Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Language: English
Year: 2022
Shaun’s Rating: 1.8/5 ★
Before Watching:
For those who don’t know, I was in a high school marching band show themed after the original Top Gun (1986), which included me (as drum major) singing “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” and screaming “you can be my wingman anytime!” at the audience. While that was certainly a… learning experience, I’ve tried to maintain journalistic neutrality and not let franchise familiarity influence my viewing of Top Gun: Maverick, the follow-up released almost 40 years later. A lot about this sequel works, despite it being delayed longer than a United flight from Newark—the production design, the editing, the cast, even the cinematography are all miles above its predecessor. Unfortunately, the very structure of the film—from its hedonistic writing and jingoistic clichés to its razor-thin conceive—nosedives in the exact same way the original did decades earlier.
Everyone knows the genesis story of Lieutenant Pete Mitchell (call sign “Maverick”, played by the timeless Tom Cruise), but Kosinski throws in some sleek motorcycle establishing shots and lo-fi flashbacks just in case. After a decorated but uncelebrated career in the field, Maverick is back at Top Gun to flirt with a new love interest (“How I Jet Your Mother”) and prepare a group of young naval pilots for a top-secret military operation. One of his pupils is “Rooster” (Miles Teller), the son of his late best buddy Goose, whose death in a training accident is still a sore subject all around. The plot itself is just a remix of the first film, yet again succeeding at box office action while doubling as military recruitment.
Maverick was iconic in the ’80s for his off-book, not-by-the-rules charisma (if only there were a word for that…), a trope heralded in the zeitgeist of the mid-80s from The Breakfast Club (1985) to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). But in a post-Trump 2022, this archetype no longer commands the same admiration or even entertainment. Maverick’s rebellious teaching doesn’t soar like his rebellious learning once did, instead drowning in insufferable clichés (e.g., “I needed to include a beach football scene teach them how to act like a team!”). Where Maverick bent rules decades ago, he now outright breaks laws, endangers others, and destroys public property in a way that makes him hard to root for, but a shoo-in for a job at Spirit Airlines.
Top Gun: Maverick also handles our modern, embattled political reality without tact. The original film screened during a time of more clear-cut global nuclear conflict, with the Soviet Union as an easy target for our collective military anxiety. The sequel, though landing on a more complex geopolitical runway, chooses the laziest solution possible and just refers to their adversary as “the enemy,” keeping them nameless and faceless. This discretion actually makes the film more uncomfortable, as the audience tries to guess whether they secretly mean Russia (who is actually at war with our ally), China (whose top-grossing film of 2022 was literally about a fabulated war with America…), or just Disney (who bested them at the box office with the Avatar sequel). What’s more, the film completely eschews any discussion of how the military has changed under drone warfare, while also deliberately skipping the prequel’s commentary that soldiers are merely “instruments of policy.” Perhaps our collective consciousness has been elevated in the last thirty-odd years to where we wouldn’t embrace these discussions, or perhaps we just switch off our brains when the movie has a fat enough effects budget.
My biggest critique is that Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t feel like a stand-alone movie, or even a true sequel. The film is such a shameless exaltation of its predecessor that it copies from it practically shot-for-shot, while recycling every single plot tension point. And yet, I (not unlike 99% of audiences on Rotten Tomatoes) somehow felt a pang of nostalgia when the credits rolled. I couldn’t help but admit that Top Gun: Maverick is a testament to why cinema has improved so much since 1986. The action scenes are genuinely stunning (though sometimes spliced too liberally), all filmed in real planes by the actors themselves, utilizing technologies that cinematographers couldn’t have dreamed of decades ago. Cruise, pushing 60, still dazzles with his 1980s charm, reminding us why we ever bothered showing up for cliché blockbusters like this. Maverick does fly too close to the sun, but every now and then we’re entitled to put our seats back and enjoy the flight.
Top Gun: Maverick premiered at CinemaCon in April 2022, and was subsequently screened at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in the Out of Competition Official Selection. It can now be streamed on Paramount+ and Prime Video.
After Watching:
All of that isn’t to say that the improvements were enough. Take, for example, the supporting cast of young pilots—this new crew is more diverse and (thankfully) less fratty than the troop in Top Gun, but they compensate for those advances with insufferable one-dimensionality. Each of them is cartoonish and epicurean, acting out individual character traits with just enough inconsistency to keep the mission moving and the smack talk flowing. The blandness of their characters actually aids in engineering nostalgia, the one feeling that Kosinski is certainly deft at mass-producing. Everyone in the audience can see someone from their glory days in these vague silhouettes.
Top Gun: Maverick is a legacy film, landing in the impossible shadow of a bygone era. The production spans a time capsule of remastered soundtrack staples, slicked back hair and leather jackets, and actors surrounded by younger photos of themselves. The characters cling to cowboy mindsets that don’t comport with reality—notwithstanding how Maverick manages to just take a jet to prove his attack strategy’s viability, his lack of actual discipline after the fact is unfathomable. Rooster also somehow sidesteps any consequences upon his triumphant return to the aircraft carrier after disobeying direct orders (what is this, the opening party of Babylon?). The film basks in the muscular aesthetics of rugged military strength, unfortunately bringing nothing new to the conversation other than a reminder of what cinema can be for us again in a post-COVID world. Paramount may still feel the need for speed, but in terms of cinematic innovation, they evidently travel on Cruise control.