Tom Cruise must be kicking himself. Just a matter of months before its long-delayed release, Top Gun: Maverick has been gazumped – by an even sleeker, more stylish and purringly homoerotic feast of raw cinematic machismo. I speak, of course, of the new propaganda film from North Korea, which shows Kim Jong-un overseeing the test launch of the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, which the country claims is part of its ongoing efforts to “contain” the United States.
Now, you might think if you wanted to be taken seriously on the global geopolitical stage, the best approach might be to simply supply the world’s media with footage of a successful test, along with a thorough read-out of the missile’s capabilities, and a sternly worded statement about the conditions under which it might be deployed. You decadent western capitalist scum!
Of course the actual smartest strategy is to pull on a leather jacket and sunglasses and film yourself striding around in slow motion outside the missile hangar to a thundering electronic soundtrack.
Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, was famously obsessed with film, and its power to inspire and move (who said brainwash?) the masses. He had a collection of around 30,000 DVDs, including every Oscar winner until at least 2013 – would he have been Team CODA or Team Power of the Dog? – and was an outspoken fan of Rambo, Godzilla, the Friday the 13th horror series, anything and everything with Elizabeth Taylor, and the James Bond franchise (Die Another Die aside, presumably).
He also possessed what sources described as a “significant” collection of pornography, which he stored in a secure, climate-controlled vault: when you’re a warmongering tyrant, why settle for a shoebox under the bed?
