#ice & mav walking out of the TGM theatre: …well that was fucking stupid

[compacflt]

Watching battleship right now and it got me thinking about ur post wondering how maverick and ice would react to current recruitment methods like e-girls and I just have to wonder what their thoughts would have been about this movie. It's more focused on the ships and not so much the fighter jets, obviously, but still...just a giant ad for the Navy. Also Rihanna which is perhaps the most important part of it all.

im no whitemanologist but if ice & mav are anything like my dad theyd probably think it’s some pretty sick shit

full disclosure: had not seen battleship until just now, when i watched it so i could answer this ask. thoughts: man, what a waste of jesse plemons! actually the whole cast is kinda stacked: liam neeson COMPACFLT (fuck yeah), Rihanna, alexander skarsgard….. woof. and yeah, it’s a gigantic fuck-you ad for the navy, but even i got a freedom boner when they hopped on *that ship* at the very end (70-year-old ordnance notwithstanding). like, i get it. that kinda whipped ass actually.

as recruitment material it’s very interesting. *guy who has only ever seen top gun watching any other movie* WOW JUST LIKE TOP GUN!!! no, but seriously, all these pro-Navy pro-mil movies are pushing a characterization of the military & the people in it that is laughably absurd. Our main character is always some guy who’s quietly very talented but outwardly a huge asshole who never plays by the rules & stays in the institution that gives him power only by the skin of his teeth. These movies are about *belonging* and push a message that even the most screwy of screw-ups can find their place in the military with a little patriotism and perseverance (maverick voice: “just wanna serve my country and be the best fighter pilot in the Navy, SIR”)—when that’s clearly not true. so, yes, in Battleship hopper is our asshole persevering main character who does everything (EVERYTHING) wrong until he just happens to do one thing right (read sun tzu I guess?) & gets a command of his own. The message is, join the navy, doesn’t matter how much of a fuck-up you are in real life, you too can excel & be recognized & get the outrageously hot chick & lead other men & have immense power….

…when we get invaded by aliens. cause that’s always the other part of these movies that kinda confuses me: unless it’s a historical movie (black Hawk down, american sniper, SPR, hacksaw ridge etc) in the modern age of pro-mil movies we have to make up an enemy to propagandize. TGM’s “fifth-gen fighter” advanced nation, for instance. Not Russia and not Iran and not DPRK, some other shitholistan that isn’t made of real people so we can drop fictional bombs on them without feeling bad. And these fictional enemies are always more advanced than us, because we are perpetual underdogs (& have been since the AmRev war, it’s part of our historical DNA). But… that discrepancy doesn’t reflect reality, obvi. If Tom Cruise hadn’t wanted to film inside real planes, TGM could’ve been a 5-minute short film of an F-35 dropping a precision guided bunker buster from 40,000 feet. like, we have the logistical/materiel capability to execute pretty much any mission we want with little to no actual struggle. But that makes for poor propaganda storytelling. So… aliens it is

It is also worth engaging with Top Gun: Maverick as a recruitment text in and of itself, and I don’t mean like “oh planes cool = people want to join the navy” I mean, this is a movie where the CORE EMOTIONAL TENET is that a kid who wanted to be in the navy got shut out & is still pissed about it. The central emotional tenet of TGM is Rooster trying to finally prove to Maverick that he IS ready to join the Navy. The whole movie is built upon the assumption that the Navy is someplace You Want To Be. It’s not just a recruitment text, it’s a recruitment story. And again, it’s asshole-rule-breaker Maverick who juuuuust manages to stay in because he’s actually super talented all along and not actually a fuck-up, and the Navy legitimizes him as a person (in my reading, as a man) at the end… warlock voice: “You’re where you belong.” Is he, though? All the evidence seems to suggest otherwise!