@@guy-sl3kr colloquially, when people use "political" as a negative descriptor, what they really mean is "it makes me uncomfortable or challenges my status quo". they want to go back to talking about the topic without having to be reminded that the topic has serious impacts on some people. which, imo, is a really immature mindset. if people are involved in any capacity, it is going to be political. damn near everything is political. the food we eat, the land we live on, the air we breathe, the language we speak is political, because people affect and are affected by it. we can acknowledge that something is political without demanding that it be a heavy conversation, and similarly, we need to stop dismissing major issues as "not political" just because we don't want to dispel the fog of blissful ignorance.
It's the same thing with Video Games and this whole "leave politics out of our Video Games!" Crowd. Most Video Games that are criticized because of political messages had political messages in them since the beginning of these series. Those people just don't like that contemporary ideas found a way in their games.
I assumed the faceless, nameless "Enemy" was faceless and nameless specifically so that no matter WHO the audience was, no matter where the film was shown, that audience WASN'T the enemy. In a global market, it just makes sense not to outright vilify any potential audience demographic and lose out on their sweet, sweet currency.
@@randomjunkohyeah1 From my perspective it has to 100% be Iran, the inciting incident makes no sense otherwise, Iran is the only boogieman that the US is concerned about enriching uranium and Iran does have dense forests to its north and snowy peaks. Iran only has American F-14s in terms of fighters, but you could easily argue that someone is supplying them.
I am pretty sure "The Enemy" is Iran in this case, although it is never mentioned in this movie. It would have to be a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons, but is seeking nuclear weapons. The country would also have to have snow capped mountainous regions which Iran has a lot of. Finally, it would be a country which has 5th generation fighters which Iran could easily buy from the Russians. In this case, it looks like the enemy fighters are Su-57s made by Russian aircraft manufacturer Sukoi. It is common for enemies of the United States to typically purchase Russian equipment for their military.
@@FireTrainer92 only to us online people, the average American thinks we're doing great things in the "underdeveloped" (purposefully de-civilized) world.
I'm an aviation enthusiast. I enjoyed the living hell of Top Gun: Maverick when I saw it in an IMAX theater. It made me go back to DCS (Digital Combat Simulator, that realistic combat flight simulator) for a bit to learn some of the fighters featured in the film. Yet I do recognize it is, in the end, a blatant US pro-military imperialist propaganda. Heck even Lockheed Martin is an official partner of the movie especially given they designed the Mach 10-breaking Darkstar.
Good thing the real Lockheed Martin isn't stupid enough to try to make a plane that tries to carry a pilot to Mach 10 (and includes an ejector seat 🤦♂)...! Cuz you know: PHYSCIAL REALITY.
Flashing back to Honest Trailers describing the original Top Gun as "a military recruitment tool disguised as a gay romance disguised as an action movie."
I was completely confused who this character was until my dad mentioned the whole thing about how Maverick had been going out with some Admirals daughter in the first movie.
@@bowencreer3922 Sounds like classicism and misogyny to me, pretending a character without a university degree was worth less than a graduate, and looking right through the strong female lead because of her gender. :-(
I'm a pilot, I love everything about flying. The US military has the finest aircraft ever created. I had my chance to go into the Air Force. I couldn't do it. I didn't want to be a part of killing poor people to make some rich people richer. My Father was a mechanical engineer, he was offered a job with McDonald Douglas before he graduated college. He turned them down because he didn't want to build things that hurt people. I'm glad to be a little bit like my Dad. The Military Industrial Complex is a real thing. The US spends more on the military than the next 16 countries COMBINED. Think of all those resources could do other than killing.
No one forced you to sign up and you don't have to... Because others are doing it for you. Yeah, we spend a lot more on killing machines than everyone else because the second we stop, you know what happens? Ukraine. The sad reality of the world is that peace can only be achieved if you are ready for war.
It is insanity, the enormous amount of resources wasted on the military building ever more efficient weapons of mass murder to gain control of the world's resources!! The gun debate is the same. Its not about the right to own weapons or not, it's about why do we make the flucking things in the first place?
@@normalizedinsanity4873 If you want peace you gotta be ready for war. That simple. Don't have to like it. But opposing it only puts you on the wrong side of history.
My cousin dropped out of Officer Candidate School (Pensacola, Fl.) for all the reasons you listed. He caught hell from all his family and me (I was young) because at the time we didn't understand. This was back in the '90s, but to this day I commend him for following his moral principals and setting an example for me as well.
For being referenced so often, that's the most braindead, dishonest pseud essay I've ever read. He converted to liberalism as a 10 year old when a black soldier gave him a piece of gum. Plot twist, it was Emmet Till's dad, the one who was executed for raping a local Italian woman.
i wrote an essay about this last year and it's hard finding the balance between telling people an essay you're writing about an insidious part of pop culture while also trying not to harsh anyone's vibe because you just want to tell people about something you find interesting which also happens to be kind of fucked up
Sleep With Me 1993 Quentin Tarentino as a party guest shows up in the final third of the movie in a house party scene cameo where he and another dude talk Top Gun, Mav and Ice Man and the underlined gay vibes they are barely hiding. It is freaking hilarious still. Classic bit.
@@samuelniles3348 No. It's just part of the culture. You never heard the phrase it's not gay if it's underway? The jokes about Navy being the gayest is standard. And marines too. Pretty much most of the branches. Everyone just bags on the airforce because most of them end up at comfy desk jobs and they literally get extra pay if they have to stay in Army/Marine accomodations instead of a nice hotel with room service.
Fantastic commentary. I'm eager to see more of this series. As someone who is pretty much the exact age the military hoped the original Top Gun would impress, I'd like to add a couple comments about that movie. First off, you might have missed an important tie-in between Top Gun and your overall topic of copaganda. The reason the original Top Gun was a bit on the silly side plot-wise was because it wasn't actually a movie. It was a movie-length music video--deliberately so. MTV was only 5 years old when Top Gun came out, and was still playing actual music videos as its primary product. More importantly, Miami Vice was 2 years old when Top Gun was released. That show pioneered the music-video style of tv show, to massive success. That style was basically one cool scene after another with the music not just enhancing the scene, but instead being the main point. Top Gun was the first, and arguably most successful feature film to try the same style. Naturally that style wouldn't have aged well, so they had to have a smidge more plot in the sequel. Second, the original Top Gun wasn't just pro-military. It was every bit as nostalgic as--or even more so than--Maverick. The Reagan era was absolutely all about nostalgia. "Morning in America" was the MAGA of the time. For the generations older than my own, Top Gun was meant to evoke America's pride about WWII and the moon shot, along with memories of Rebel Without a Cause. "Remember that fighting overseas kept the Reds away from home. Remember the amazing tech, and our brave test pilots, who won the space race against the Soviets. Remember that the military gives needed purpose, so we don't lose the all-American rebels who are meant to be the best of us.", the movie said to our parents. "Even", the film added, "remember when we could enjoy homoeroticism all over our screens without thinking about actual homosexuality," it said to a population desperate to pretend AIDS would go away if we just ignored sick gay people hard enough. And yup, all those messages were just as fascist at their core. The difference is that in the mid-80s, those messages were wildly popular, and believed by a clear majority.
Thanks for the perspective. It's really insightful to read this from someone who was the target demographic from the original and lived through all of the context. I think we forget about MTV a lot, when it was so massively influential on pop culture at the time. Unfortunately, I despair that a lot of that messaging is somehow still popular considering that this movie has gotten a ridiculous amount of accolades and financial success.
This is why I dont go for over patriotic / war movies as much. Im Mexican American and was a kid during the Busch years. I have nostalgia for shows & cartoons of the era. But I distinctly remember the racism, xenophobia, & homophobia of the time. It was messed up & ignorance dominated popular thought. So when people idolize the past as something perfect or an ideal to return to, usually Im the first to balk at that. And thats why for all the memes, all the rave reviews by critics, I just cant get behind Top Gun nor will I ever watch Maverick. Its copaganda that’ll fuell the imagination of more idiots that make the world a worse place to live in.
Interesting. As someone who watched the first Top Gun when it came out, I thoroughly enjoyed the most recent one. The movie never showed the enemy. As an audience, we never know who it is supposed to be. Without identifying the enemy, the central story was able to focus more clearly on the themes of loss, friendship, teamwork, forgiveness, and dealing with the realities and challenges of growing older. I found the last point particularly poignant. I also understand why the elderly man next to me shed a tear. I recommend watching it for these points as well as for the visual impact.
i hate this movie. not because i've seen it, but because i work in a movie theater and audiences for maverick left more of a mess on the regular than the crowds for minions: rise of gru.
Ohh boy hoo you still hate this movie after it’s out of threatens still? Jesus dude get some help am sorry for the mess but I guess your okay with marvel fans then. 😂😢
@@daltonbedore8396 no the smooth Brian’s are people who enjoy the marvels and the Disney remakes with the whole modern audience crap that we were told that’s what we need and that doesn’t appeal to anybody. This movie was made to entertain first and enjoyed by me a 24 year who has no interest in the military have you seen the commander in chief Biden you think I want to serve with that asshole in office and military recruitment numbers have been low for the navy and Air Force who’s been trying to push the woke agenda which o believe is propaganda for smooth brains anti military and anti guns morons who believe black rifles are scary 🤪🤪🤣.
