directed by Joseph Kosinsky
written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Martin Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig and Justin Marks
If I'm perfectly honest, I was not the biggest fan of the 1986 film Top Gun growing up. I watched it in theaters, and I did enjoy it, but the older I got, the less I cared for the film. While other films of my youth like Aliens (which came out in the same year), Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park aged pretty well, Top Gun, which was quite unfortunately dated by its Cold War setting, did not. My feelings for the film are actually best summed up by this hilarious send-up prepared by the folks at Honest Trailers.
It was to my great surprise, then, that when I saw the first trailer for this film, I felt an odd rush of nostalgia when I heard the first few notes of Harold Faltermeyer's now iconic "Top Gun Anthem." From a film that I would think about seeing when it came out, Top Gun: Maverick suddenly acquired an urgency that had not been there before. The stellar reviews came in, a good chunk of which were from people who openly professed to hating the original film, and my curiosity reached a fever pitch.
So Top Gun: Maverick takes place over thirty years after the events of the first film, and we find Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise, naturally) testing hypersonic jets for the Navy. Maverick, who could easily have made Admiral by now, has dodged promotions his entire career so that he can stay in the air. Unfortunately, his testing facility is shut down by the big brass, who have decided against spending any more of taxpayers' money on manned aircraft. Fortunately for Mitchell, however, one of his old buddies, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer), who happens to be Admiral and the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet now, has a very special assignment for him over at the Naval Air Station North Island. Maverick finds himself returning to to the training facility where it all began: Top Gun. This time, though, he's going back as an instructor, to train an elite group of pilots to perform an impossible mission (sorry) to take out a uranium enrichment plant in an unnamed enemy nation's army base deep in the mountains. Crucially, one of the candidates for the mission happens to be Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller) the son of Maverick's best friend Nick "Goose" Bradshaw who died back when he and Maverick were students at Top Gun. There is serious bad blood between Maverick and Rooster as the former blocked the papers of the latter back when he was a cadet at the naval aviator's academy, setting him back a couple of years. Maverick, of course, was only trying to protect Rooster, and acting on the secret request of his late mother. It's a challenging task ahead, with all of the clashing egos, and neither time, nor his commanding officer (Jon Hamm) is on Maverick's side.
Apparently Tom Cruise was, for a time, not at all keen on revisiting this particular story because of concerns, among other things, that the first film felt a bit too propagandistic. Well, it's a good thing somebody changed his mind because in my humble opinion, Top Gun: Maverick is a rare thing: it's the legacy sequel done correctly. Unlike recent legacy sequels that essentially kicked its beloved legacy characters to the curb (I'm looking at you, Star Wars), this film brings its main character forward and gives him a bit of growth as a character. The first film was about Maverick stepping out of the shadow of his father, this one is about him doing right by his surrogate son. It's a nice story of redemption, which is quite a step up from the paper-thin plot of the first film.
What is even more significantly stepped up, however, is the sheer commitment to authenticity that's on display here; the flight sequences are gripping, and in this film much more emphasis is placed on the G-forces the pilots experience in the course of their training and, ultimately their mission, seemingly borrowing a little bit of a tension-generator from another 80s aviation classic, The Right Stuff. Ed Harris, who played John Glenn in that film, makes an appearance here. These action sequences, at a time when everything in theaters feels like weightless CGI, are just wondrous to not just behold but to experience.
As the title suggests, this is Tom Cruise's movie through and through. He's basically the only character left from the first film, with Val Kilmer only making the briefest appearance owing to his sickness, which is actually written into the film. It's gratifying, though, that the filmmakers have cast Jennifer Connelly, who is reasonably close to Cruise's actual age, as Maverick's love interest Penny instead of going with the old trope of having him hook up with someone half his age. It's a thankless role, but Connelly makes the most out of it, as does the talented young actress who plays Penny's teenaged daughter. Call me grateful for small favors, but I'm also glad they didn't go for a hot and heavy love/make-out scene, focusing instead on how Maverick connects with Penny by communicating with her and laughing with her. This film doesn't just succeed because of its high-flying action sequences; as unlikely as this sounds it gets a lot of the quieter moments right, too.
Most importantly, to my mind this film works because of how it allows Maverick to grow older, just like the target audience. The fact that Cruise doesn't really "pass the torch" in this film to his younger cast mates has grated on some writers, but let's get real here; nobody's going to watch a movie called Top Gun: MAVERICK to see a bunch of millennials make the freaking title character look like an over-the-hill dotard. The Star Wars sequels, this ain't. Is it a bit of a fantasy to see a borderline senior citizen taking G-forces like a champ, flying rings around kids half his age? Maybe, but when it's this well-realized it's a fantasy one is willing to indulge. It's almost as silly as the reviewers poking fun at the fact that the enemy nation in this movie is completely anonymous, as if they WANT Hollywood to go around picking fights with other countries. Well, like one writer said: go ahead and make it Putin's Russia, if you want to.
It's a little harder, however, to indulge the inherent silliness in the film's premise. The script takes pains to explain why the U.S. Navy has to use older model F-18s as opposed to more modern F-35s for the movie's big mission, but is conspicuously silent on why drones cannot be used for the mission, despite the fact that drones are the reason why Maverick's test flight program was shut down and would entail considerably less risk to human life. I was paying close attention for the line that would explain this, but the reason never came. I guess the writers were just hoping the viewers would forget about this niggling detail when we would see the awesome actions sequences and, well, to be fair, for the duration of the film, at least I did.
There's also a touch of silliness towards the climax of the film, which I won't spoil, but suffice it to say that, after managing to sell me on its (flawed) premise and draw me in with its remarkable verisimilitude, the film suddenly takes a turn into the borderline fantastical in its final few minutes, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of the ridiculous airport chase scene in the otherwise superlative film Argo. As with Argo, though, this doesn't really detract from my overall enjoyment of the film.
This was a movie made for people my age, and I have to say, I quite liked it.
8.5/10
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