Bill Maher’s take on the year’s biggest box office hit, “Top Gun: Maverick,” isn’t quite the same as that of fans and critics. Instead of heaping praise, he calls the mega-hit “two-hour propaganda ad for defense contractors, militaristic, jingoism, and bombing foreigner.”
On Friday night’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” on HBO, the host-comedian not only called out the theme of the film but also film critics “who find every movie somehow lacking in woke credentials” but fail to see what he sees in the Tom Cruise film.
“Every other movie that comes out, all of which are made by liberals for liberals, with ardent liberal intent, fall short. If the movie is about poverty, the director didn’t grow poor enough to understand it. If it’s about being gay, it’s not gay enough,” he said. “Don’t even try sidelining white-washing, colorism, white saviorism. No amount of virtuous signaling is ever virtuous enough, but somehow 96% of film critics love ‘Top Gun’ like a Catholic priest loves sleepaway camp.”
After tipping his hat to Cruise, who, he calls “an ageless reliably entertaining movie star” that sometimes makes him think “there’s something to Scientology,” Maher continues trying to make his point about the film.
“If you’re a film critic and you’ve been making your life’s mission to root out the insufficiently liberal in cinema, did you not notice that ‘Top Gun’ is a lot about making warmongering sexy?” he asked. “The weapons porn, the endless money shots of engines, burning jet fuel, the big d— energy. The aircraft carriers dancing in the sun’s haze all, to the manly macho masculine sounds of… Kenny Loggins?”
Maher goes on to say that if the U.S. military were a country, “its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases and gases in the world. Our military is the world’s single-largest consumer of petroleum.”
“Think about that,” he said. “The next time you’re watching a flyover, how we’re destroying the world to protect it.”
And then there is the unnamed “enemy” that the “Top Gun” fighters are fighting with, who are just referred to as “enemy.”
“We don’t name them; we never see their faces; we don’t hear them talk. Who are they? That’s not important,” he said, brushing it away. “We don’t know who we’re bombing and we don’t care. ‘We’re bombing someone. Awesome!”
He went on: “Whose ass we’re kicking is on the need to know basis. God bless America and death to, to whom it may concern. Sorry, enemy. It’s not about you. It’s about us. We have Tom Cruise and you don’t. This is a d— measuring contest and it doesn’t really matter who owns the other d—. As long as ours is longer.”
You can watch Maher’s entire New Rules segment in the clip at the top.
