The box office success of Top Gun: Maverick is being celebrated by right-wing media outlets in the US as a win for their causes.
Tom Cruise's latest movie has enjoyed the most successful opening weekend of his entire career, riding a wave of critical acclaim to a total international box office haul of US$248 million after just a few days.
In Aotearoa, the film scored the fourth biggest May opening for any movie ever with a total of NZ$2.6 million including sneak previews.
Mainstream film critics hailed it as "the most thrilling blockbuster we've gotten in years" and Newshub's own Kate Rodger described it as "the epitome of the big screen blockbuster" in her five star review - now it's also being championed for political reasons by broadcasters who generally attack what they deem as progressive or 'woke'.
Fox News reported the "non-woke, pro-America" film is being "hailed as a return to patriotic fervour".
Megan Basham's review on The Daily Wire alleges the film "highlights the greatness of the Reagan era". She also appears to celebrate there not being any openly gay characters.
"In this disheartening new world in which military generals parrot the virtues of diversity and inclusion instead of merit and readiness, and every sequel comes with a PR campaign about the rainbow-flag-representing characters that have been added, the old-school style of the new Top Gun class is an invigorating shock," wrote Basham.
Fellow right-wing film reviewer Christian Toto gushes over Cruise in particular, claiming the "ageless star is in full control of his film destiny" and personally "clearly helped Maverick avoid most, if not all, of the culture war booby traps".
"The oft-delayed sequel can't replicate that Reagan-era optimism or the original's rah-rah patriotism. This is 2022, and cheering on a straight white male military hero is problematic to the small but vocal minority that runs the culture. Don't tell that to Cruise," wrote Toto.
"[The film features] no hand wringing over military might or extended emasculation of its rugged hero, for starters. No lectures on America's imperfect past or gender inequality... Top Gun: Maverick isn't woke in the slightest. It is, though, a testament to American excellence and the ability to achieve a goal no matter the odds."
Far-right provocateur website Breitbart - notorious for popularising the likes of Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos - went further with an article from an author who admitted to not having actually seen the film headlined 'Masculine, Pro-American Top Gun: Maverick Blasts to $146M Opening, Towers over Woke Flops'.
"It didn't do what James Bond did - turn itself into a mewling little pyjama boy gerbil of a movie. It didn't do what Star Wars did and pervert a romantic-adventure series into a shrill Womyn's Studies lecture," wrote John Nolte.
"Instead, Top Gun chose to respect human nature and remain what it was, what worked, and what normal people love."
He also gushed extensively over Cruise as well as including a bizarre, seemingly random list of films he considers "woke flops", including Terminator: Dark Fate, Charlie's Angels, In the Heights, Wonder Woman 1984, West Side Story and Eternals.
Popular right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro praised the film in his YouTube review as a "very patriotic" throwback that depicts the US military as "a bunch of good-looking young people who are going out to defend the country... and the international order".
Whether most people are enjoying the film for political reasons or as pure entertainment, it's winning significant praise from audience members as well as critics.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Top Gun: Maverick currently has an audience score of 99% (alongside the reviewer score of 97%). It is also the first movie of 2022 to get an A+ CinemaScore rating.
On IMDb the film has a user rating of 8.7 out of 10 at the time of publishing, while on Letterboxd it has 4.2 out of 5.
