OSCARS 2023: Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

When a sequel to “Top Gun” was first announced in 2010, I found myself asking: Who gives a shit? Twenty-four years after it was released, “Top Gun” was regarded as a campy product of the Reagan years, Cold War propaganda awash in the visual signifiers of a bygone decade. I could only conclude that “Top Gun 2” was a vanity project being pushed through solely by Tom Cruise's ego. As the movie continued through Development Hell, even after Tony Scott's passing, I continued to feel this way. After “Top Gun: Maverick” was subsequently filmed, and then delayed for over two years due to the pandemic, my question remained. Who is this movie for, excepting Tom Cruise himself? I guess this proves that I don't know what I'm talking about. “Maverick” became a massive blockbuster, well received by critics and film nerds. It was for a lot of people, it turns out. Now it's nominated for six Academy Awards, including a surprise placement in the Best Picture category. 

Some 34 years after the events of “Top Gun,” Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is still a captain and still flying jets for the Navy. After a ballsy stunt to save the test pilot program he's working for, Maverick is once again sent back to the TOPGUN fighter pilot academy in San Diego. This time, Maverick will be a teacher, instructing a new team of pilots on a ridiculously risky mission to destroy an uranium plant within enemy territory. Among the younger pilots is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, the son of Maverick's long-dead BFF “Goose.” Rooster blames Maverick for the death of his father. Pete Mitchell has to grapple with these new and old burdens as he attempts to prove himself the best of the best once again. 

While reviewing the original “Top Gun” as part of my Tony Scott Director Report Card in 2021, I noted that I'm not a fan of the film. This is largely because I think Maverick is a deeply unlikable protagonist, an endlessly cocky douchebag that the entire narrative bends around in order to justify and preserve his ego. The belated sequel does, if nothing else, humanize Tom Cruise's superhuman hero to some degree. As so much of Cruise's modern filmography is meant to do, the opening montages draw attention to how fragilely human Cruise's body is. This makes his miraculous stunts of daring even more incredible but at least he's depicted as an actual human. The script also makes sure to have Maverick constantly getting chewed out by those all around him, from his bosses, to his students, to even his potential love interests. He's still incredible and he still succeeds on the back of his preternatural talent, Tom Cruise wearing a huge grin the whole time. Yet at least he's a little more grounded this time. 

How much you like “Top Gun: Maverick” seems to depend entirely on how invested you are in Tom Cruise and his status as the Last Movie Star. This is not just because Cruise's otherworldly charisma is the entire motivating force behind the film. It's also because every emotional issue in the script is filtered entirely through Maverick's wants and needs. The tension he feels with Rooster is hard on him. Not because someone's father died but because it reminds Maverick of loosing his friend. When Iceman, played by a voiceless Val Kilmer, dies off-screen, we're supposed to be sad because Maverick loved Ice so much. When Maverick is pulled off the program, and the new pilots are taught to focus on maneuvers that will likely get them killed, it's bad not because the pilots might die... But because it means Maverick will have let his team down. 

In this movie, all of gravity bends around Tom Cruise's ego. If you're like me, someone who honestly finds Cruise more off-putting than compelling, “Top Gun: Maverick” doesn't give you much of a reason to give a shit about anything that happens. The laser-intensity focus the script has on Maverick's arc means none of the other characters are developed beyond the thinnest sketches. The new pilots are the broadest of stereotypes, all defined solely by their pithy callsigns. “Hangman” – played by Glen Powell, a doll-faced ready-made movie star in the Cruise mold – is the new Ice, an overly cocky jerk who is somehow different from the overly cocky jerk we're supposed to root for. Miles Teller's blustering “Rooster” goes from resenting to respecting Maverick over the course of a montage. The romantic subplot Maverick shares with Jennifer Connelly's Penny – who is written as if she's an established character, even though she's not – is totally free of chemistry. If you don't buy into Cruise's mega-watt star power, you're unlikely to get much out of “Top Gun: Maverick.” 

The film, like so many decades-late legacy sequels, also puts a lot of weight on callbacks to the original. The reappearance of a motorcycle, a bomber jacket, an iconic airplane, and a gratuitous shirtless volleyball scene are meaningless unless you've already seen the original “Top Gun.” Yet, as much as the sequel depends on nostalgia, it does function as spectacle in its own right. Director Joseph Kosinski – who specializes in Cruise vehicles and legacy sequels – doesn't have the visual panache of Tony Scott, no matter how much he tries to replicate that Golden Hour shine. However, he does know how to engineer some thrilling stunts. The scenes of the jets moving in line with each other, or the pilots tossed around inside the cockpits, are impressive. I didn't care for a single minute about “Maverick's” plot or characters and even I got a thrill out of the climatic sequences. This is a well organized action movie that uses less CGI than you'd probably think.

Yet I still can't escape the nagging question of what “Top Gun: Maverick's” purpose is. The original film was Cold War propaganda, designed to make the U.S. Navy and Air Force look like glamorous, unstoppable superheroes. It was a movie all about shallow posturing, of making our country look cooler than the Soviets. But the Cold War has long since ended. “Maverick” goes out of its way not to identify the enemy nation that has built this offending uranium plant that motivates the plot. We never see any flags or insignia that assign to a real world country. The enemy soldiers are literally rendered faces, their faces hidden behind goggles and oxygen masks. “Maverick” is agitprop without a cause, designed to make the Navy and fighter jets look cool and competent and super effective... Against a totally nebulous enemy. Its propaganda for the U.S. military complex alone, without even a pretend notion of some higher goal to aspire to. Join the Navy, pilot jets, look cool, be heroic, and kill somebody, anybody, as long as they aren't other Americans. 

 

“Top Gun: Maverick” was beloved not just by general audiences. Critics praised it as the kind of older spectacle that we need more of, in an age of increasingly samey superhero movies. The Film Twitter crowd adored it, turning their admiration for the film into a meme itself. The wellspring of love around “Maverick” is such that I don't think there's any controversy about its Best Picture nomination, even though a blatant popcorn movie like this is not your typical Oscar bait. Yet I suppose my lack of love for Cruise, my indifference towards the original, and my distrust of the military industrial complex left me largely immune to “Maverick's” charms. I love me some bitchin' stunts but a movie needs more than that. And “Maverick” didn't even have the good sense to be as homoerotic as the original, the sheen of muscled bodies and dude-on-dude bonding mostly taking a backseat to more generic themes of teamwork. What is “Top Gun” without camp? Not much, it turns out. But what do I know? [6/10]