It's crazy that movies like Battle of Lake Changjin are treated like "jingoist propaganda" (yeah, no shit, the movie comissioned by the CCP Ministry of Propaganda is propaganda), but Top Gun is talked about as just an action movie, COD has "no politics", etc.
When I was in middle school (around 1997) I bought a mix tape with the Top Gun soundtrack on one side (and the Billy Joel Album Running on Ice on the other) at a garage sale. I absolutely loved it and played it until it eventually wore thin. I didn't see the actual movie until I was a senior in high school, and it was...okay. The casual sexism stood out to me even then, and the mission and the enemy were unclear--I thought just to me, that I'd missed something, so I'm glad to know that it was kind of deliberately ambiguous.
Highly recommend the "Theaters of War" documentary referenced in this video, it goes into what Skip Intro talks about but with a much finer detail and has interviews with Oliver Stone on how much untalked dealings goes on with the Military when making movies.
So, couple of quick notes: "the enemy" in the beginning of top gun was actually intended as Libyan. The beginning photo incident that opens top gun is based on a real event between US Navy pilots and Libyan fighter pilots in the early 1980s
Very well written and produced. The title says it all. It seems dangerous to have a military motivated by such a facile group of emotional devotions that the film portrays. You brought real depth to the topic.
38:57 I hate when people describe any piece of media as “apolitical” ,every work of media is political even if I wasn’t intended, a little piece of the creators views will have to be inserted no matter what because everything is political. It’s especially when ridiculous here as its a war movie. wars are up there as one of the most political things ever, and it’s something that can’t be portrayed without picking a side , you are anti-war or pro-war ,and there’s very little room for in-betweenness . Its always only apolitical if the speaker agrees with the politics , and while this does happen on the left it’s way more common on the right , because they view there ideology as the default , it’s “natural” and everything else as a pervasion.
Question? Would you ever make a video on the birth of a nation? I've heard of it's cultural significance, and seen a couple of it's truly awful scenes, but I wonder if there's more that I could learn about it? Love your vids!
I never understood the Top Gun hype. It always struck me as corny nonsense. And after watching the trailer for this new one with the speech in front of the giant American flag, I thought it was going to be a recruiting ad. Good to see someone discussing this.
That just you 😂 the first movie made 360+ million dollars in 1986 by now is closer to 800 million dollars and the new movie Maverick made 1.480+ billion dollars so a lot of people love this movies and they have huge impact on the pop culture.
I know this isn't the point, and I'm only repeating stuff I've heard elsewhere since i'm not a film buff, but the side-by-side shots are really showing the "films now are harder to watch" common complaint - in terms of poor lighting, framing, etc. Almost every shot seems to illustrate this. 1:07 is a frame I picked randomly but is a great example. The top shot is clear and readable, with the light sources and framing chosen purposefully and with the poses giving us information about the situation and characters. The bottom shot, it's hard to see what's going on or who anyone is. Like they were trying to go for very sharp contrasty light but it's just not working- we can see more of the background character on the left than the characters in the foreground. I'm not familiar with the movie but the bottom one has to be the remake - if it were the original, who would bother remaking it?
@@troubadour723 yea i think it's this odd push for "realism" or whatever the fuck. not sure who started it or which movie with poor shots and lightings got so popular that other filmmakers went, "now let's do it like that too" but i do hear that "but it's realistic!!" talking point more and more often these days -- from both people who supposedly work in producing and critics.
@@mophead_xu it's so funny to me that "more realistic" in cinema seems like it should mean "let's create a more accurate portrayal," but so many directors use it to mean "let's make this movie look like garbage." Cinema hasn't gotten more realistic, but rather it's become "hyper-real."
@@illiterate467 in their obsessed chase for realism they've lost what "being realistic" even mean, it seems. _if_ anyone calling the shots ever understood what it's supposed to mean at all. 💀💀💀
Not sure if someone said it already but In the original Top Gun the enemy was supposed to be North Korea however since the US and NK were negotiating at the time the military thought it would be a bad idea to name NK as the enemy so they just replaced all mention of Korea with "the enemy"
I think the book "How We Decide" really captures the difference between "don't think just do" and "if you're making a split second decision and actually have a lot of training and expertise and background knowledge, you should trust your gut because your prefrontal cortex can't process information fast enough while the rest of your brain already knows that information that you've honed over a long period of time". I think the fast way to say the latter thing is "don't hesitate, trust your training" (i'm sure you could probably shorten it even more, but "don't think, just do" is a very bad phrase. Sometimes even in an emergency situation you need to pause for a second before leaping to the first thing you think to do, so maybe just "trust your training")
someone gets hit by a car what do you do, dont think just do will tell you pull them out of the street as fast as you can, reality is you should NOT move them you could make it way worse, make sure people can see you and call others over both to call the ambulance and to help redirect traffic see if anyone has anything to help stop bleeding, but do not move them, some thinking may use up a bit of limited time to help but trying to help the wrong way can be deadly
I love how "pro-military" it's made out to be yet it celebrates a pilot blatantly disobeying orders and showing complete disregard for the military chain of command. So it's like the audience gets to have it both ways. But at least they're sticking it to the "bad guys". This film and its enormous success is a HUGE step backwards. By the way, you left out how apparently a giant chunk of the plot to Maverick is Star Wars.
18:52 Journalist: “I can’t wait to go to this premiere of a movie about airplanes, heavily sponsored and influenced by air-force* *Airplanes at Premiere* Journalist: “Holy shit we’re under attack!” Like bro, what did u expect?
Yeah how dare that man have the instinct that he was under attack after a recently started war that the US is involved in while standing on a aircraft carrier as fighters suddenly fly over head.
Год назад+4
they've gone all the way down memory lane, but failed to take my breath away.
Love the commentary, been waiting for a propaganda analysis of the Top Guns in the wake of the new one. But the funniest thing about the new Top Gun for me is that it is an amalgamation of three missions from Ace Combat 7. It has the trench run and precision bombing a small target ala Star Wars and the getting nuked by missiles if you go too high. Also the vaporwave vibe of your monologue set this one is *chefs kiss*
My first thought watching "Top Gun: Mavirck" was "this is an 'Ace Combat' fan fic with 'Top Gun' slapped on it," based on the fact that the mission reminded me of several "Ace Combat" missions. Also, the enemy made more sense when I thought it was Belka (the villain from "Ace Combat 5"), because they'd have F-14A's, Su-54's (I'm sorry, I meant "Fifth Generation Fighters"), a Uranium Enrichment plant for nukes in violation of the "no nukes" policy created (because of Belka) and could be brought down by someone deciding to fly an F/A-18 or an F-14A in a mission intended to be flown with an F-35.
The "don't think, just do" thing is an actual martial arts concept, the very same "Ultra Instinct" that Goku uses, when i heard it i thought this movie was going to go full anime! PS: and by "full anime" i mean that the we would have seen the F14 piloted by Rooster and Maverick being shot down by the enemy, they manage to eject and find themselves grounded in enemy territory, but out of the blue the Darkstar comes to their rescue, and we have a little exposition from the HQ on the aircraft carrier explaining that the Darkstar had been upgraded into a two seater VTOL manned/unmanned, and that they sent it in on autopilot; Maverick is injured and cannot pilot, Rooster however is still fine, so he puts Maverick in the back seat and proceeds to pilot the Darkstar himself. The new fighter reveals itself to be hard to tame, but being the new protagonist Rooster quickly masters its full potential and capabilities, and proceeds to do crazy stunts, ending the fight against 11 enemy Su57 by getting a multi-lock on all of them and shooting down all of them at once with a single and massive salvo of missiles.
Top Gun: Maverick has the exact same story line and phrases as Star Wars: New Hope. 1. training to fly through a tight trench run 2. cannot fly above trench run due to guns ontop of trench 3. training to shoot guided missle into very small target hitting a core target to disable attack 4. guided missle system gets damaged and Maverick says "dont think" similar to force ghost Ben Kenobi "use the force" 5. missle hits target at an "impossibly" sharp angle
i've greatly enjoyed this copaganda series, and i'm surprised it hasn't garnered WAY more views yet. to be honest i didn't know this latest video was in that series and i wasn't particularly interested in the movie. maybe put Copaganda Series in brackets or something for weirdos like me?
It's not anti-intellectual to trust one's instincts and to learn by experience. And to be unafraid to push boundaries and yes, break a few commonly-held assumptions about what's possible or not. And just to make sure you understand it, actual naval aviation and the air force require a TON of reading, higher reasoning skills, mathematics, and an understanding of exactly how the extremely complicated machines they use work. They're not anti-intellectual by any means and wouldn't promote that in a movie they have any say over.
