watched Val Kilmer’s film that detailed his life and how throat cancer was impacting him and was delighted they dealt with that very well.
Nice Job dealing with Anthony Edwards role — it was powerfully nostalgic.
————————————-
I won’t comment specifics a the moment. I need to think more about the new cast, but even that was done very well. All ’round I had a good time.
— admittedly a tad loss for the cold war clarity — that is hard to say without sounding silly. The new cold war (should that be the case) is not going to be as clean or as comprehensible.
Cost issues aside, F-35 is in my humble opinion the best plane in its class now. Explain it if you disagree.
I wish Tom had the cajones to actually take on AA. Have a pilot who is a female/minority who doesn’t make the grade but is accepted anyway,to Tom ‘s chagrin. Bad stuff and then Tom is the hero.
I have already explained. The F-35 is barely capable of flying. Quite aside from that, saying the F-35 is the best manned fighter jet is like saying the Iowa class are the best battleships. Manned fighters are obsolescent, if not obsolete. The future of military aviation is in remote control and AI. The Pentagon hasn’t moved in that direction because the US is no longer capable of real innovation and because the Pentagon brass consists entirely of craven, hidebound mediocrities. And you are wrong when it separate the issue of cost from the issue of effectiveness. When a plane costs as much as an F-35 does, the generals become reluctant to deploy them, especially in any kind of bold and decisive way because they know the loss of even one would negatively affect their careers. And, of course, excessive cost means fewer will be built. So the F-35 is a piece of shit and would still be nearly useless if it weren’t.
See there are the older F-22, the F-35, the Russian Su-57 and the Chinese J-20. The 5th generation is these four planes and that’s it. The cost is different for different countries. The Su-57 goes for $30 million but for the Russian budget being ten times smaller it’s like $300 million on the US scale. And the F-35 compared to the now discontinued F-22 is not that expensive.
Though it’s a little bit slower than the F-22 it’s a better plane, a lot better design.
The Su-57 outperforms it in flight capabilities but it’s like a machine for the aces. A regular pilot can’t operate it. The Chinese J-20 doesn’t look good, perhaps it is good but it doesn’t look like it. That matters too, at least for me and the F-35 is beautiful.
…And then what happens?
Not exactly compelling for $12, Bro.
You see, that is why they pay those Khazars so much money to write scripts.
Lord have mercy.
Not to worry. If there’s ever a movie or TV show about her experience in New York City the rapists will be recast as white “rednecks” driving a truck adorned with a confederate flag. The hero cop will be a coal black negro
I might just go see this movie. When I saw the previews months ago given the more diverse cast I assumed it would depict the black and latino pilots as stellar and contemptuous of their fellow whites while the white male pilots would be screwing up and bringing up the rear. I thought the subtext of the movie would be that whites are being replaced and that that’s a good thing.
America has changed a great deal for the worst since 1986 when the original Top Gun aired at theaters. The nation was about 78-79% white and there was a lot of implicit white pride. It still felt like a white country and people took pride in our history. There was a feeling that America was winning the cold war and a lot of optimism about the direction of the nation and good will towards each other. Reagan, although almost as old as Biden, was a smiling unifier while Biden is an angry, senile and divisive prick.
2022 merica is a far worse place with wokeness, CRT and institutionalized anti-white racial hatred everywhere one looks.
We need someone to pen articles about how the NBA is 80% black and that needs to change.
That’s the template, a script that works on the dumbasses in their target audience.
OK, but in 2022 the reality of modern military aviation is more Iron Man than top Gun(better theme music, too). Flying suits have been demonstrated by the british military, and pilotless aircraft have been a reality for decades. And then we have the whole business with the hypersonic missiles. There was a time when the fighter jock was king of the skies, but those days are kinda over. Computer modules just perform their assigned tasks and don’t have sex scandals or set the boat afire because they didn’t get to be navy SEALS and other butthurt ego acting out type stuff.
Elon Musk, who cameo’d in the 2nd Iron Man film, warned about AI, its day is coming and future fighter pilots will have to contend with the reality of swarms.
Men age like wine. Women age like milk.
Yes, the combat premise of the original was laughable, total nonsense. Also ridiculous, was the dismissal and tolerance of disobedience (loads of qualified competitors for these choice slots).
Loved the danger zone music and aircraft carrier launches.
The new Top Gun movie, like the old one, seems about as intelligent as the Marvel crap they keep cranking up.
funny stuff….she played the “combat tactics” instructor in Top Gun. Not a few of us wondered where
this blond bimbo actually got her “combat” experience. The
“un-named country” in TG II is, of course, Israhell’s arch-enemy Iran. No doubt
‘Murka’s rainbow military will cover itself with glory when push actually comes to shove.
