Top Gun: Maverick (2022 | USA | 137 minutes | Joseph Kosinski)
Two years after it’s initially-scheduled release, the Top Gun sequel fires up its afterburners and buzzes into real, live, actual movie theaters this Memorial Day weekend. A rare case of a sequel that surpasses the original, this cinematic airshow was worth the wait. As much as a dose of propagandist fantasia might’ve tided us over during the spring 2020 “lockdowns”, this spectacle of military prowess rendered in air ballet really does benefit from the huge screen, big sound, rowdy audience experience. If you can set aside the many obvious reservations, give your brain a little vacation. The sky is dope, revel mindlessly in its majesty.
Ladies and/or gentlemen, find yourself a person who looks at you the way Tom Cruise looks at airplanes. A testament to his love of big fast expensive vehicles, this installment required all of the actors to undergo rigorous training so that they, too, could experience the wonders of flight and convey the emotions directly from the cockpits of those fabulous war machines. The wholly awesome, yet entirely extraneous, opening sequence exists for the sole purpose of establishing Cruise’s need for speed and his character’s enduring commitment to always doing the right thing for the hard-working people of the US military. In it we see still-captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, older but happily no wiser, testing the speed limits of the skies in a sweet experimental aircraft just to stick it to the cold-hearted squares who’d prefer to see our glorious air force replaced with a faceless drone program. As the rest of the film plays on, one might suspect this salient policy argument about the trade-offs between the risk to human lives in highly dangerous missions to resurface. That is, if our faces hadn’t already been melted by the thrill of seeing actors faces being melted by excess gravitational forces. Second-hand thrills are a hell of a drug.
This stunt with multi-million dollar government property gets him in exactly the kind of trouble he adores. A wink, a surgically-enhanced smile, and a friend in high places gets him out of an insubordinate pickle and back where he left his heart so many decades prior: a sexy San Diego beach base for another stint at Special Weapons Training Academy (TOPGUN, no space, to the real flyboys). One could view everything after the first dazzling sequence as some kind of afterlife wish fulfillment, but it would make no difference to the interpretation of the film. Director Joseph Kosinski clearly adores the material and films this homage with dreamlike reverence for the Tony Scott original. For viewers, the effect is deeply comforting, from the reprise of Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” over the main credits to the familiar tones of the sobering chimes and tubular bells that evoke Harold Faltermeyer’s original score (the new version finds Lady Gaga credited alongside him and Hans Zimmer). You know instantly where this is headed and have an instant sense of assurance that it’s destination is going to be awesome.
Nearly every element will be familiar, yet elevated by both the reflection on the passage of time as well as by improvements in the possibilities allowed by modern filmmaking. In addition to all of the sequences of Tom Cruise flying airplanes — this time F-18s, if that makes any difference to the gearheads — you’ll also get the contractually-mandated scenes of Tom Cruise running like Tom Cruise runs, Tom Cruise chasing the sunset on a Kawasaki motorcycle at high speeds with only reflective aviators as protective gear, Tom Cruise doing sport in the sand, and a classic Tom Cruise Has A Love Interest shoehorned in because there is no surer evidence of real human feelings than a little bit of human romance. There’s a prismatic effect of surrendering to this new version of the old and on top of that, some of these cheese-worthy structural features are pretty good! In particular, the sand-sport sequence ditches oily homoerotic beach volleyball in favor of an ocean-kissed update on american football that dares to ask: what if two balls and offense, defense, and denim cutoffs all at the same time? As for the romance, Kelly McGillis apparently didn’t get a callback. In her place, we get Jennifer Connolly — whose character was referred to in the original — only nine years Cruise’s junior. There’s not much to the role, but she’s well up to the task of portraying a gorgeous single mother, salty barkeep, and expert sailor with the confidence of enduring beauty and coastal knits who sees through one charming aviator’s schtick yet still can’t resist that look (“the only one he’s got”).