See I would have read don't think about as to not over think things. Like a medic they have to make snap judgements or else whatever chance of saving life could be lost. They can't go over ever possibly angel. They have to see and use what has been drilled into them when they were training and time on the job and do.
yea i think Hot shots: part deux is more my style of tribute to Top Gun. it was a cheesy movie and parodying it is way more fun than that being into it after you turn 13
I didn't have any "nostalgia" for the film as I don't live in the US and never watched the first one until a day before the second one. Still absolutely loved the second one tho, watched it twice in theatre which I never did for any other movie
The reason of this movie existence is because of the movement that aims to depoliticize artwork criticism (One of the notorious example of this is the entire anime fandom like the ones with NGNL where people tend to ignore its outright phedophilia just because the world building and story is "good") Im glad that you put artistic merit aside in order to tell to people how worrying this kind of work this is.
Arguably, the _only_ anti-war film is Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, which never shows the military or the atrocities committed by them. It is about opposing war on principle, not because we have been emotionally manipulated into doing so. Everyone should see this masterpiece film.
28:02 - While I understand and respect where you're going with this overall, that's not why he threw the book away. He threw it away because every pilot in there already knew the book, cover-to-cover. And, do did "the enemy".
You finally talk about a movie! My dad is a huge Tom Cruise fan. I personally like Top Gun: Maverick more than the original Top Gun, but mostly because the romantic subplot doesn't have ethical issues like the original Top Gun. I also like that while the enemy isn't named, there's more of an actual plot in Top Gun: Maverick. Also: Please look up the trope "Backed By The Pentagon" on TV Tropes.
15:26 I always why Playboy of all places seems to have gotten some of the best, under-the-radar interviews of the late 20th century. They always seem to pop up in places you don't expect
At 12:55, you mentioned how you believe the mysterious antagonist flying against our Top Gun heroes are Soviet pilots. Now, they may have been portrayed as Soviet-made MiGs, possibly flown by Soviet trained pilots. However, If at any point in the 1980s, American combat aircraft had shot down and killed Soviet pilots anywhere in the world, we would have wound up in a shooting war with the Soviet Union which would have quickly escalated to WWIII. Now, that said, it's likely that the adversaries engaged were a semi-autonomous Soviet puppet state in the Mediterranean region. By the way, love the video, great points you're making.
i hate how those guys have the nerve, the audacity to claim this movie isn't about the real world while picturing some very realistic planes they actually borrowed from the military!!! what do you mean it's NOT ABOUT THE REAL WORLD? you worked with the military!!! the real one!!!!
Remember when Kingsman had a scene where a guy slaughters a church congregation and it was played as a fun joke? Then when a guy actually shot up a church congregation and Christians pointed to that movie y'all said it's just a movie? Funny how you guys flip when it suits you...
@@optillian4182 Easy. Napoleon tried taking over Europe, leading to the Napoleonic Wars which were so devastating it resulted in Europe setting up a kind of "UN" to try and prevent something like this from happening, all sides agreed to certain borders and to basically leave each other alone as they all scrambled for Africa and Asia. Not only did this NOT work to fully prevent wars as German reunification saw several wars, its implementation actually led to such an interconnected mess of "alliances" and "guarantees" that when Franz Duke Ferdinand was assassinated, it dragged pretty much everybody in. Then there was the League of Nations. Same idea. Prevent wars. Same situation. The desire for peaceful resolutions allowed tyrants to rise up and bully other countries until they were powerful enough to, literally, try to take over the planet, and in part, US isolationism made it worse because our lack of involvement early on made it so the Soviets were not only more involved, but wound up with more land in Europe that they proceeded to abuse and rule over for decades after the war. Essentially, you NEED a police force because as cute and nice and lovely as it sounds to live in a world where the US doesn't have to spend billions on killing machines that can kill better than China or Russia's killing machines... Let's be real here... it's hippy nonsense that requires people stop being people.
The funny irony is that the "mission" of this movie is based on is in Ace Combat 7, that even have Top Gun Maverick DLC, but the story is way more anti-war, the fear of the weapons that we created and how our superiors not give a fuck about us, sure, it have ending more optimistic than Project Wingman, another recent combat fighter simulator, but all the global communication satellite network is gone, destroyed, and both side of the conflict are nearly destroyed by the weapons that they try to control, also in the mission you really need to think, you would crash or fail the mission, and your actions really have consequences, terrible consequences for the world.
Also Ace Combat 7 was all about drones replacing pilots, and they followed trough on it instead of just some babble at the beginning. They plagiarized ace combat 7 completely
@@MaticTheProto It funny because those same drones turns against both nations half way the story, after they destroy the global satellite communication network, becoming rogue, and began to attack those nations, making them almost a wasteland.
fucking incredible video. i literally watched this movie last night and was stunned by the insidious and dishonest politics of the film, and i felt crazy because i hadn't seen anyone talk about it
Criminal Minds had been my go to back ground noise show for years until it got pulled from Netflix where I'm at, and I don't think I've actually really watched an episode of it.
Maverick's dad did not take part in either operation menu or Freedom Deal by virtue of his being dead before that. November 1965 was just after the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley and US aircraft were bombing NVA and VC camps and munition and storage areas in Cambodia, part of an effort to shut down the Ho Chi Mhin. So that's the secret, Duke Mitchel died flying over Cambodia when he engaged in a desperate effort to defend his fellow pilots against MiG's who had come out to intercept them.
Hey, I was thinking about your series the other day and I noticed you lacked the ultimate Copaganda show of the 21 century: 24. This was a show that pretty much defined the war on terror for several years. Being used to justify everything from illegal detention and torture to the actual invasion of Iraq! I mean the thud thud thud of the clock was presented as the reality of how the war was being fought(and how it should be fought). Every objection or call for calm consideration was met with "Do you want the Terrorists to win?!" As if the West was always 24 hours away from total destruction. Few shows have had the impact and influence on our daily lives as 24 and the adventures of Jack Bauer. AND ITS OBJECTIVELY A BAD SHOW! They never lean into the fact that every episode was supposed to be one hour following the next one. Jack Bauer should have been a wreck at the end of the 24 hours. So Damaged and exhausted that he can't lift his gun. Yet he is always ready able to stop the terrorists at the last second. I mean the show tells you when he will succeed in the title: After 24 hours are almost up.
I don't understand how someone can watch top gun and not see that it is pure propaganda. And my brother in christ it worked, double the defense spending, what an awesome movie
Love how you politicized the fact it’s a nameless enemy. It sure but it feels like you just want to trigger yourself at that point. They aren’t dehumanizing the enemy it’s purposely made with no specific enemy because guess what, it’s easier to market the movie across the entire world that way. SMH
It also takes away any nuance of how the US military acts and how they fight real actual people, often people who are innocent casualties or targeted for ulterior motives. It is inherently political as essentially it white washes the nuances of reality. Also its called the US military, its a military, its a government body, obviously everything surrounding it is political.
I prefer to think I was watching Top Gun: A New Hope. Any connections to the original are cringe fodder. Any character building from the first is gone. The 'new pilots' don't remind me of real Navy Pilots. The way the entire mission, one of this 'magnitude', is under supervision of a single person with an agenda. I could go on but the movie did it for me.
Maverick’s first call is to save the jobs of his military colleagues, who wouldn’t actually be fired, from a guy who wants to use drones, which is actually a good idea, and he does it by disintegrating their prototype. The mission is stupid, the characters don’t make sense, but one thing is for sure: the US military has good, strong people whose only fault is that they sometimes disagree on how they will do the right thing. DONGGG~~
Interesting video! Although I do think the film can be a rebuttal to fascism. Here are a few points that you and anyone else can disagree or agree over. 1)typically the right wing media fails to discuss what makes a live good/bad. I’ve seen those reviews by crowder, Shapiro, etc. they aren’t discussing the story, the acting, in so much that it “feels pro-American”. 2)this film promotes masculinity positively; something fascism can’t do. Cruise dosnt force Jennifer Connelly into a relationship as the previous movie does. The men and women respect each other. The father-son relationship talks about grief, regrets. Val Kilmer’ ascend is heartbreaking as both he and tom show their vulnerabilities. As far as strength goes, maverick didn’t think that goose’s son CANT succeed it’s that he didn’t want an accident happening. So it’s a level of care that is complex and caring. Fascism can’t stand this. Strength means being stubborn, logical, and decisive. Emotions are for pussies. Men dominate women as that is their natural place. Also, the inclusion of diverse Americans as pilots would be criticized by fascists. This is a common set of beliefs among fascists.
Deconstructing things which weren't actually that bad is actually doing less of a service to the truth than whitewashing what actually WAS bad about them. Now, I wasn't born until the late 80s, so I have no first-hand nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s. There were problems back then; asbestos, two major wars, drugs, smoking just about everywhere, very little in the way of automotive safety, and of course, racism. But that misses the reason why people are nostalgic for those times; they were still good for other reasons, because they were a huge improvement over the preceding years, and over the course of those years, things unarguably got better for most people. They were a time of great economic prosperity, on the whole. They saw the civil rights movement win more civil rights and liberties than ever before or since. They had low unemployment, low inflation, and things got safer and less polluted as the years went on. These days, it's hard to say that things have gotten better for most people since the year 2000, even if I ignore COVID-19. Between 1950 and 1970, a lot of good things happened and life got better for a huge number of Americans, and people actually began to address what wasn't good in those years. Not sure why I listed asbestos as the first really bad thing back then.
