Tom Cruise and the team behind “Top Gun: Maverick” have made “tough guys” John Cena and LeBron James look like wimps by standing up to the Chinese Communist Party.
The smash-hit movie’s producers told China to go pound sand and restored Taiwan’s flag to Cruise’s flight jacket.
Cruise and other movie producers were slammed when the initial trailer for the movie came out.
Originally, Taiwan’s flag was not featured on the famous bomber jacket Cruise’s character Maverick wears.
However, in the just-released final movie, the flag patch has been returned to its original spot.
Hong Kong film critic Ho Siu Bun said the reinstatement of the flag is “unprecedented.”
“Major film studios have never been shy about pandering to the Chinese market,” he said.
“And even if it is a simple scene, editing is very costly.
“So no one knows why they changed it back.”
Top Gun: Maverick features Tom Cruise’s character wearing a bomber jacket with the Taiwanese flag on the back. In Taiwan, audiences cheered upon seeing Taiwan’s flag appear on Cruise’s jacket and applauded several times throughout the film.https://t.co/CGTbNBV39E via @bpolitics
— Steve Matthews (@SteveMatthews12) May 31, 2022
Bill Maher recently called out Hollywood and sports celebrities for taking China’s money while remaining silent on the Communist regime’s many human rights abuses.
“But the NBA has a television deal with China worth a billion-and-a-half dollars,” Maher said.
“So LeBron James said Morey needed to be ‘educated on the situation,’ the situation being, ‘I’ve got some shoes to sell.’
“‘Kowtow’ is a Chinese word but boy, Americans have gotten good at it.
“That’s the deal China offers American companies and celebrities: ‘We’ll give you access to our billion-plus consumers as long as you shut up about the whole police-state-genocide thing.’
“John Cena took that deal.
“Well, c’mon. China accounts for 34% of global box office and he’s a movie star now. So, like the Uyghurs, last year, he learned he needed to get some re-education.
“You see, John referred to Taiwan as a country as if were a separate country from China, which it is.
“But what China would like to do to Taiwan what did to Tibet and what it’s now doing to Hong Kong.
“When a country can make your big muscly Macho Man action star grovel in their language, you know you’re somebody’s b*tch.
“In the original ‘Top Gun,’ Tom Cruise wore a bomber jacket but the flags of several Asian countries that are our allies sewn on the back.
“Well, the flag for Taiwan has now magically disappeared for the upcoming ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’” Maher said of the original trailer.
“Well, he used to be a maverick. Now he does whatever China says.
“So can you really blame 18-year-old Eileen Gu, who’s already made over $31 million as the face of 23 brand products in China, for following in the footsteps of other American celebrities?
“Some of Gu’s defenders say it’s racist to ask if she’s still an American citizen and she herself won’t say. Why is that racist?
“Why was it racist to think that COVID might have originated from a lab leak as opposed to from eating bats — besides the fact that the idea that COVID came from eating gross weird food seems way more racist and the idea that it came from a high-tech lab?
“Besides that, the definition of ‘woke’ was supposed to be being alert to injustice in society.
“But because the ‘woke’ now see race first and everything else never, fear of being accused of racism has given a free pass on human rights abuses to China and any other places that are perceived as non-White.
“If China was in Europe, would they get away with having concentration camps without more of an outcry from America?
“In 2020, NBA players wore jerseys that said ‘Freedom,’ ‘Speak Up,’ and ‘Justice,’ but I guess those things only matter for home games.
“Sorry, Uyghurs,” Maher said.
“Someone has to tell me where we got this rule that you can’t criticize China because I suspect we got it from China.
“Because after all, it’s where we get everything else.”
The #Olympics pretends to only be about sports, but really the games have always been a bit of a proxy war for which country has the best system. #StopKowtowingChina pic.twitter.com/l2fUDh4nSi
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) February 19, 2022
In May last year, professional “tough guy” John Cena shamelessly groveled to the Chinese Communist Party after calling Taiwan “a country.”
“I must say right now, it’s very, very, very, very, very, very important,” Cena said.
“I love and respect China and Chinese people.
“I’m very, very sorry for my mistake.”
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