I know right
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The opposing pilots looked white though.
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I couldn’t tell faces but did they look like this?
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Don’t even have to go that far.

One country in the world flies F-14s. Only one ever bought any from us to the best of my knowledge. Iran. Done and done.

And a presently non-nuclear country who could develop an enrichment program and thus violate international treaties and pose a direct security threat to the US? Who’s best accessible by carrier launch? And who would have access to the purchase of next gen fighters and Russian helicopters?

It’s very very VERY obviously Iran.
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Right when they laid this out I knew who it was. Iran is the #1 bete noire of our regime. The posters on this thread may not be aware they were being propagandized, which is the surefire tell that they were.
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I mean the only real alternative would be some sort of Western Russian separatist state splintering off and going rogue. Or Eastern European having a Russian puppet government who is then supplied with Iranian F-14s. But even then you’d launch an attack from a ground base somewhere, not a carrier.

It has to be Iran.
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Maybe.

But fuck Iran anyway.

I get it, it’s all the Juuuuuuuus. But I have no problem casting Iran as the big bad in one of these things. They've been a back-asswards shithole for 40 years.
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I don’t like Iran at all.
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Cruise has said himself - it's a love letter to naval aviation.

And when you watch it - just...duh. Of course it is. It's a salute to sailors and aviators. There's a reason its first screening was on the deck of a carrier. He loves these dudes.

Is that propaganda? I mean, I guess if you have sand in your vag. Remember, the concept of 'public relations' didn't exist until Edward Bernays decided that 'propaganda' had developed a negative connotation as a term of art. So he came up with a new one.

So if you use 'PR' as the proxy for 'propaganda' as it was originally intended - oh sure, why not. Yeah, if that's what you wanna call it, you can.

And is it pro-military? Um...yes. Very obviously.

Y'know what? Good. Jesus - has the entire country turned into disaffected twats? Are we a nation of 350 million Janine Garofalos?

Christ I hope not.

Yes - we absolutely still have a place in the world for 'rah rah, go USA!' movies. In fact in many ways we've had a gaping void in that area for years. I'm not going to pretend this is something that it isn't and don't feel compelled to anyway.

I mean - there's a group of people that spend a lot of time running away from the most obvious labels one could put on them - and weirdly, it's the same people who insist we run away from this. Projection; the same thing we always see from...uh...this group of people.
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Tom Cruise is just a straight up movie star. He may not be the actor that Daniel Day Lewis is, but he's a STAR. He's magnetic. He draws people to him and he understands the movie machine as well or better than anyone.



Hell, he may be the last true 'star' we see for awhile. And he's been knocking this stuff out for 35 years. It's really really remarkable.

And damn he's legit. He just wants to LEARN things all the time. Frankly I can see how someone like him might have gotten sucked into Scientology because he's just so laser-focused that if he gets even an inkling of interest in something, he's going to go full bore and pretty much ignore naysayers.

He's a pros pro, man. And bankable and charismatic and entertaining and turned up to 11 at damn near all times. The entertainment industry will be exponentially worse when he decides to hang 'em up or if he simply can't do the job anymore.
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Man, some of these look to be in (predictably) dreadful shape.





Others appear to have been upgraded fairly recently





In fact, I think that last photo is the same jet with a new livery as the 2nd photo; both appear to be tail#3-6039

Man, 6050 has seen better days...
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6066 here appears fairly middle of the road.



Honestly, you could convince me that 6050 is the one that Maverick actually flew in that movie. Thing doesn't even look airworthy.
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Does it matter when a white middle aged protagonist saves the day in a machine made for war? That's going to royally trigger a horde of low IQ morons looking to bitch about something on twitter.
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There is a F-4 Phantom peaking behind the F-14 in the first photo.

I wonder how they keep those TF30's running in the F-14.
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Persians can be pasty.
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