In addition to those ops you mentioned, given the Top Gun subject matter, I think Operation Barrel Roll is worth mentioning. It involved extensive bombing of Laos, ostensibly in support of the Royal Lao Army in its fight with the Pathet Lao communist insurgents. In total 260 million bombs were dropped on Laos, making it the most intensively bombed country in history. Cumulatively, between all the cross-border operations during the Vietnam War, Cambodia and Laos saw more bombs dropped on each of them individually than Germany and Japan combined during the Second World War. Clearly, as the film suggests, the US military saw Vietnam's borders with these countries as nothing but arbitrary lines on a map. EDIT: I went down a rabbit hole whilst researching this comment and happened upon this fact: during Operation Barrel Roll the equivalent of one planeload of bombs was dropped on Laos every eight minutes. Twenty-four hours a day. Continuously. For over eight years.
40:06 hard dislike. Umberto Eco describes 14 criteria, that in their RADICAL expression of A NUMBER OF THEM are common to fascism, like nowadays Ruscism (PutinHuilo manages to check almost all 14 points). Every country idealises their military personnel and needs some form of patriotism. "It's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck him out, the brute!' - But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot." A fascism sees their "heroic sacrifice" up to deification for the "greater good" as important - however, not all fascisms. Fascism is a very versatile ideology; Silone, after Bondy, said "the fascists of tomorrow won't say: 'We are fascist!', but 'We are Anti-fascist'". That does not mean that every Anti-Fascist is a Fascist in disguise, but that fascism is so malleable that it will use anti-fascist reasoning behind its actions - e.g. "De-Nazification of the Ukraine" (Far-Right Ukrainian parties got 2.6% of the vote in the last election). Claiming systems, let alone politicians, were "fascist" because they fulfill some of Eco's criteria out of context and far from radicalised is exactly that "Wolf!"-crying that allowed the first Fascism in Europe since 1975 to start the first war of conquest in Europe since 1941 flying under the RaDaR. Because there was so much hyperventilation of "fascism in America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", nobody paid attention to Ruscism that fascisised at least since 2014, with its brain-washing youth organisations like the "Yunarmiya" (to which the USA has no pendant), full control of every aspect of the press and information (to which the USA has no pendant), an unopposed campaign to build up the amorphous "West" as the enemy both stronger and weaker ("woke") as Russia (to which the USA only came even close during the McCarthy-witch hunts)...... It is dangerous to cry: "Wolf!!!", when the wolf in question in the grand scheme of things is but a Yorkshire Terrier. It is irresponsible to do so while a real wolf resp. bear lurks right behind the border and now has begun to actively attack the first allied country. Top Gun are dumb, mindless action flicks; South Korea made an action film about fighter pilots with much more substance. It is advertisement; whoever calls it "propaganda" is lucky to never have experienced true war propaganda. What it is not is "fascist".
@@Derpderpson123 I wouldn't go that far, but +Skip Intro has some really, really problematic takes. Talking about "fascism" while Europe is attacked by a real, card-carrying fascism (#ruscism) that'd have been lauded in the Montreux conference however has real-world consequences.
34:28 Sometimes I wonder why some people do what they do. Airplanes are not made from steel and the fact that Pauline Kael can't tell them apart maybe is a good reason for her not to talk about the movie. She is not forced to review each movie. I agree the movie is not good in the classical sense but she is clearly out of her league. The horny part could be the reason some people were unable to follow the movie, they were thinking about the "projected erotic undertones" . Claiming the movie was pay by the Navy is an interesting affirmation, and it's mentioned multiple times.
My favorite thing about the new Top Gun is it's all about Maverick teaching pilots how to do the Trench Run on the Death Star. Edit: My second favorite thing is the ending is Iron Eagle without Dio and Queen on the soundtrack.
It's unquestionably Iran, they are the only other nation in the world to ever use F14s, and contrary to what most people know, they have incredibly cold and mountainous terrain in many places, particularly north on the Caspian sea.
To a colored person and I was 16 when this came out we viewed it as another white boy hype film. We had hip hop giving us poor and colored people art balls and a real view as most of us were war babies parents who served in WW2 Vietnam Korea and got the real stories. I saw the film as pure entertainment and my dude Tom cruise new movie. But white right hype from 70s-90s where eagles dare war games Rambo commando was all how badass the white boy is.human shield Scorpio the list goes on and on. I just got popcorn 🍿 a large drink and enjoyed the show
It really is ironic how this types of movies insisting that they aren't political is part of what makes their political messages so insidious
It's not surprising, since they're already dealing in myths anyway.
It's insidious because insisting that it's not political is part of its political agitation for the status quo.
What does it even mean for something to be "not political"? Makes no sense
@@guy-sl3kr colloquially, when people use "political" as a negative descriptor, what they really mean is "it makes me uncomfortable or challenges my status quo". they want to go back to talking about the topic without having to be reminded that the topic has serious impacts on some people.
which, imo, is a really immature mindset. if people are involved in any capacity, it is going to be political. damn near everything is political. the food we eat, the land we live on, the air we breathe, the language we speak is political, because people affect and are affected by it. we can acknowledge that something is political without demanding that it be a heavy conversation, and similarly, we need to stop dismissing major issues as "not political" just because we don't want to dispel the fog of blissful ignorance.
It's the same thing with Video Games and this whole "leave politics out of our Video Games!" Crowd.
Most Video Games that are criticized because of political messages had political messages in them since the beginning of these series. Those people just don't like that contemporary ideas found a way in their games.
I assumed the faceless, nameless "Enemy" was faceless and nameless specifically so that no matter WHO the audience was, no matter where the film was shown, that audience WASN'T the enemy.
In a global market, it just makes sense not to outright vilify any potential audience demographic and lose out on their sweet, sweet currency.
tbf, none of those two explanations really excludes the other.
I just assumed it was the US.
@@troubadour723 That's reasonable.
I will say, showing that the enemy has a very snowy pronounced mountain range in their territory does kinda narrow down who it could be
@@randomjunkohyeah1 From my perspective it has to 100% be Iran, the inciting incident makes no sense otherwise, Iran is the only boogieman that the US is concerned about enriching uranium and Iran does have dense forests to its north and snowy peaks. Iran only has American F-14s in terms of fighters, but you could easily argue that someone is supplying them.
I am pretty sure "The Enemy" is Iran in this case, although it is never mentioned in this movie. It would have to be a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons, but is seeking nuclear weapons. The country would also have to have snow capped mountainous regions which Iran has a lot of. Finally, it would be a country which has 5th generation fighters which Iran could easily buy from the Russians. In this case, it looks like the enemy fighters are Su-57s made by Russian aircraft manufacturer Sukoi. It is common for enemies of the United States to typically purchase Russian equipment for their military.
Yes, also, Iran used to fly F-14s.
I thought it was suposed to be the Netherlands
@@nnotcircuit010 Luxembourg, actually.
@@DrZaius3141 That makes more sense
Thank goodness, I was afraid they were going to war on the christmas again
the first movie rehabilitated the u.s. military’s image after vietnam, and the purpose of this one was to do the same after the iraq war.
Didn't do a good job because Iraq and Afghanistan is constantly in the public conscience
@@FireTrainer92 Doesn't happen overnight dude.
I think the objective of the movie was to tell a story. Just ask the filmmakers.
@@FireTrainer92 only to us online people, the average American thinks we're doing great things in the "underdeveloped" (purposefully de-civilized) world.
@@FireTrainer92 you are being overly charitable with how much the general american public cares about anyone outside their borders.
I'm an aviation enthusiast. I enjoyed the living hell of Top Gun: Maverick when I saw it in an IMAX theater. It made me go back to DCS (Digital Combat Simulator, that realistic combat flight simulator) for a bit to learn some of the fighters featured in the film.
Yet I do recognize it is, in the end, a blatant US pro-military imperialist propaganda. Heck even Lockheed Martin is an official partner of the movie especially given they designed the Mach 10-breaking Darkstar.
Their logo is even on the nose of Darkstar in the movie xD
@@Warszawski_Modernizm Well, who else would design a son of SR-71 but the company that designed the SR-71.
And all that for a small cameo of the F-35 in the opening montage
Ace Combat fans watched Top Gun Maverick with a hard on tbqh
Good thing the real Lockheed Martin isn't stupid enough to try to make a plane that tries to carry a pilot to Mach 10 (and includes an ejector seat 🤦♂)...! Cuz you know: PHYSCIAL REALITY.
Flashing back to Honest Trailers describing the original Top Gun as "a military recruitment tool disguised as a gay romance disguised as an action movie."
Based on the anti-intellectualism thing, remember that the love interest went from an astrophysicist to a bartender.
I was completely confused who this character was until my dad mentioned the whole thing about how Maverick had been going out with some Admirals daughter in the first movie.
Business owner/entrepreneur.