Don’t care, all I see is a gorgeous woman.
Propaganda for Whites to die for ZOG. Brings a tear to his eye.
Uh huh. Why we lose.
Here is the new poster for the movie.
https://postimg.cc/KK3JwQ02
That is one brilliantly concise 7-word movie review!
Imagine “Maverick” destroying “the unnamed enemy’s uranium enrichment facility” at DIMONA.
In the opening scene WTC-7 collapses. Next, millions of movie-goers witness the many compelling reasons it could only have been a Israeli-controlled demolition, ending with the infamous crocodile tears of real-life Bond-villain Lucky Larry Silverstein.
After much behind-closed-doors wrangling (and as more & more Zionist betrayal is revealed), “Maverick” strikes the ultimate terrorist state.
That would be one hell of a blockbuster movie! I can’t imagine why (((Hollywood))) hasn’t already done it.
You were old ages ago? Sheesh! Are you like a 100 years now?
They would say nothing about the rapists being blacks.
The real problem is that America’s military has nothing to do with defending America and is only about expanding the US empire under Jewish-neocon control.
Did Soros recently buy Kersey’s heretofore matchless mojo? Wherefore Ken’s homage to TOP GUN-MANURE?
Oy!
I absolutely HATE hearing “our brave men and women,” especially when referring to the military. We all know that women do NOT perform, risk, or suffer equally. Plus they’re not drafted.
That men don’t protest female “stolen valor” is unforgivable. Why to they broadcast their pussy-worship to their sons? No wonder so many young males want to be gay!
If there is one female within 10,000 miles of any photo-op honoring the military, she will be placed front and center…getting all the attention and kudos.
On the other hand, if there are millions of women within 3,000 miles of events spotlighting child abuse, divorce-initiation, domestic violence, mooching, murder, rape, and so on (the bad things in life!) women somehow never appear.
Why is that?
Why is the WWII woman who packed a parachute considered equal to the man who had to jump out of a plane to face/deliver death?
Why is a male teacher who has sex with a student called a “rapist” while a female teacher raping a boy is said to have had a “romp-affair-fling-relationship-dalliance”?
Why do the same men who get jealous of raped boys (“Where was that hottie when I was in school?”) want to kill guys who rape their daughters?
Why do the men who want to castrate males who rape their daughters have no equal desire to razor off the clits-and-tits of females who rape their sons?
FACT: unless and until men start defending masculinity, they’ll continue eating stool.
Bullshit! The author even says so.
He even further capitulates to Wokeness by capitalizing “black.”
What gives?
Bleh!
And duh: that makes it a “woke” movie!!!
Where’s the all-White “Black Panthers Party” docudrama?
When will the NBA be mandated to be 60% White?
When will the biography of MLK star a White male actor?
Kurt Russell is ballsier than Tombo C will ever be. And Kilmer is thrice the man cucked Cruise pretends to be.
Val’s Doc Holiday is simply and superbly iconic: https://tinyurl.com/7cxytcjv
His “huckleberry” is the essence of low-key, unsung heroics and faithful friendship:
Video Link
I would guess that this is mostly true. Allow me to concede that I never saw the original ‘Top Gun’ and I intend to skip this one as well. Movies are geared to the ‘tastes’ (and dubious sophistication) of young adults. This conformist-prone audience is ripe for easy conquest (i.e., manipulation.) Hollywood understands this. Thus they produce ingenious propaganda-as-entertainment epics accordingly. And America yields.
This persistent tendency explains the curious ‘success’ of woke ideology among today’s young adults. Brainwashing and indoctrination work, especially on teens and twenty-somethings who are hungry for validation.
When will Americans realize that Hollywood’s glorification of war is all about steering the masses towards embracing military solutions to phantom political ‘threats’?–(which invariably involve a third party that we needn’t name.)
Unstated objectives are all part of Hollywood’s brainwashing game. Tinsel-town’s objective is to soften up the masses for the next pro-Zionist war. Meanwhile, American borders bleed. Oh well. First things first.
Yet Kersey doesn’t seem to get the bigger picture? (Is it possible?)
He just loves the fact that the Good Guys in the fighter jets are White men.
What about their missions, Mr. Kersey?
Cui bono?
This Gee Wiz description is revealing.
Is Paul Kersey really this naive?
The cool white guys are positioned to attack “[the] military base of a rogue country (strangely never identified), where it’s seeking to enrich Uranium”.
Gee, Paul. What country might this be?
Is this a joke?
The snowy mountains and the fiords give it away. The top gun gang attacked Norway.
I know what you are thinking, but did you see any mosques? No, of course not. It was Norway.
Trust me, I am a geography whiz.