2022 Reviews – Top Gun: Maverick

I feel the need… the need for speed!

Doesn’t Quinten Tarantino believe the first Top Gun movie is an allegory for being gay? Could that make Top Gun: Maverick a thematic tale for being trans? There’s only one way to find out – I’ll have to watch the damn movie and wait for Tarantino’s take. But I’ve only just seen Top Gun for the first time for myself this year. I remember when I was young, I had a friend whose dad wouldn’t stop going on about how great Top Gun sounded in his new surround sound system, but it’s one of those classic movies that’s always slipped my radar (pardon the pun). I found it really impressive though, for its focus on the aircrafts, and there are scenes that are undoubtedly iconic that were a great privilege to finally see in their state of origin. Although, it just means Top Gun isn’t a treasure to me like it is to some, and I haven’t been waiting 36 years for a sequel, yet I want it to do well.

After spending years in quality control, testing the newest advancements in aircraft technology, CAPT Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is called back to the Top Gun program to teach the best of the best how to complete a complicated attack on an enemy base. This includes an extremely difficult maneuver, and yet, the biggest complication of the assignment will prove to be quelling tensions between himself and long-lost wingman Goose’s son LT Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), after Maverick almost had Rooster removed from the academy on his mother’s orders. Maverick’s superiors also make it clear that Maverick should expect this to be his last post with the Navy, as he’s finally written more checks that his body can cash, and ADM Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) won’t be around forever to save him. Top Gun: Maverick is brought to us by director Joseph Kosinski, although it’s been sold as a Tom Cruise project at heart.

I think the entire movie can probably be summed up by the opening objective, as Maverick sets out to prove the sound barrier of a new fighter jet. It’s like somebody said, ‘let’s make a serviceable retread of Top Gun, smooth and steady, and then the powers that be (probably Tom Cruise) decided to ramp it up to eleven for a gigantic and frantic final act, which was my favourite third of the movie. In fairness to Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, a movie I potted for sometimes feeling way too similar to the original, there are large portions of this movie that simply feel like an ode to Top Gun, as we hit on similar touchstones and similar scenes. As the one-sight novice of Top Gun I am, if you told me that the opening title sequence of Top Gun: Maverick is a copy-and-paste job from the original, then I would believe you – highway to the replay zone. Part of me feels a little sad that a Top Gun sequel couldn’t have come sooner, where Val Kilmer was up for a bigger contribution, and Meg Ryan could’ve played a role too, as her career blew up – people would have wanted the adventures of Maverick and Iceman, and I’m imagining a potential love triangle between Kelly McGillis’ and Meg Ryan’s characters in the pursuit of Maverick affections…. Anyway, within the sequel we’ve got, Jennifer Connelly is pretty good, although her role is only in service to Maverick’s growth, as a bar owner we are told he has history with, in the absence of Kelly McGillis. But how about Miles Teller?! Oh mama, “goodness gracious, great balls of fire!”, what a hottie! Teller actually really impressed me with his swagger after more often than not seeing him portray nervous and more heady characters in movies (Whiplash, War Dogs, Fan4stic). This was a sun-soaked side of him I’d never seen before, and perhaps his best side.

And now, I just want to write about Tom Cruise for a while. You see a movie like Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and it stinks, but Tom Cruise is believable in it, as a retired Military Police Officer. Then the Reacher TV series comes out, and you see a man-mountain like Alan Ritchson fulfilling the role and it makes you question how you ever believed in Tom Cruise in the first place 😂 It’s because Tom Cruise is the ultimate movie star, and whatever he decides he’s doing, he commits, and is charismatic enough to bring us along with him – that’s if he’s scaling the Burj Khalifa in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol or demanding the truth in A Few Good Men. If anyone is going to decide to resurrect a famous movie character over 30 years later, and have me riding their tail with complete trust, then it should be Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise, known for constructing a very arrogant filmography as it is, excels in bringing back perhaps the cockiest self-assured character of them all in Maverick – it was a pleasure to watch.

Top Gun is a feeling. It’s being the best, and looking the coolest, while a rocking soundtrack plays. Top Gun: Maverick rightly recaptures the nostalgia, bringing those calming 80s vibes of ‘simpler-times’ to the present day. Most other films would be jealous of the lasting success Top Gun has had, and it’s another reason why it’s a little surprising that a sequel has taken so long, where there’s good memories to capitalize on. Personally, I feel lucky to have experienced the optimistic adrenaline of Top Gun in my own lifetime, and never mind that it’s has taken this long to get here when it feels so damn good. I just want to put my aviators on, and march into the sunset – maybe play some shirtless touch-football or volleyball along the way. And remember my friend’s dad, with his surround sound system? I had been dying to check out the Hoyts Extremescreen experience, and finally, Top Gun: Maverick screamed the right opportunity – I’m a happy man.

4.0