Never saw either- but always assumed Val kilmer was the love interest, and miles teller filled that hole- I mean role for the sequel
A business owner with her own boat she sails herself and has a classic car. What are you doing?
@@bowencreer3922 Sounds like classicism and misogyny to me, pretending a character without a university degree was worth less than a graduate, and looking right through the strong female lead because of her gender. :-(
I'm a pilot, I love everything about flying. The US military has the finest aircraft ever created. I had my chance to go into the Air Force. I couldn't do it. I didn't want to be a part of killing poor people to make some rich people richer. My Father was a mechanical engineer, he was offered a job with McDonald Douglas before he graduated college. He turned them down because he didn't want to build things that hurt people. I'm glad to be a little bit like my Dad. The Military Industrial Complex is a real thing. The US spends more on the military than the next 16 countries COMBINED. Think of all those resources could do other than killing.
No one forced you to sign up and you don't have to... Because others are doing it for you.
Yeah, we spend a lot more on killing machines than everyone else because the second we stop, you know what happens?
Ukraine.
The sad reality of the world is that peace can only be achieved if you are ready for war.
The US also almost entirely funds NATO by itself. Europe isn't going to do shit against Russia or China -- they rely on the US for military aid.
It is insanity, the enormous amount of resources wasted on the military building ever more efficient weapons of mass murder to gain control of the world's resources!! The gun debate is the same. Its not about the right to own weapons or not, it's about why do we make the flucking things in the first place?
@@normalizedinsanity4873 If you want peace you gotta be ready for war. That simple. Don't have to like it. But opposing it only puts you on the wrong side of history.
My cousin dropped out of Officer Candidate School (Pensacola, Fl.) for all the reasons you listed. He caught hell from all his family and me (I was young) because at the time we didn't understand. This was back in the '90s, but to this day I commend him for following his moral principals and setting an example for me as well.
SkipIntro: "Everyone in this movie is educated to be a hero..."
Me, who has read Umberto Eco's 14 features of fascism: "Oh no."
yeah this is very well structured to set off your fascism alarm bells
@@nerdywolverine8640 also the constant assertion that The Enemy is both superior and inferior
For being referenced so often, that's the most braindead, dishonest pseud essay I've ever read. He converted to liberalism as a 10 year old when a black soldier gave him a piece of gum. Plot twist, it was Emmet Till's dad, the one who was executed for raping a local Italian woman.
First two, I thought it was coincidence, then I thought this guy read Umberto Eco.
America has a lot of nerve declaring enemies while oppressing domestically for centuries @@amiablereaper
i wrote an essay about this last year and it's hard finding the balance between telling people an essay you're writing about an insidious part of pop culture while also trying not to harsh anyone's vibe because you just want to tell people about something you find interesting which also happens to be kind of fucked up
How did the essay go?
Delicate balance necessary that I've given up on years ago due to the insidious nature of propaganda conditioning pre-disposing the masses to mierda
"The first top gun has a ton of repressed homoerotic sexual tension"
Thank you!
Quentin Tarantino have very similar interpretation
Sleep With Me 1993
Quentin Tarentino as a party guest shows up in the final third of the movie in a house party scene cameo where he and another dude talk Top Gun, Mav and Ice Man and the underlined gay vibes they are barely hiding. It is freaking hilarious still. Classic bit.
Is it a rarely heard topic?
Tony Scott was gay so I doubt it was repressed
@@samuelniles3348 No. It's just part of the culture. You never heard the phrase it's not gay if it's underway? The jokes about Navy being the gayest is standard. And marines too. Pretty much most of the branches. Everyone just bags on the airforce because most of them end up at comfy desk jobs and they literally get extra pay if they have to stay in Army/Marine accomodations instead of a nice hotel with room service.
Fantastic commentary. I'm eager to see more of this series.
As someone who is pretty much the exact age the military hoped the original Top Gun would impress, I'd like to add a couple comments about that movie. First off, you might have missed an important tie-in between Top Gun and your overall topic of copaganda. The reason the original Top Gun was a bit on the silly side plot-wise was because it wasn't actually a movie. It was a movie-length music video--deliberately so. MTV was only 5 years old when Top Gun came out, and was still playing actual music videos as its primary product. More importantly, Miami Vice was 2 years old when Top Gun was released. That show pioneered the music-video style of tv show, to massive success. That style was basically one cool scene after another with the music not just enhancing the scene, but instead being the main point. Top Gun was the first, and arguably most successful feature film to try the same style. Naturally that style wouldn't have aged well, so they had to have a smidge more plot in the sequel.
Second, the original Top Gun wasn't just pro-military. It was every bit as nostalgic as--or even more so than--Maverick. The Reagan era was absolutely all about nostalgia. "Morning in America" was the MAGA of the time. For the generations older than my own, Top Gun was meant to evoke America's pride about WWII and the moon shot, along with memories of Rebel Without a Cause. "Remember that fighting overseas kept the Reds away from home. Remember the amazing tech, and our brave test pilots, who won the space race against the Soviets. Remember that the military gives needed purpose, so we don't lose the all-American rebels who are meant to be the best of us.", the movie said to our parents. "Even", the film added, "remember when we could enjoy homoeroticism all over our screens without thinking about actual homosexuality," it said to a population desperate to pretend AIDS would go away if we just ignored sick gay people hard enough.
And yup, all those messages were just as fascist at their core. The difference is that in the mid-80s, those messages were wildly popular, and believed by a clear majority.
Thanks for the perspective. It's really insightful to read this from someone who was the target demographic from the original and lived through all of the context. I think we forget about MTV a lot, when it was so massively influential on pop culture at the time. Unfortunately, I despair that a lot of that messaging is somehow still popular considering that this movie has gotten a ridiculous amount of accolades and financial success.
Still are
"Who are we attacking again?"
"Anyone."
This is why I dont go for over patriotic / war movies as much. Im Mexican American and was a kid during the Busch years. I have nostalgia for shows & cartoons of the era. But I distinctly remember the racism, xenophobia, & homophobia of the time. It was messed up & ignorance dominated popular thought. So when people idolize the past as something perfect or an ideal to return to, usually Im the first to balk at that. And thats why for all the memes, all the rave reviews by critics, I just cant get behind Top Gun nor will I ever watch Maverick. Its copaganda that’ll fuell the imagination of more idiots that make the world a worse place to live in.
These movies trade on myths, which is what the Reagan/Bush era was all about.
LMAO "Busch years"
Interesting. As someone who watched the first Top Gun when it came out, I thoroughly enjoyed the most recent one. The movie never showed the enemy. As an audience, we never know who it is supposed to be. Without identifying the enemy, the central story was able to focus more clearly on the themes of loss, friendship, teamwork, forgiveness, and dealing with the realities and challenges of growing older. I found the last point particularly poignant. I also understand why the elderly man next to me shed a tear. I recommend watching it for these points as well as for the visual impact.
I understand and respect your statement. Nostalgia is dangerous if we are not careful.
The myth began before formal inception of america in 1776 with genocide of indigenous & enslavement of stolen Africans @@troubadour723
You gotta do 24
I'm not sure if you've covered it already, but it's crazy. The post-9/11 super counterterrorism cop
That was one of the most manipulative TV shows I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot.
@@troubadour723 Yeah dude sure it is.
i hate this movie. not because i've seen it, but because i work in a movie theater and audiences for maverick left more of a mess on the regular than the crowds for minions: rise of gru.
Oh man, this is actually really interesting input. People that leave huge messes are usually super privileged asshats.
@@lizc6393 the exact smooth rain audience this movie was carefully crafted by the Military Industrial Complex to appeal to
Ohh boy hoo you still hate this movie after it’s out of threatens still? Jesus dude get some help am sorry for the mess but I guess your okay with marvel fans then. 😂😢
@@daltonbedore8396 no the smooth Brian’s are people who enjoy the marvels and the Disney remakes with the whole modern audience crap that we were told that’s what we need and that doesn’t appeal to anybody. This movie was made to entertain first and enjoyed by me a 24 year who has no interest in the military have you seen the commander in chief Biden you think I want to serve with that asshole in office and military recruitment numbers have been low for the navy and Air Force who’s been trying to push the woke agenda which o believe is propaganda for smooth brains anti military and anti guns morons who believe black rifles are scary 🤪🤪🤣.
shows you what kind of people are fans😢 unthinking and disrespectful
Based on the former air force members I've met, if someone said "don't think, just do", their response would be "shut up Yoda"
"Don't think, just obey" is a better slogan for the US Empire
Kind of a funny thing, but Top Gun Maverick has nothing do to with the TOPGUN school.
The first movie actually had something to do with it
Yes correct it’s a sequel to the original movie and as the title would suggest….. this movie is about MAVERICK
War is inherently political. You can’t make a war movie without sending some political message
You seem to be unfamiliar with the difference between domestic and international politics.
@@alexanderphilip1809 War involves both domestic and international politics which are deeply intertwined
@@alexanderphilip1809 and you seem to lack any education
I enjoy your videos so much and I get genuinely happy every time I see there’s a new one
It's crazy that movies like Battle of Lake Changjin are treated like "jingoist propaganda" (yeah, no shit, the movie comissioned by the CCP Ministry of Propaganda is propaganda), but Top Gun is talked about as just an action movie, COD has "no politics", etc.
