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Deja Vu All Over Again: Film Review of Top Gun: Maverick
By Geoff Carter
Movies are nectar for the masses. The people love the panache, the stars, the glitz, the glamor, and their occasional sheer audacity of movies. But most of all, the people love their predictability. Action thrillers like Die Hard, True Lies, Passenger 57, Air Con, or Air Force One offer thrills, chills, and shootouts with mind-numbing regularity. As Tom Waits once said, “A lot of action, a lot of music, a lot of girls. You’re going to love it.”
The public knows what they’re getting when they buy tickets for a Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Vin Diesel vehicle. A flawed hero, usually a rebel and maybe an outsider, who sniffs out and tracks down a set of heinous villains—maybe terrorists or cartel members, who will engage our hero in a frenetic chase and fierce shootout with—ultimately and inevitably—our hero coming out on top. Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the (overly) complicated love interest that the hero can’t quite bring himself to accept (except maybe at the end).
We’ve all seen this same movie with different trappings—probably dozens of times. They’re fun and entertaining and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them, but they remind me of reading to my daughter when she was very young. Goodnight, Moon—of course. She would, without fail, ask that I read it to her night after night after night. Something about the story reassured her, made her feel good. I don’t know why, but I believe that same psychomechanism is at work in today’s average movie viewer.
Top Gun: Maverick is a very current case in point. As of today, it is the highest-grossing film of 2022 and an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. A sequel to the original (and also popular) Top Gun, which came out in 1986, Maverick takes up the saga of its hero, Pete Mitchell (Tom Cruise) aka Maverick, thirty-six years after he originally attained the status of “top gun” during his training. Despite his superlative skill as a navy pilot, Mitchell has never been promoted to flag rank because of repeated incidents of insubordination and is now working as a test pilot. Learning that their scramjet program is to be scrubbed due to the Navy’s decision to invest in drones, and in order to save the program, Maverick, true to form, pushes his jet past Mach 10 and crashes it.
His old friend, former rival—and admiral—Iceman (Val Kilmer), intercedes for Maverick, and assigns him as instructor for the Top Gun program, which will be assembling a group of its best and brightest graduates to prepare to take out a uranium enrichment plant situated in an underground bunker at the end of a long and treacherous canyon flanked by a steep mountain slope defended by surface-to-air missiles and F-14s (they never say from which nation).
Maverick comes up with a dangerous plan to approach the site under the radar (literally) at dangerous speeds, to destroy the target and finally escape, and begins to train the young pilots to execute it. One of the elite pilots, Rooster (Miles Teller), is the son of Goose, Maverick’s former best friend and wingman who died during an accident with Maverick. Rooster blames Maverick for his father’s death and for stalling his own career as a Navy fighter pilot, but I it turns out that Maverick had rejected Rooster’s application to the Naval Academy because the boy’s mother, Goose’s wife, had asked him to.
A rivalry between pilots Rooster and Hangman (Glen Powell) ensues. Hangman is the bolder and more audacious of the two while Rooster is the better team player. After one of the jets crashes, Maverick’s plan is put on hold. Cyclone (John Hamm), the officer in charge of the mission, removes Maverick and turns to another plan which will ensure success but pose a greater risk to the pilot.
True to form, Maverick flies through the mission training course using his original parameters, proving that it can be done. Cyclone has no alternative than to appoint Maverick as mission leader. Needless to say—but I’ll still say it, through his singular blend of skill and recklessness, Maverick manages to accomplish the mission, at the same time earning the respect of his pilots and the friendship of his dead wingman’s son. Strange. I have a feeling I’ve seen all this before.
Top Gun: Maverick is an exceptionally well-made action picture. The training and dogfight sequences which used Navy F/A-18E and F/A-18-Fs, are absolutely stunning. Joseph Kosinski’s direction is taut and intensely to the point. The actors, who were filmed in the backseats of the 18Fs while filming, had to train in a “boot camp” to get them accustomed to high G forces and aerobatics. The climactic action sequence(s) were masterfully filmed and edited; every expectation of a Hollywood action film, and then some, were fulfilled by this film.
And yet, for all its virtuoso pyrotechnics and classic Hollywood heroic posturing, there is still a hollowness at the core of this film. Action-adventure films are not usually known for their deep dives into psychological or thematic complexities (nor should they be), but there is a lack of fiber beneath the flash and gloss of this film. The characters are drawn with almost childishly broad strokes. There is the stereotypical perky woman pilot Phoenix (Monica Barbaro), the nerdy WSO Bob—the dude doesn’t even have a nickname—(Lewis Pullman), and Hangman (Glen Powell), Rooster’s nemesis.
Rooster’s grudge against Maverick is understandable, but the former’s refusal to try to fathom the man who was his father’s best friend is childish—as are many of the rivalries and interactions of these elite pilots. In fact, there is a clubhouse feel to the entire school, not helped by nearly every character having a fighter pilot tag name.
Perhaps because the premise of Maverick is built on a previous film and rehashes many of the same storylines and thematics of the original: rivalry turns to respect, teamwork is more important that individuality, and heroism trumps authority, it seems as if it’s an old and tired story we’ve seen a hundred times before.
But maybe that’s precisely the point.