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“The end is inevitable, Maverick. Your kind is headed for extinction.”
”Maybe so, sir. But not today.”
How is it possible that the highest-grossing, best-reviewed film of the year — by critics and audiences — that was credited with saving the film industry amid near-total collapse would not be winning Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday, March 12th?
There is no question that Top Gun Maverick should be winning. In the real world that is what would happen. It deserves it more than any movie ever has in the 22 years I’ve been covering the Oscars. But will it win? Of course not.
The movie that will likely win instead is Everything, Everywhere All At Once, an original, imaginative film about an elderly Chinese mother (Michelle Yeoh) who must save the world by popping in and out of the multiverse so that she can eventually accept and love her gay daughter (Stephanie Hsu), flaws and all, and appreciate her long-suffering husband (Ke Huy Quan).
Some love it, some hate it, but there is no question why it has swept the season so far and is likely to win a whole bunch of Oscars on Sunday, including Best Picture.
There isn’t a film that reflects the “woke” Left more than this one. This kind of winner makes the industry feel safe. They can hide who they really are — mostly white, mostly male — by shrinking back into the shadows, centering people of color, and voting for films that reflect the ideology of the utopians.
For several years now, the Oscars have been in an ongoing tug-of-war over merit and equity. It started with the rise of marginalized voices on social media calling out the Oscars for not giving enough of their wins to women and marginalized groups.
This led to big changes by the Academy to bring in new members and diversify its roster. Every year activists would count the heads to see whether certain criteria had been met.
When Trump won it caused mass panic that led to a kind of ongoing hysteria that targeted filmmakers via social media. La La Land was “racist” so Moonlight won. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was “racist” so The Shape of Water won. Then came Green Book, where the hysteria peaked.
The already declining ratings got even worse as Hollywood took a side against Trump. They just assumed all of their viewers and ticket buyers agreed with them and if they didn’t they were expendable.
As Oscar ratings declined, the tug-of-war between merit and equity continued heating up, largely due to political polarization. At some point, everything Hollywood put out seemed to be in some way political. As a climate of fear gripped Hollywood it began to infect everything from late-night comedy to screenwriting to award shows.
And so “Woke Hollywood” was born.
It would only get worse by 2020, after the Great Awokening in the Summer. By now, equity has easily beaten merit and the public was starting to notice. They couldn’t stand being lectured to by Hollywood elites, especially at awards shows.
By the time COVID hit, it wasn’t just empty theaters threatening to end Hollywood as we once knew it. It was also the newfound zealotry that had captured the entire industry. Prestige movies that came out in 2021 bombed. By 2022, we were all getting nervous. The Oscars were dying on the vine. Their brand seemed to be toxic. Politics, Wokeism, and activism had choked the life out of the film industry and the Oscars.
And then came Top Gun Maverick. The only thing people knew about it was that it was good and it wasn’t “woke.”
There he was, the last movie star, Tom Cruise, doing what we’ve always needed them to do: be great. Be larger than life. But it was more than that. Dripping with testosterone and alpha male energy, Cruise peacocked through the movie in a way that has been mostly absent in movies as studios tried to force women into those roles to re-order the hierarchy and hack our sensibilities.
But there was nothing they could do about it. Top Gun Maverick took off like an F-15.
Even Steven Spielberg noticed that Top Gun Maverick saved Hollywood.