And there are Chinese movies with anti-war messages. Like 1942.
"The enemy is too strong and too weak" "action for action's sake..." oh I've read my share on fascism to know where this is going....
When I was in middle school (around 1997) I bought a mix tape with the Top Gun soundtrack on one side (and the Billy Joel Album Running on Ice on the other) at a garage sale. I absolutely loved it and played it until it eventually wore thin. I didn't see the actual movie until I was a senior in high school, and it was...okay. The casual sexism stood out to me even then, and the mission and the enemy were unclear--I thought just to me, that I'd missed something, so I'm glad to know that it was kind of deliberately ambiguous.
Highly recommend the "Theaters of War" documentary referenced in this video, it goes into what Skip Intro talks about but with a much finer detail and has interviews with Oliver Stone on how much untalked dealings goes on with the Military when making movies.
So, couple of quick notes: "the enemy" in the beginning of top gun was actually intended as Libyan. The beginning photo incident that opens top gun is based on a real event between US Navy pilots and Libyan fighter pilots in the early 1980s
Very well written and produced. The title says it all. It seems dangerous to have a military motivated by such a facile group of emotional devotions that the film portrays. You brought real depth to the topic.
38:57 I hate when people describe any piece of media as “apolitical” ,every work of media is political even if I wasn’t intended, a little piece of the creators views will have to be inserted no matter what because everything is political.
It’s especially when ridiculous here as its a war movie. wars are up there as one of the most political things ever, and it’s something that can’t be portrayed without picking a side , you are anti-war or pro-war ,and there’s very little room for in-betweenness .
Its always only apolitical if the speaker agrees with the politics , and while this does happen on the left it’s way more common on the right , because they view there ideology as the default , it’s “natural” and everything else as a pervasion.
Tetris is my favorite political media
@@PALWolfOS everything surrounding the game was political
Question? Would you ever make a video on the birth of a nation? I've heard of it's cultural significance, and seen a couple of it's truly awful scenes, but I wonder if there's more that I could learn about it?
Love your vids!
I never understood the Top Gun hype. It always struck me as corny nonsense. And after watching the trailer for this new one with the speech in front of the giant American flag, I thought it was going to be a recruiting ad. Good to see someone discussing this.
The original was so corny that I turned it off about 25 minutes into the film. it was 110% dog crap
@@djangofett4879, in fairness, I do remember a closeted friend loving Top Gun. So it wasn't all bad.
That just you 😂 the first movie made 360+ million dollars in 1986 by now is closer to 800 million dollars and the new movie Maverick made 1.480+ billion dollars so a lot of people love this movies and they have huge impact on the pop culture.
@@fashion_fckyou, did you read what I wrote? I said I couldn't understand the hype.
@@tim290280 exactly man that's why you don't understand the hype of this movies 🤣!
I know this isn't the point, and I'm only repeating stuff I've heard elsewhere since i'm not a film buff, but the side-by-side shots are really showing the "films now are harder to watch" common complaint - in terms of poor lighting, framing, etc.
Almost every shot seems to illustrate this. 1:07 is a frame I picked randomly but is a great example. The top shot is clear and readable, with the light sources and framing chosen purposefully and with the poses giving us information about the situation and characters. The bottom shot, it's hard to see what's going on or who anyone is. Like they were trying to go for very sharp contrasty light but it's just not working- we can see more of the background character on the left than the characters in the foreground.
I'm not familiar with the movie but the bottom one has to be the remake - if it were the original, who would bother remaking it?
Of course I appreciate the rest of the video - like I said, I don't know much about film, so I like learning.
Technical standards are pretty low these days, despite the massive amount in economic resources.
@@troubadour723 yea i think it's this odd push for "realism" or whatever the fuck. not sure who started it or which movie with poor shots and lightings got so popular that other filmmakers went, "now let's do it like that too" but i do hear that "but it's realistic!!" talking point more and more often these days -- from both people who supposedly work in producing and critics.
@@mophead_xu it's so funny to me that "more realistic" in cinema seems like it should mean "let's create a more accurate portrayal," but so many directors use it to mean "let's make this movie look like garbage." Cinema hasn't gotten more realistic, but rather it's become "hyper-real."
@@illiterate467 in their obsessed chase for realism they've lost what "being realistic" even mean, it seems.
_if_ anyone calling the shots ever understood what it's supposed to mean at all. 💀💀💀
Not sure if someone said it already but In the original Top Gun the enemy was supposed to be North Korea however since the US and NK were negotiating at the time the military thought it would be a bad idea to name NK as the enemy so they just replaced all mention of Korea with "the enemy"
I think the book "How We Decide" really captures the difference between "don't think just do" and "if you're making a split second decision and actually have a lot of training and expertise and background knowledge, you should trust your gut because your prefrontal cortex can't process information fast enough while the rest of your brain already knows that information that you've honed over a long period of time". I think the fast way to say the latter thing is "don't hesitate, trust your training" (i'm sure you could probably shorten it even more, but "don't think, just do" is a very bad phrase. Sometimes even in an emergency situation you need to pause for a second before leaping to the first thing you think to do, so maybe just "trust your training")
someone gets hit by a car what do you do, dont think just do will tell you pull them out of the street as fast as you can, reality is you should NOT move them you could make it way worse, make sure people can see you and call others over both to call the ambulance and to help redirect traffic see if anyone has anything to help stop bleeding, but do not move them, some thinking may use up a bit of limited time to help but trying to help the wrong way can be deadly
Tldr- my gut tells me to ignore long-winded essays devoid of clear purpose
@@youknowwhoyouare2269 I: You not seeing the purpose doesn't mean there isn't any -_-
I love how "pro-military" it's made out to be yet it celebrates a pilot blatantly disobeying orders and showing complete disregard for the military chain of command. So it's like the audience gets to have it both ways. But at least they're sticking it to the "bad guys".
This film and its enormous success is a HUGE step backwards.
By the way, you left out how apparently a giant chunk of the plot to Maverick is Star Wars.
18:52
Journalist: “I can’t wait to go to this premiere of a movie about airplanes, heavily sponsored and influenced by air-force*
*Airplanes at Premiere*
Journalist: “Holy shit we’re under attack!”
Like bro, what did u expect?
You, you are intelligent bro
Yeah how dare that man have the instinct that he was under attack after a recently started war that the US is involved in while standing on a aircraft carrier as fighters suddenly fly over head.
they've gone all the way down memory lane, but failed to take my breath away.
10:41 that soundtrack no matter what y’all think of the film still kicks butt.
Love the commentary, been waiting for a propaganda analysis of the Top Guns in the wake of the new one. But the funniest thing about the new Top Gun for me is that it is an amalgamation of three missions from Ace Combat 7. It has the trench run and precision bombing a small target ala Star Wars and the getting nuked by missiles if you go too high. Also the vaporwave vibe of your monologue set this one is *chefs kiss*
My first thought watching "Top Gun: Mavirck" was "this is an 'Ace Combat' fan fic with 'Top Gun' slapped on it," based on the fact that the mission reminded me of several "Ace Combat" missions.
Also, the enemy made more sense when I thought it was Belka (the villain from "Ace Combat 5"), because they'd have F-14A's, Su-54's (I'm sorry, I meant "Fifth Generation Fighters"), a Uranium Enrichment plant for nukes in violation of the "no nukes" policy created (because of Belka) and could be brought down by someone deciding to fly an F/A-18 or an F-14A in a mission intended to be flown with an F-35.
The "don't think, just do" thing is an actual martial arts concept, the very same "Ultra Instinct" that Goku uses, when i heard it i thought this movie was going to go full anime! PS: and by "full anime" i mean that the we would have seen the F14 piloted by Rooster and Maverick being shot down by the enemy, they manage to eject and find themselves grounded in enemy territory, but out of the blue the Darkstar comes to their rescue, and we have a little exposition from the HQ on the aircraft carrier explaining that the Darkstar had been upgraded into a two seater VTOL manned/unmanned, and that they sent it in on autopilot; Maverick is injured and cannot pilot, Rooster however is still fine, so he puts Maverick in the back seat and proceeds to pilot the Darkstar himself. The new fighter reveals itself to be hard to tame, but being the new protagonist Rooster quickly masters its full potential and capabilities, and proceeds to do crazy stunts, ending the fight against 11 enemy Su57 by getting a multi-lock on all of them and shooting down all of them at once with a single and massive salvo of missiles.
A shame it wouldn’t go into War in the Pocket territory.
lol, there is a big difference between "unraveling after a long day" and "unwinding after a long day". Strange, but true.
Top Gun: Maverick has the exact same story line and phrases as Star Wars: New Hope.
1. training to fly through a tight trench run
2. cannot fly above trench run due to guns ontop of trench
3. training to shoot guided missle into very small target hitting a core target to disable attack
4. guided missle system gets damaged and Maverick says "dont think" similar to force ghost Ben Kenobi "use the force"
5. missle hits target at an "impossibly" sharp angle
"All of the grieving is fully clothed." Amazing.
