My sister took me to see Top Gun: Maverick this week. Critics have pointed out that Tom Cruise returning to his signature action-hero character, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, after all these years, makes him look like a man out of time. After all, those were the Reagan days. And the movie starts by pushing all the old buttons: A takeoff montage from an aircraft carrier, set to an 80’s synth score leading to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” then Maverick putting on his old bomber jacket and zipping to the base on his Kawasaki. He is in a way literally stuck in time: After reaching Mach 10 (and in the process killing an experimental fighter jet) Maverick’s superior dresses him down, saying he’s refused any promotion above Captain and any assignments or command besides flying jets, when with his record he could be an Admiral or even a Senator. But, like a lot of Cruise characters, and other action heroes, he stays in his niche cause that’s the only thing he’s good at, and that’s where he’s found his calling. It is in fact amazing that somebody his age can still be a fighter jock, but then the other reason Maverick is a symbol of bygone times is that Tom Cruise, while not looking exactly like he did in the Risky Business years, still looks remarkably good and fit for his age, as opposed to co-stars like Kelly McGillis (who is not in this movie) or Val Kilmer, who IS in this movie and had to do most of his dialogue on a computer screen because he lost his voice to throat cancer in real life.
In fact it is because of “Iceman”, now Admiral Kazansky, that Maverick’s career is saved, but he has to be sent back to Top Gun in San Diego, this time as an instructor. Of course Maverick being Maverick (and Cruise being Cruise) he ends up being the star pilot anyway. But the situation is wrapped up in Hollywood military drama. The base admiral (Jon Hamm) is a by-the-book stick-in-the-mud. The new team are mostly in rivalry with each other, especially “Hangman” (Glen Powell), who doesn’t play well with others and is just as cocky and handsome as Maverick but doesn’t pull it off as well. But Maverick’s main issue is that he’s still haunted by the death of “Goose” (Anthony Edwards), his radar man and best friend. This comes up because one of the other jocks is “Rooster” (Miles Teller) who we know is Goose’s son because he inherited his father’s mustache. Maverick’s guilt means that he is overprotective of the whole team, but especially Rooster, to the point that he was willing to follow his late mother’s wishes to keep him out of the Naval Academy, for which Rooster naturally resents him.
All this drama is held together (sorta) by the plot: The US Navy air arm is assigned to take out a uranium processing plant in a rogue state that is conveniently unnamed. For extra security against air attack and location, the plant is set in the center of a mountain canyon with steep cliffs ringed by SAM anti-air batteries. The Navy is using older F/A-18s, apparently for security reasons, while the enemy is using fifth-generation Russian fighters. Thus the goal is for the team to get in, dodge the SAMs, do a two-stage, pinpoint bombing and get out before the fighters can reach them, and the Navy keeps moving the schedule and narrowing the window for operation. Maverick’s team are already the best of the Top Gun class, but they don’t know how to run this mission in less than 3 minutes, and Maverick has to keep pushing them. He tells the team, “Time is your adversary.” As if the script had not already been laying down that point.
The joke of this movie, without spoiling much, is that time may be a tough adversary for Maverick (and Cruise) but it hasn’t beaten him yet.
This is one of those Hollywood blockbusters that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you think about it too hard, like how McGillis isn’t in it but Maverick has a relationship with Jennifer Connelly that seems to already have a history even though she wasn’t in the first movie. But as corny and egotistical (and problematic) as Cruise can be, he really does sell the concept of personal excellence. Mitchell tells his team that he’s going to push their limits and show them they’re capable of more than they think, and ultimately, he does. And when we saw the film in the theater, they had a short bit where Cruise directly addresses the camera and tells the audience how proud he and the crew are to have made this movie, and how they did most of it without green screens, using real planes and real flight training. That certainly gives authenticity to the flight scenes and helps make them that much more intense.
Top Gun: Maverick is not really sophisticated entertainment. But it’s a hell of a ride.