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US-China relations
This Week in AsiaLifestyle & Culture

Hollywood used to bend over backwards for China. Top Gun: Maverick shows it might not any more

  • The long-awaited sequel to the 1986 cult classic initially removed the Taiwanese and Japanese flags from Tom Cruise’s jacket to please Chinese censors
  • But as US-China ties soured and Chinese tech giant Tencent pulled its backing amid a US media backlash, the flags mysteriously reappeared

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Tom Cruise’s character wears a bomber jacket with a patch featuring the Taiwanese and Japanese flags in the original ‘Top Gun’ film (right). The flags were initially replaced in the trailer for this year’s sequel (left). Photo: Twitter
Alison de Souza

The days of Hollywood executives cosying up to Beijing may be over.

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So thinks Erich Schwartzel, author of the book Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, which looks at how Chinese investments in America’s soft-power behemoth have altered the power balance between the two nations.

Realising the gold mine that China’s massive market represents for American films approved for release there, major US studios and filmmakers have bent over backwards to flatter – or avoid offending – the censors in Beijing.

Tilda Swinton’s character in the 2016 Marvel movie ‘Doctor Strange’ was changed to a Celtic mystic, instead of a Tibetan monk, to please Chinese censors. Photo: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Handout
Tilda Swinton’s character in the 2016 Marvel movie ‘Doctor Strange’ was changed to a Celtic mystic, instead of a Tibetan monk, to please Chinese censors. Photo: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Handout
They have cast Chinese stars in token roles; scrubbed Hollywood blockbusters of sexual references deemed problematic; and even rewrote Tilda Swinton’s character in the Marvel movie Doctor Strange as a Celtic mystic, instead of a Tibetan monk as it was in the comics.
But the pendulum may have swung the other way, according to Schwartzel, who covers Hollywood for The Wall Street Journal and illustrated his argument with a tale of two films: 1986’s Top Gun and the sequel to it released earlier this year, Top Gun: Maverick.

When the movie poster and trailer for the latter were first unveiled in 2019, eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the Taiwanese and Japanese flags on the bomber jacket worn by Tom Cruise’s fighter-pilot character in the original had been removed.

Cue a chorus of fans, media commentators and politicians in the United States accusing the film of pandering to Beijing.
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