This channel is popping off! Love your content man!
One of the most underrated channels.
Love your work bro.
i've greatly enjoyed this copaganda series, and i'm surprised it hasn't garnered WAY more views yet. to be honest i didn't know this latest video was in that series and i wasn't particularly interested in the movie. maybe put Copaganda Series in brackets or something for weirdos like me?
It's not anti-intellectual to trust one's instincts and to learn by experience. And to be unafraid to push boundaries and yes, break a few commonly-held assumptions about what's possible or not.
And just to make sure you understand it, actual naval aviation and the air force require a TON of reading, higher reasoning skills, mathematics, and an understanding of exactly how the extremely complicated machines they use work. They're not anti-intellectual by any means and wouldn't promote that in a movie they have any say over.
See I would have read don't think about as to not over think things. Like a medic they have to make snap judgements or else whatever chance of saving life could be lost. They can't go over ever possibly angel. They have to see and use what has been drilled into them when they were training and time on the job and do.
It also requires not thinking why you are doing what you are doing and why you are fighting "the enemy"
I think you miss how the film often subverts the nostalgia angle as much as it wallows into it.
Couldn't force myself to watch this movie. There is some nostalgic that is simply passed its prime.
I didn't liked the first one to begin with so there is no reason I could think of to watch the second one.
yea i think Hot shots: part deux is more my style of tribute to Top Gun. it was a cheesy movie and parodying it is way more fun than that being into it after you turn 13
I didn't have any "nostalgia" for the film as I don't live in the US and never watched the first one until a day before the second one. Still absolutely loved the second one tho, watched it twice in theatre which I never did for any other movie
@@valacftw If you experience the first movie as a cultured American 36 years ago. The second movie is cheesy.
@@aplaceholderbplaceholder9524 am not an American tho, and the second movie is so much less cheesier than the first one. First one is not a good film
The reason of this movie existence is because of the movement that aims to depoliticize artwork criticism (One of the notorious example of this is the entire anime fandom like the ones with NGNL where people tend to ignore its outright phedophilia just because the world building and story is "good")
Im glad that you put artistic merit aside in order to tell to people how worrying this kind of work this is.
Saying all anime is like that is pretty ignorant
The military itself is charged with homoerotic energy. Top gun is very realistic
Just binged this entire series, it's the best Playlist on RUclips. Can't wait to see where it goes next. (I'm hoping SVU)
Arguably, the _only_ anti-war film is Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, which never shows the military or the atrocities committed by them. It is about opposing war on principle, not because we have been emotionally manipulated into doing so. Everyone should see this masterpiece film.
Go and See, The Cranes are Flying, Ballad of a Soldier
I don’t know, it felt like “feel sorry for this one German dude!” while millions starved and died horribly.
What about all quiet and das Boot
17:36 I witnessed the film 3 times in theatre with family members, no regrets 😎
Thank you for talking about this movie.
28:02 - While I understand and respect where you're going with this overall, that's not why he threw the book away. He threw it away because every pilot in there already knew the book, cover-to-cover. And, do did "the enemy".
Iove that you included the scene from Mad Men! This is what came instantly to my mind, when you mentioned nostalgia
They really just inserted a scene of Tom cruise killing a few people and everyone was totally fine with it. How the actual fuck did we get here?
You finally talk about a movie! My dad is a huge Tom Cruise fan. I personally like Top Gun: Maverick more than the original Top Gun, but mostly because the romantic subplot doesn't have ethical issues like the original Top Gun. I also like that while the enemy isn't named, there's more of an actual plot in Top Gun: Maverick. Also: Please look up the trope "Backed By The Pentagon" on TV Tropes.
15:26 I always why Playboy of all places seems to have gotten some of the best, under-the-radar interviews of the late 20th century. They always seem to pop up in places you don't expect
I don't have anything relevant or intelligent to add other than I like your outfit!! Solid aesthetic. Great vid as always
At 12:55, you mentioned how you believe the mysterious antagonist flying against our Top Gun heroes are Soviet pilots. Now, they may have been portrayed as Soviet-made MiGs, possibly flown by Soviet trained pilots. However, If at any point in the 1980s, American combat aircraft had shot down and killed Soviet pilots anywhere in the world, we would have wound up in a shooting war with the Soviet Union which would have quickly escalated to WWIII. Now, that said, it's likely that the adversaries engaged were a semi-autonomous Soviet puppet state in the Mediterranean region.
By the way, love the video, great points you're making.
"Semi-autonomous soviet puppet state", your red scare brainwashing is showing
i hate how those guys have the nerve, the audacity to claim this movie isn't about the real world while picturing some very realistic planes they actually borrowed from the military!!! what do you mean it's NOT ABOUT THE REAL WORLD? you worked with the military!!! the real one!!!!
Remember when Kingsman had a scene where a guy slaughters a church congregation and it was played as a fun joke? Then when a guy actually shot up a church congregation and Christians pointed to that movie y'all said it's just a movie?
Funny how you guys flip when it suits you...
@@dfmrcv862 Any evidence that the former caused the latter?
@@optillian4182 Easy. Napoleon tried taking over Europe, leading to the Napoleonic Wars which were so devastating it resulted in Europe setting up a kind of "UN" to try and prevent something like this from happening, all sides agreed to certain borders and to basically leave each other alone as they all scrambled for Africa and Asia. Not only did this NOT work to fully prevent wars as German reunification saw several wars, its implementation actually led to such an interconnected mess of "alliances" and "guarantees" that when Franz Duke Ferdinand was assassinated, it dragged pretty much everybody in.
Then there was the League of Nations.
Same idea.
Prevent wars.
Same situation.
The desire for peaceful resolutions allowed tyrants to rise up and bully other countries until they were powerful enough to, literally, try to take over the planet, and in part, US isolationism made it worse because our lack of involvement early on made it so the Soviets were not only more involved, but wound up with more land in Europe that they proceeded to abuse and rule over for decades after the war.
Essentially, you NEED a police force because as cute and nice and lovely as it sounds to live in a world where the US doesn't have to spend billions on killing machines that can kill better than China or Russia's killing machines...
Let's be real here... it's hippy nonsense that requires people stop being people.
@@dfmrcv862 So you want American soldiers everywhere, threatening to shoot innocent people who reject American hegemony?
@@optillian4182 Innocent people? No. Only those that threaten our people.
Not even the Navy could defend you against the "QUIT HAVING FUN" bombs in this video.
The funny irony is that the "mission" of this movie is based on is in Ace Combat 7, that even have Top Gun Maverick DLC, but the story is way more anti-war, the fear of the weapons that we created and how our superiors not give a fuck about us, sure, it have ending more optimistic than Project Wingman, another recent combat fighter simulator, but all the global communication satellite network is gone, destroyed, and both side of the conflict are nearly destroyed by the weapons that they try to control, also in the mission you really need to think, you would crash or fail the mission, and your actions really have consequences, terrible consequences for the world.
Also Ace Combat 7 was all about drones replacing pilots, and they followed trough on it instead of just some babble at the beginning.
They plagiarized ace combat 7 completely
@@MaticTheProto It funny because those same drones turns against both nations half way the story, after they destroy the global satellite communication network, becoming rogue, and began to attack those nations, making them almost a wasteland.
@@MaticTheProto Ace combat wouldn't even exist without the first Top Gun, you know?
fucking incredible video. i literally watched this movie last night and was stunned by the insidious and dishonest politics of the film, and i felt crazy because i hadn't seen anyone talk about it
Criminal Minds had been my go to back ground noise show for years until it got pulled from Netflix where I'm at, and I don't think I've actually really watched an episode of it.
Maverick's dad did not take part in either operation menu or Freedom Deal by virtue of his being dead before that.
November 1965 was just after the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley and US aircraft were bombing NVA and VC camps and munition and storage areas in Cambodia, part of an effort to shut down the Ho Chi Mhin. So that's the secret, Duke Mitchel died flying over Cambodia when he engaged in a desperate effort to defend his fellow pilots against MiG's who had come out to intercept them.
Hey, I was thinking about your series the other day and I noticed you lacked the ultimate Copaganda show of the 21 century: 24.
This was a show that pretty much defined the war on terror for several years. Being used to justify everything from illegal detention and torture to the actual invasion of Iraq! I mean the thud thud thud of the clock was presented as the reality of how the war was being fought(and how it should be fought). Every objection or call for calm consideration was met with "Do you want the Terrorists to win?!" As if the West was always 24 hours away from total destruction.
Few shows have had the impact and influence on our daily lives as 24 and the adventures of Jack Bauer. AND ITS OBJECTIVELY A BAD SHOW! They never lean into the fact that every episode was supposed to be one hour following the next one. Jack Bauer should have been a wreck at the end of the 24 hours. So Damaged and exhausted that he can't lift his gun. Yet he is always ready able to stop the terrorists at the last second. I mean the show tells you when he will succeed in the title: After 24 hours are almost up.
