The Thrills and Conflicts of Top Gun: Maverick
Reviews are never quite as objective as many would like to assume. Granted, that reality can also serve as an unfortunate coping mechanism for the filmmaker, actor, or audience who doesn’t like what a critic has to say. The (re)view from nowhere, rendering true judgment without bias, is a mirage. But it’s also not the point of criticism, and subjectivity is often what gives each reviewer a fresh way to respond to a movie. This is all to say that we—critics and audiences alike—always carry our a prioris.
The point of this preamble is to confess that I come into Top Gun: Maverick carrying some heavy baggage. First, I am an aerospace engineer by degree and career. So a film about airplanes doing unbelievable things is at once a uniquely exciting promise and one that could far too easily degrade into feeling like a work assignment. (As an example, I felt definite glee at the references to “hard decks” in their test flights.)
But perhaps more pertinent is the fact that I hate the original Top Gun in nearly all its facets. The bombastic 80s cheesiness has never been an endearing quality to me. I find the conflict between Maverick and Iceman little more than annoying, and the love scenes are egregiously uncomfortable. Beyond all of that, I hold deep concerns about the inherent militaristic thrust of the film, the jingoistic impulses which go unquestioned.
So I was ready to hate Top Gun: Maverick. In fact, I put off watching the movie for nine months because I didn’t want to have to find a way to write about the movie. The very excitement the movie drew out of me as an aerospace engineer was also a thing to be skeptical of—it’s an unfortunate rule of thumb that the coolest planes are the ones created specifically to destroy and kill. So I wanted to avoid this movie or, failing that, to eviscerate it. But, after all that, here I am to tell you that Top Gun: Maverick is pretty great.
If you held even the slightest doubt as to what the sequel is about, the very title puts to rest any questions. At the tail end of his career and under threat from Navy brass, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is called back to the Top Gun pilot training program for a special assignment. (Between the rigorous Navy hierarchy and the number of times Ethan Hunt has been kicked out of the IMF, it seems clear that Cruise’s ultimate nemesis is—and has always been—bureaucracy.) An enemy's nuclear weapons plant is soon to be operational, and the Navy needs its best young pilots to destroy it. But there’s little time and no precedent for a mission of this kind; Mitchell is the only pilot bold and skilled enough to prepare the pilots. To follow his lead, they’ll have to be willing to push themselves and their aircraft beyond their limits.
It’s no surprise that Mitchell clashes with the strong wills of the new hotshot pilots—especially Rooster, the son of Maverick’s old partner, Goose. What’s unexpected is how ruminative Joseph Kosinski’s film becomes as it considers the gap between where Mitchell was and where he is now. Cruise portrays Mitchell as a brave man tempered by death. He’s still reckless with his own body, but he refrains from putting anyone else in danger. Care and regret are both foregrounded in the character, along with a real terror at the idea of losing another person in his life. The foolishness of the past has worn on Maverick, and it inflects every relationship he has: a fear of harming Rooster, a protectiveness for all of the young pilots, a wistfulness to his romance with Jennifer Connelly’s Penny.
For all its focus on action, these reflections on regret and aging are the true substance of Maverick. As Mitchell warns the pilots, “Time is your greatest enemy.” Casting Glen Powell as a cocky, trigger-happy pilot provides an insightful refraction of Cruise’s younger Maverick. It’s a canny move that allows the film to cast Maverick’s own youthful brazenness in a different light. Here, we see such antics for what they are: thin bravado that seeks its own glory over the benefit of others.
Of course, it’s the action that’s going to determine Top Gun: Maverick’s legacy, and Kosinski and his crew deliver on all fronts. The sequences are constantly riveting, keeping a frenetic pace with clear camerawork against stunning mountain backdrops. Nearly all of its action scenes are on par with the best of the last few years, and it’s particularly here that Maverick separates itself as an effective sequel. The bitter irony in the unending deluge of reboots and cinematic universes is that the follow ups never manage to deliver the thrills of the original, frequently resigning themselves to meager fan service and CGI sets. Top Gun: Maverick manages to play the greatest hits and interrogate its legacy while also outstripping its accomplishments.
Still, Maverick is not a perfect movie. The greatest hits are as grating as ever, and far more heavy handed than they need to be. We’ve all seen Goose die, and we all understand the guilt Maverick feels toward Rooster; there’s no reason to show a flashback to Goose’s fatal ejection. And we really didn’t need another rendition of “Great Balls of Fire.”
Some of the film’s finest moments are its quietest. There are times where the sound fades as Maverick takes a second to fully grasp his surroundings or confront a difficult decision. But these serene moments imbue the film with a tension that it’s not quite ready to solve: Is Maverick’s story about fighting hubris, confronting time, and discovering beauty? Or is his character arc about overcoming those things, of mere artillery and destruction?
Finally, there’s still an irksome facet to Top Gun: Maverick’s fetishization of weaponry. The climax shoehorns a dogfight between a comparatively ancient F-14 and more modern, capable fighters. It’s a storybook battle between the new and old, pulling heavily on those underdog heartstrings. But is nostalgia for the weapons of our childhood such a virtue? Kosinski makes what is probably a wise choice by eliding any specific foe, with characters only ever referring to “the enemy,” but such choices can’t address the inevitable imperialism at play.
The film ultimately falls back into the dilemma I was wary of. It is undeniably exhilarating and cool; but its thrills are seductive in questionable ways. Still, it is expertly crafted and visceral in ways that few modern action movies, especially franchise reboots, can dream of achieving. When it’s all said and done, the only appropriate response may be that of Penny: warmly sighing against a doorframe, wondering how we ever let Maverick charm us again.
