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darkwizard42 t1_j6m22fy wrote

Reply to comment by Buhos_En_Pantelones in Why Film Festivals Are Steering Clear of Controversial Movies by BobRobot77

Self censorship is a thing. Fear of backlash leads to this outcome.

Creating non specific enemies like Top Gun Maverick or fictional enemies like Aliens, human invaders from another realm is another angle. Last you have some art where they make the bad guy just so bad emotionally/character wise and then bland their appearance/physical characteristics to make them inoffensive but often forgettable.

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MrrrrNiceGuy t1_j6mskjp wrote

Always Sunny in Philadelphia did this in one of their latest seasons with them making Lethal Weapon 7 and trying not to be offensive.

So in LW 7, the bad guy ends up being a tidal wave but not a tsunami because that implies Asian tidal waves are bad, so it’s just a generic tidal wave. And it’s not an act of God but some “act of the universe, or whatever.”

In the end the gang just watches their movie with stoic faces realizing how shitty it is due to the excessive censorship.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6mn434 wrote

The enemies in the original Top Gun are generic and non-specific.

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SutterCane t1_j6mov9y wrote

It was the Soviets in the original.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6mppvd wrote

They never say it's the USSR in Top Gun.

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SutterCane t1_j6mt2z0 wrote

Huh.

  1. takes place during the Cold War

  2. bad guys have MiGs

  3. everyone is following the rules of engagement between US and Soviet forces

But I guess you’re right. They don’t say it, which means it’s totally not the USSR.

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The_Sundial_Man t1_j6mvktw wrote

Just like the enemy in Maverick is totally not North Korea.

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kinglearthrowaway t1_j6n0qxi wrote

Lol it’s funny you say that bc I saw them as “totally not Iran”

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Epyr t1_j6ncbzt wrote

It's Iran, not North Korea. They are trying to stop them from getting nukes. NK already has nukes.

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PureLock33 t1_j6p9rst wrote

Plus Iran still fields F14 Tomcats. They literally make their own spare parts for them since the US stopped making replacement parts.

So much wink wink to the audience. Totally not Iran, guys.

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Streets-Ahead- t1_j6ng1sn wrote

Tiem for history lesson

  1. Lots of counties had MiGs, the Soviets exported them.

  2. The battle at the end of Top Gun is loosely inspired by a real life incident in 80s where American Tomcats engaged Libyan fighters.

  3. An earlier draft of the script actually specified North Korean enemies.

  4. The insignia on the enemy fighters is fictional.

  5. Nobody at the end seems concerned at all that World War III may have just started.

Whoever they're fighting can be assumed to be a Soviet-aligned country, but it wasn't Big Red itself.

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Butch_Beth t1_j6nfdy7 wrote

MIG's were sold to many communist nations and in the movie are actually repainted F5's, they don't say it's Iran in the new movie either, but everyone knows it's Operation Opera.

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SwingJugend t1_j6mpcl5 wrote

>Self censorship is a thing.

Yes. For example, the Hays Code was not a government thing, it was an internal industry self-censorship that the major film companies worked out by themselves, yet it still got enforced pretty much like a law for over 30 years.

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NeoNoireWerewolf t1_j6n7d03 wrote

That’s a bit different since it was a young, unregulated industry trying to avoid the government taking an interest in their hustle. The artists were not self-censoring out of fear of being deemed racist/sexist/insensitive/whatever, it was the studios saying you couldn’t have films be too violent/sexual/crass because then the government will come in and start telling them how they can run their business. Basically the same story for the Comics Code Authority. Today’s discussions about self-censorship are quite different, as they are linked more to things like representation and whether the content of the work is representative of who the creator is as a person. It is a fight about who has the right to tell what kind of stories and whether the art can actually be separated from the artist.

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reckoner23 t1_j6nhic6 wrote

And thankfully it was ignored starting in the late 60s. Its a shame we seem to have reverted.

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