In an increasingly rare confluence of popular opinion and elite Academy taste, the non-woke Top Gun: Maverick scored six Oscar nominations on Tuesday morning, including best picture and adapted screenplay.
While Tom Cruise missed out on a nomination for lead actor, he is nominated in the best picture category as one of the movie’s producers. It marks the fourth Oscar nomination of Cruise’s career and his first in more than two decades, following Magnolia in 2000.
Top Gun: Maverick was an unqualified popular and critical success, earning $1.49 billion at the global box office and nearly unanimous praise from critics. The Paramount release notably avoided the woke sermonizing and left-wing preaching that have become commonplace in Hollywood movies, proving that audiences still crave the kind of straightforward entertainment.
As the first Hollywood box-office smash following the coronavirus pandemic, the sequel is widely credited for bringing audiences back to theaters in significant numbers.
The first Top Gun received four Oscar nominations back in 1987.
This year’s nominations were dominated by the indie action-fantasy-comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once, which scored the most nods at 11, followed by the German-language All Quiet on the Western Front and The Banshees of Inisherin, with 9 each. Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans earned seven nominations.
Avatar: The Way of Water also received a best picture nomination, earning a total of four nods — well below the first Avatar’s nine nominations.
The 95th Academy Awards ceremony is set to air Sunday March 12 on ABC, with left-wing comedian Jimmy Kimmel returning as host. Once a ratings juggernaut, the annual broadcast has been plagued in the recent years by plummeting viewership as audiences wary of left-wing grandstanding by celebrities are electing to tune out in droves.
Last. year’s broadcast drew just 15.4 million viewers, the second-worst in the history of a telecast.
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