As to the other characters, that’s not really why we’re here is it? But some of it works decently, and occasionally very successfully. First, congratulations everyone: Jon Hamm has graduated from hot dreamy ad-man mess to buttoned-up, disapproving, Navy authority figure. Although he appears offscreen for most of the film, texting back and forth with Maverick in fully punctuated sentences, like grown-assed men, Val Kilmer’s rival-turned-buddy Iceman also makes a return. It’s easily among the film’s most moving callbacks and is handled with tenderness and light humor. Finally, there’s a new class of borderline nameless Top Guns who show up and competently perform the job of being young, attractive, and overconfident in their abilities to be the best there is at what they do. Sure, the crew includes avatars of a blond ideal of 1980s masculinity (Glenn Powell, with the height and perfect smile that must pain Cruise not to have been born with, as “Hangman”, this film’s “Iceman” analogue) as well as a dreamboat who’s presented as a nerd only because he’s quiet and wears glasses (Lewis Pullman, as “Bob”). But compared to the last time around, the script acknowledges the existence of people of color (including Jay Ellis as “Fanboy”, all of the good callsigns having been taken is a recurring theme) and changes to combat policy by including a tough aerial ace played by a woman (Monica Barbaro as “Phoenix”, progress!) among the ranks of expert flyers.
They remain fairly interchangeable mostly because the movie only has eyes (and room for) so many personalities and the main new one takes up a great deal of airspace: Miles Teller as “Rooster”. You can tell right away that he’s the one to care about because unlike the squares who show up at The Hard Deck in his standard-issue brass-buttoned khakis, he rolls in wearing a jaunty aloha shirt, conspicuous dog tags, some too-cool-for-school gold sunglasses, a sweet mustache, and an instant facility for tickling the ivories on the bar’s very familiar piano with an old song that breaks old Maverick’s heart. Even though his callsign should’ve been “Gosling” (rejected for rights issues, I’m sure), it’s instantly obvious that he’s the son of Anthony Edwards’s character, the one true love who got away (via death) from Maverick oh so many years ago and whose Goose-ly ghost looms large. Cruise conveys a sense of wounded pain around the kid, Teller is suitably cocky and defiant, and the film takes its time establishing the roots of their tense conflicted relationship without spilling its guts all at once.
Compared to the original, whose plot is kind of nonsensical when you think about how it sends students to start World War III with little more than a shrug, Top Gun: Maverick is a vast improvement in legibility if not plausibility. Maverick’s been called back to his old stomping grounds to train former graduates, the best of the best of the bests, to replicate the Star Wars: A New Hope assault on the Death Star, except with airplanes, on planet earth, without The Force. It’s a phenomenal choice by screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie to lay this all out early. Never losing track of the blueprint or objectives, the film can follow the ups-and-downs of training, team-building, interpersonal competition, and struggles with the impossibility of the mission, while gilding it with small beats of effective character development. An even greater trick, though, is making the final boss level remain jaw-dropping even after having watched dozens of training montage dress rehearsals. Combined with the commitment to thrilling practical filmmaking, the cleaner storytelling and character-driven script, makes for a wildly successful summer blockbuster, a throwback that’s even more satisfying.
I despise local airshows and cower in fear like a jittery goldendoodle whenever SeaFare invites fighter planes to terrorize our local airspace. I also acknowledge that there are many parts of Tom Cruise’s biography that are troubling, to say the least. (I have a grudging admiration, however, of his advocacy against motion-smoothing, adherence Covid-protocols, and apparent willingness to put himself in maximal physical danger to make movies even if it means dying on set.).
Yet, I was surprisingly able to leave all of those conflicted concerns at the door to the theater where I saw a screening. The music started blaring, the familiar feels stirred, and the film started to feel like a self-reflexive and self-aware commentary on itself. Like the US military industrial complex it lionizes, there’s some element of bloat to Top Gun: Maverick. Some sequences aren’t strictly necessary, some plot lines could be trimmed, there’s occasional bits of backfill to create a sense of unearned continuity. Tom Cruise is many things, but even on the precipice of the big six-zero, he’s a credibly certified movie star who adamantly sets himself up for success. The kids might keep getting younger, but he manages to stay the same age (and this movie has the flashbacks to prove it). Sequence after sequence, including one with a death-defying intertwining snake spiral of dueling egos, are astonishing to watch and mind-melting to contemplate how they were achieved. While watching, it became instantly clear to me that the best airshow is one with spectacular photography viewed in IMAX, not outside your own rattling windowpanes. This one is an absolute blast, a compelling argument for going to movie theaters, and if you’re willing to fly into that particular danger zone will … take your breath away.
Top Gun: Maverick arrives in theaters on May 27th, including the recently-reopened Pacific Science Center’s IMAX. See it as big and loud as you can.
Images courtesy Paramount Pictures.