It occurs to me that I never officially reviewed TOP GUN: MAVERICK. Another writer at Vital Thrills covered it this year, and apart from some posts on Twitter and Facebook I didn’t really write about the film in depth.
But first, some context. I saw TOP GUN in the summer of 1986 - I don’t remember how many times I saw it, but I know it was more than once. That summer was the first summer of the 1980s that wasn’t dominated by a Spielberg or a Lucas production, but you can be assured that the lessons from those two filmmakers were learned. By the time 1986 rolled around. that summer’s releases were very much in the mold and the spirit of Lucas and Spielberg. Even David Cronenberg’s THE FLY, while probably not directly influenced by them, feels of a piece with the rest of those films - it’s an emotional powerhouse from a director that had previously been seen as cold and technical.
But it was TOP GUN that ruled that year - the rise of Tom Cruise had begun in earnest, but it wasn’t just Cruise that sparked the imaginations of moviegoers that summer. The military propaganda was strong, with films like TOP GUN and ALIENS leading the way. (ALIENS could be seen as not so much a propaganda film as it was an indictment of American imperialism, but that theme isn’t as prevalent as others in the film.) We were at the tail end of the Reagan era, American exceptionalism was a thematic throughline within most of our entertainment, and TOP GUN was about as rah-rah cheerleader as it got. TOP GUN feels like it was made in a lab, engineered to elicit the responses that it did. I still like TOP GUN, but its pleasures are surface level. It’s not a particularly deep film, nor does it want to be.
Cut to 36 years later, and what was once considered facile and superficial has become poignant and profound. TOP GUN: MAVERICK isn’t as propagandistic as its predecessor - oh, it’s still there, but it’s more focused, not so eager to please as it is insistent that it’s still relevant. TOP GUN: MAVERICK isn’t celebrating American exceptionalism as much as it celebrates American endurance and resilience. You can feel free to disagree with the film’s argument, but then again, we have Tom Cruise in our corner, and for the purposes of this discussion, he’s enough.
Look, I’m going to give a film points this year for fully embracing the cinematic experience the way TOP GUN: MAVERICK does. This was a film engineered for maximum impact, on the biggest screens possible, and full of eager, excited filmgoers ready to blast off into the stratosphere again. But TOP GUN: MAVERICK is more than just a nostalgia trip. If it were simply that, I doubt it would have resonated as deeply as it did, or bust all the box office records during a year when most films could barely get off the ground.
While it follows the template of the original film almost like clockwork, each scene that corresponds to its predecessor falls differently, full of additional context and emotional poignancy. For younger audience members, TOP GUN: MAVERICK is probably little more than a decent action-adventure film, with terrific practical effects and real world action sequences that weren’t micromanaged on a computer monitor. But for people of my generation, who have lived through the end of the Cold War, the Great Recession, and the pandemic, TOP GUN: MAVERICK is an affirmation. We still stand. We are better people coming through what we have, and what we were before has been tempered and sharpened, but also with more focus and more resilience. We endure. These aren’t surface level pleasures. We can hand off the world to those who have come after us, knowing that we did the best we could. Even if that isn’t as true as we would like it to be, in the spaces between credits of TOP GUN: MAVERICK, for two hours and ten minutes, we can believe that it is so. It’s rare that movies nowadays do that, and I think that, more than the military fetishism, more than Cruise, more than the aerial photography, is why people kept coming back to it all year.
We still matter. More, we still have something to give.
This is undoubtedly the best film Joseph Kosinski has yet directed, mostly because he adds his technical prowess to the film while being smart enough to get out of the film’s way when it comes to its emotional impact. Kosinski isn’t copying Tony Scott’s style so much as he is channeling it, focusing it, using Scott’s signature visuals in a different context. TOP GUN: MAVERICK doesn’t work without the insistence of sticking with the original film’s sense of verisimilitude, and Kosinski does that perfectly. You can watch TOP GUN: MAVERICK without having seen the original, but if you see the original, those surface pleasures suddenly become poignant and sagacious once you see the sequel. When we talk about sequels that are as good as or better than the original, I think that those aspects are a requirement - the sequel builds upon the first while adding even more to the plate.
And then, of course, there is Tom Cruise. It simply is not possible to tell this story without him, and I’m happy that he waited as long as he did to make another one of these. Reading Cruise’s interviews over the years about TOP GUN, if you read between the lines, while he acknowledges the impact the film had on his career, he almost comes across as being embarrassed by it, as if TOP GUN was a film that was merely a stepping stone to get to where he wanted to be, but not a true classic in the sense of the term. He wasn’t wrong.
But with TOP GUN: MAVERICK, Cruise is able to not only give the predecessor a youthful, naïve optimism, but the sequel also fills that optimism with something stronger, more profound, more meaningful. This is optimism with a purpose - it’s seem some things, man, and still comes out through the other side with its shine and its sharpness intact. Through his entire career as an actor, and through his personal life, and whatever you may think of Cruise as a person, all of that informs Pete “Maverick” Mitchell with a sense of poignancy and urgency. TOP GUN: MAVERICK is as much about Tom Cruise as it is about Maverick. That sense of searching for a family, not stopping until you find it, and holding on as hard as you can when you get it. That feels quintessentially Tom Cruise. It’s what makes the films he’s done in recent years feel as powerful as they do - the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films may be fueled by spectacular stunt work, but it’s Ethan Hunt’s determination to let none of his charges die under his watch that makes them as compelling as they are. The same is true with TOP GUN: MAVERICK. You can think what you want about Tom Cruise, but Ethan Hunt and Pete Mitchell will always be there to save us.
So as we close out 2022, is TOP GUN: MAVERICK really deserving of all the awards talk? Absolutely. It’s immaculately crafted, fueled by more than nostalgia, with jawdropping action sequences that surpass even the original film. It’s one of Tom Cruise’s very best performances, and it’s easily the most rewatchable film of the decade. One of the criteria I always used when judging what makes a great movie is its ability to transport us every single time we sit down to it. Well, I’ve seen TOP GUN: MAVERICK going on seven times (three times in the theater) - so many times I won’t even list it on Letterboxd anymore. Each time, it takes me to that sweet spot that very few movies do. It’s Indiana Jones being chased by the boulder, it’s Luke on the Death Star trench run, it’s Jack and Rose standing on the deck of the Titanic, arms stretched in flight. It’s Maverick running to save his surrogate son. It’s the stuff dreams are made of.