I’m just as surprised as you are. Am I really giving a glowing recommendation for Top Gun: Maverick? That can’t possibly be right, can it? I LOATHED the original Top Gun. And LOATHED might be too weak a word to describe it. The film was a pissing contest homoerotic ad for the US Navy. It had nothing to say other than, “Are you sure there’s no homosexuality in our armed forces?” The conflicts were pointless; the characters were wooden; the hero was a shallow jerk. If you don’t masturbate to either Kenny Loggins or jet fighters in action, Top Gun was a complete waste of time.
I expected the exact same from the sequel; so, seriously, I’m as surprised as you are.
What happened? Well, there are some key differences between the two films right off the bat. 1) Top Gun: Maverick has a plot, an exciting and dangerous one at that. It’s a plot I will critique in theory, but the theoretical is irrelevant of film enjoyment. 2) Top Gun: Maverick has a great deal more depth than the original. The point is no longer to measure members, but instead the measure of membership. 3) (And I cannot stress this enough) Tom Cruise is a different actor than the one who existed in 1986. Between Risky Business (1983) and 1988, Cruise performed under the impression that all he had to do was show up, act cool, and the audience would respond. The fact that he wasn’t wrong didn’t help. It wasn’t until Rain Man (1988) when a real actor emerged, one capable of something more than putting on a pair of sunglasses and smiling at the camera. Fiftysomething Maverick has the same skill set in cockpit, but can act circles around twentysomething Maverick, and this script asked him to do just that.
Instead of wasting our time trying to show how cool everything Top Gun was, Maverick decided to have a plot – a dicey, perilous plot guided by the Navy’s oldest child, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Mitchell is now in his fifties, but he’s still got the ability to defy military orders and motorcycle regulations alike. Sure, they’d string up any minority for doing what Maverick does, but Maverick is protected by his rival from 1986, Iceman (Val Kilmer). That’s “Admiral” Iceman to you. The story opens with Maverick braving Mach 10 for fun. Mach 10 is 7,673 MPH. At that rate, you could go from NYC to South Carolina in five minutes.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, a nation is enriching uranium and we don’t want them to do that. The film was fairly clever here in failing to name the nation or its location. Heck, even the battle footage allows few clues: well, it clearly has mountains and rivers and canyons and trees. It also has winter five miles away from summer, which is a neat trick. The point is that without specifying the evil, the film can avoid all talk of racism, xenophobia, or bias of any kind. The plan could be to invade Iran, Kazakhstan, or Sweden for all we know.
And the important part is that “Maverick” HeyMitchell has been summoned to mentor the past twelve winners of the Top Gunger Games so as to prepare the kids for a very dangerous mission involving mountains and canyons and trees and rivers and the real-life equivalent of blowing up the Death Star. Is Maverick up to the task? Well, of course he is, cuz he’s part Jedi and part Peter Pan. It takes him about thirty seconds to establish himself as superior flier to all the other Top Guns; now, normally, I’d berate such as generation-baiting, but here it feels like, “well, of course he is … because he never indulged in the kind of life that makes one soft.” Maverick never had a wife, never had children, never had a day job. Maverick can’t even pay an expensive beer tab, which is a sad statement about a fiftysomething … he still test flies supersonic vehicles; that’s what he does. If you want to make a statement about the strength of your generation based on this guy, well, go ahead, I guess.
Along with the mission at hand are the subplots including contemporary bar owner and new Kelly McGillis, Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly). Oh, and there’s also the part where the son of Maverick’s Top Gun wingman “Goose” has been invited to the Top Gunger Games. Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller – say, shouldn’t the son of Goose be played by Ryan Gosling? That seems like a no brainer) has a bone to pick with Maverick. Well, this isn’t just another pissing contest now, is it?
The film has expert pacing and exposition. We know exactly what we need to know when we need to know it. We know the motivations, the rivalries, and while we may not care about the current Top Gun pissing contest, the film makes it quite clear that it doesn’t care, either. The pilots exist for a mission; they do not exist to test themselves against one another; they exist to test which ones will be best to complete the mission as a team – this is exactly the turning point for me, and it made me care 100% about the mission and its success, which is all very exciting. An through it all, there’s now a Maverick who is suddenly more than just an ego with sunglasses.
None of that is what I expected, but kudos to those who turned the Top Gun military ad campaign into something much better.
OK, now that I’ve praised the film adequately:
Don’t kid yourselves; the plot in this film constitutes an act of war. Despite the Orange Moron’s opinions, the United 
States cannot –even if justified- waltz into a sovereign nation with war planes, start bombing stuff, and expect to “get away with it.” And all it would take is one undoctored photograph to get the afterparty started. The next sequel to this film would invariably be called: Top Gun: Consequences. [And if you’re going to commit an act of war, don’t you want one with a much higher chance of success?] This is precisely why intelligent leaders expend huge amounts of energy creating treaties to make actions like this unnecessary … and, in turn, why millions upon millions of intelligent people gnash their teeth when an orange-painted buffoon breaks said treaty out of spite.
In the long run, Top Gun: Maverick will go down with 300 and Rocky III as “films I hate myself for loving.” It’s a ton of bad American culture in one fell swoop: the desire to solve every problem with a hammer … the existence of white privilege completely without acknowledgement of such (tell me, who else but a white American man would see “Captain in the US Navy” as a reason to be embarrassed?) … yet another prayer at the altar of the war gods … generation-baiting … and a weird and never-ending American belief that people should be evaluated entirely by what kind of soldiers they are.
This is a great watch … so long as you don’t think about it too much.
There once was a slick naval flier
Who couldn’t resist going much higher
Although jets were so nifty
One day, he was fifty
And still didn’t know how to retire
Rated PG-13, 130 Minutes
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Writer: Peter Craig
Genre: Solutions I hope the military never uses IRL
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Who is ready for an action film?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who see consequences