I don't understand how someone can watch top gun and not see that it is pure propaganda. And my brother in christ it worked, double the defense spending, what an awesome movie
the gaza thing near the end really got me :(. its been going for so long and its only been worsened by us via our world policing
Love how you politicized the fact it’s a nameless enemy. It sure but it feels like you just want to trigger yourself at that point. They aren’t dehumanizing the enemy it’s purposely made with no specific enemy because guess what, it’s easier to market the movie across the entire world that way. SMH
It also takes away any nuance of how the US military acts and how they fight real actual people, often people who are innocent casualties or targeted for ulterior motives. It is inherently political as essentially it white washes the nuances of reality.
Also its called the US military, its a military, its a government body, obviously everything surrounding it is political.
Glad I stumbled on this channel, pretty interesting series
Im just amazed by how yellow everything is today.
I prefer to think I was watching Top Gun: A New Hope. Any connections to the original are cringe fodder. Any character building from the first is gone. The 'new pilots' don't remind me of real Navy Pilots. The way the entire mission, one of this 'magnitude', is under supervision of a single person with an agenda. I could go on but the movie did it for me.
“you can't make an anti-war movie”
*Cries to Grave of the Fireflies for the 20th time”
Maverick’s first call is to save the jobs of his military colleagues, who wouldn’t actually be fired, from a guy who wants to use drones, which is actually a good idea, and he does it by disintegrating their prototype. The mission is stupid, the characters don’t make sense, but one thing is for sure: the US military has good, strong people whose only fault is that they sometimes disagree on how they will do the right thing. DONGGG~~
You must be super fun at parties
My mother keeps begging me to watch reacher, when i said no i didnt know the words to describe Clancy-ism , its copaganda
I still prefer Hot Shots! over this propaganda flick because at least I got a few laughs out of it. Top Gun just bores me.
The first top gun movie is based on an engagement of the coast of Libya. So I always assumed that was who the enemy was.
Are we going to hit every one of Umberto Eco's 14 points?
Interesting video! Although I do think the film can be a rebuttal to fascism. Here are a few points that you and anyone else can disagree or agree over.
1)typically the right wing media fails to discuss what makes a live good/bad. I’ve seen those reviews by crowder, Shapiro, etc. they aren’t discussing the story, the acting, in so much that it “feels pro-American”.
2)this film promotes masculinity positively; something fascism can’t do. Cruise dosnt force Jennifer Connelly into a relationship as the previous movie does. The men and women respect each other. The father-son relationship talks about grief, regrets. Val Kilmer’ ascend is heartbreaking as both he and tom show their vulnerabilities. As far as strength goes, maverick didn’t think that goose’s son CANT succeed it’s that he didn’t want an accident happening. So it’s a level of care that is complex and caring. Fascism can’t stand this. Strength means being stubborn, logical, and decisive. Emotions are for pussies. Men dominate women as that is their natural place. Also, the inclusion of diverse Americans as pilots would be criticized by fascists. This is a common set of beliefs among fascists.
In addition to Top Gun you had Air Wolf, Blue Thunder, A-Team , Knight Rider which were essentially the Military or Special Ops teams as cops
Skip Intro has discovered Parenti! You my friend are based.
god i love this channel soooooo much
dude, Maverick faced MiGs, no shit it's the soviets
You have out done yourself with this video. Also Chris Ryan is a trip sometimes.
Deconstructing things which weren't actually that bad is actually doing less of a service to the truth than whitewashing what actually WAS bad about them. Now, I wasn't born until the late 80s, so I have no first-hand nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s. There were problems back then; asbestos, two major wars, drugs, smoking just about everywhere, very little in the way of automotive safety, and of course, racism. But that misses the reason why people are nostalgic for those times; they were still good for other reasons, because they were a huge improvement over the preceding years, and over the course of those years, things unarguably got better for most people. They were a time of great economic prosperity, on the whole. They saw the civil rights movement win more civil rights and liberties than ever before or since. They had low unemployment, low inflation, and things got safer and less polluted as the years went on.
These days, it's hard to say that things have gotten better for most people since the year 2000, even if I ignore COVID-19. Between 1950 and 1970, a lot of good things happened and life got better for a huge number of Americans, and people actually began to address what wasn't good in those years.
Not sure why I listed asbestos as the first really bad thing back then.
Does this movie click with non-US people? I couldn't get pass the simplistic plot and oozing patriotism.
Yes it does.
instant like for the Parenti cameo
It’s pretty great to learn that yvan eht nioj was too subtle
In addition to those ops you mentioned, given the Top Gun subject matter, I think Operation Barrel Roll is worth mentioning. It involved extensive bombing of Laos, ostensibly in support of the Royal Lao Army in its fight with the Pathet Lao communist insurgents. In total 260 million bombs were dropped on Laos, making it the most intensively bombed country in history. Cumulatively, between all the cross-border operations during the Vietnam War, Cambodia and Laos saw more bombs dropped on each of them individually than Germany and Japan combined during the Second World War. Clearly, as the film suggests, the US military saw Vietnam's borders with these countries as nothing but arbitrary lines on a map.
EDIT: I went down a rabbit hole whilst researching this comment and happened upon this fact: during Operation Barrel Roll the equivalent of one planeload of bombs was dropped on Laos every eight minutes. Twenty-four hours a day. Continuously. For over eight years.
I'd love your take on Simon's Homicide: Life on the Street.
40:06 hard dislike.
Umberto Eco describes 14 criteria, that in their RADICAL expression of A NUMBER OF THEM are common to fascism, like nowadays Ruscism (PutinHuilo manages to check almost all 14 points).
Every country idealises their military personnel and needs some form of patriotism. "It's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck him out, the brute!' - But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot." A fascism sees their "heroic sacrifice" up to deification for the "greater good" as important - however, not all fascisms.
Fascism is a very versatile ideology; Silone, after Bondy, said "the fascists of tomorrow won't say: 'We are fascist!', but 'We are Anti-fascist'". That does not mean that every Anti-Fascist is a Fascist in disguise, but that fascism is so malleable that it will use anti-fascist reasoning behind its actions - e.g. "De-Nazification of the Ukraine" (Far-Right Ukrainian parties got 2.6% of the vote in the last election).
Claiming systems, let alone politicians, were "fascist" because they fulfill some of Eco's criteria out of context and far from radicalised is exactly that "Wolf!"-crying that allowed the first Fascism in Europe since 1975 to start the first war of conquest in Europe since 1941 flying under the RaDaR. Because there was so much hyperventilation of "fascism in America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", nobody paid attention to Ruscism that fascisised at least since 2014, with its brain-washing youth organisations like the "Yunarmiya" (to which the USA has no pendant), full control of every aspect of the press and information (to which the USA has no pendant), an unopposed campaign to build up the amorphous "West" as the enemy both stronger and weaker ("woke") as Russia (to which the USA only came even close during the McCarthy-witch hunts)......
It is dangerous to cry: "Wolf!!!", when the wolf in question in the grand scheme of things is but a Yorkshire Terrier. It is irresponsible to do so while a real wolf resp. bear lurks right behind the border and now has begun to actively attack the first allied country.
Top Gun are dumb, mindless action flicks; South Korea made an action film about fighter pilots with much more substance. It is advertisement; whoever calls it "propaganda" is lucky to never have experienced true war propaganda. What it is not is "fascist".
so on point, this guy is the Dunning-Kruger effect personified
@@Derpderpson123 I wouldn't go that far, but +Skip Intro has some really, really problematic takes.
Talking about "fascism" while Europe is attacked by a real, card-carrying fascism (#ruscism) that'd have been lauded in the Montreux conference however has real-world consequences.
34:28 Sometimes I wonder why some people do what they do. Airplanes are not made from steel and the fact that Pauline Kael can't tell them apart maybe is a good reason for her not to talk about the movie. She is not forced to review each movie. I agree the movie is not good in the classical sense but she is clearly out of her league. The horny part could be the reason some people were unable to follow the movie, they were thinking about the "projected erotic undertones" . Claiming the movie was pay by the Navy is an interesting affirmation, and it's mentioned multiple times.
Best plot twist ever since a certain documentary about queues
6:00, the whole snowflake commentary was awesome. Love you man!
My favorite thing about the new Top Gun is it's all about Maverick teaching pilots how to do the Trench Run on the Death Star.
Edit: My second favorite thing is the ending is Iron Eagle without Dio and Queen on the soundtrack.
It's unquestionably Iran, they are the only other nation in the world to ever use F14s, and contrary to what most people know, they have incredibly cold and mountainous terrain in many places, particularly north on the Caspian sea.
To a colored person and I was 16 when this came out we viewed it as another white boy hype film. We had hip hop giving us poor and colored people art balls and a real view as most of us were war babies parents who served in WW2 Vietnam Korea and got the real stories. I saw the film as pure entertainment and my dude Tom cruise new movie. But white right hype from 70s-90s where eagles dare war games Rambo commando was all how badass the white boy is.human shield Scorpio the list goes on and on. I just got popcorn 🍿 a large drink and enjoyed the show
I did nazi that plot twist coming