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Explainer | Why Taiwan fans are cheering Tom Cruise’s return as Top Gun star
- Sequel shows Hollywood star wearing familiar bomber jacket from 1986 original bearing Taiwan’s flag, after the patch went missing in a 2019 trailer
- Move to retain patch ‘unprecedented’, as major film studios have never been shy about pandering to mainland Chinese market, analyst says
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Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise is back in his iconic bomber jacket as a US Navy pilot, stealing hearts with action blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick. But audiences in Taiwan have also been cheering the return of another movie symbol: the Taiwanese flag patch on the back of his jacket.
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A pre-screening last month for the sequel to Cruise’s classic 1986 action flick Top Gun had Taipei movie-goers erupting in cheers and applause when they found the patch with the Taiwanese “Blue Sky” flag was back, after an earlier trailer showed it had been removed, possibly with an eye on the vast mainland Chinese market.
The 1986 original had Cruise’s character, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, wearing the now iconic jacket with patches featuring flags from Taiwan, Japan and the United States, along with a United Nations symbol.
In a 2019 trailer for the recent mega-hit, Captain Mitchell was still wearing the same jacket- but the flags were gone – replaced by indeterminate ones in the same colour scheme. This sparked criticism that it was a Hollywood attempt to please censors in Beijing, which considers Taiwan to be part of its territory and Taiwanese symbols an affront to its authority.
Hong Kong-based film critic and lifestyle editor Ho Siu-bun called the move to retain the original patches “unprecedented”.
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