Chinese Top gun... normalizes war by being about... test pilots not engaged in actual war. Meanwhile, American Top Gun... attacks Iran. That said, I'm lowkey looking forward to when US/PRC media industry goes gloves off and start depicting WW3 with each other. It's probably not going to improve the discourse, but at worthwhile to show some costs to populace. Get on it Modern Warfare.
> “Born to Fly” is the highest-profile flick of this type to normalise the notion that the present-day PLA’s mission is to fight and kill Americans.
Meanwhile in Hollywood:
>> It is defended by ... and fifth-generation Su-57 fighters as well as older F-14 Tomcats.
Makes me wonder who could be the people manning Su-57 and F-14? Martians?
> Told by radio that they are in an area under China’s jurisdiction, the foreigners retort: “We can come and go whenever we want.”
Ask the recipients of the US' bombs for the last 30 years how they feel about that.
> <small>PLA</small>
Really?
> Alas, “Born to Fly” is closer in spirit to the first “Top Gun”. That film from 1986 shows obnoxious young pilots helping a hegemonic America enforce its will, without concern for the niceties of international law.
It's quite amusing to see this after all that bashing of evil Sino filmmakers.
The opponent in new Top Gun was Iran. They are only country with F-14. Iran recently made deal with Russia to buy Su-53. It is possible they could buy Su-57.
But would have to be alternate universe where that happened and US didn't develop F-35 or any naval stealth fighter.
I think the Su-35 deal includes tech transfer, which helps their domestic aircraft development advance past the variations-on-the-F5 stage. I doubt we'll ever see a production Su-57 run, and yes I know they're supposedly in serial production, but I'm skeptical it'll get past handcrafting each one.
Small caps is a typographic technique to balance the appearance of strings of capitals in predominantly lowercase running text. The Economist is applying their style guide. I checked. It's not a subtle dis.
