Geopolitics is a very complex game, butTop Gun: Maverickis definitely taking a cultural stance in the perpetual tussle between China and Taiwan after news that Maverick’s iconic leather jacket remains unaltered in the sequel, thus eliciting an extra warm reception for Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster in the latter nation.
For anyone unfamiliar with the two countries' history, Taiwan was established as a country in 1949 by what was then the Republic of China’s ruling government after Mao Zedong’s Chinese revolution took over the mainland that same year. Since then, the larger People’s Republic of China and Taiwan have fought over international recognition of the latter on practically every world stage. As China gained greater geopolitical influence, the Communist Party has exerted its economic power in recent years to get certain Hollywood productions to adapt their content for local censorship, as was initially suspected ofTop Gun.
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Nevertheless,Top Gun: Maverick’s decision to feature the same Taiwan and Japan flags on Maverick’s jacket, as in 1986, has won over the hearts of Taiwanese citizens now that the film finally premiered in the country. The decision is now being seen as a possible sign of changing trends among Hollywood studios. Although, Tencent pulled Chinese investment forTop Gun: Maverick, Taiwanese audiences have shown their love for the film by making Cruise’s jacket go viral with limited edition replicas going for as much as $1,449 in the country.
The shift in narrative is hardly insignificant, as Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations and holds formal diplomatic relationships with very few countries and informal ones with still less than half of the member states. The decision also meansTop Gun: Maverickwon’t land near Chinese cinemasanytime soon unless the flags are edited out as they were in the movie’s first 2019 teaser. Even then, it seems highly unlikely given precedents set by China’s government.
China is far from the only government in the region known to prohibit certain films from screening in the country, asmore recentlyUnchartedwas banned in Vietnamover a depiction of a map that attributed control of territories in the South China Sea to the People’s Republic of China. Regardless of that, Taiwan represents a much larger strategic interest for Western nations, especially given that the Taiwan-based TSMC currently produces over half of the world’s supply of semiconductors and processors that companies such as Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, and Nvidia need to combat chip and GPU shortages.
While it’s still too early to call for a definitive shift in Hollywood, it appears studios are leaning toward passing onsatisfying censors in Chinajust to be able to tap into the country’s huge market, especially due to reputational risks that entails with would-be customers in others parts of the world.
