OUT NOW: Top Gun - Maverick

Busted for going against orders, Tom C- sorry, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Cruise) is sent back to Top Gun to prepare a team of pilots for a dangerous, near-impossible mission.

The stakes are raised when Maverick realises one of said pilots is Rooster (Miles Teller), the son of his friend Goose, who died in the original Top Gun.

I am not a fan of Top Gun. I have no great angle on the film - it never stuck to my ribs. However the tenor of the reviews for this movie got to me. 

So going into Top Gun - Maverick, I was wondering if the movie would work on its own terms. 

A legacy sequel that is not about the second generation, but the last generation reckoning with its mistakes. 

A feature of Tom Cruise’s films in the last decade has been about refining his characters down to their tenacity - that indefatigable force of will has been a key feature of Cruise’s work and persona, but as the star focused more and more on action roles, it has been foregrounded.

Call it the Christopher McQuarrie factor (he takes a screenplay credit), or a savvy reading of the public perception of him, but it no longer feels like Cruise has to present himself as an Everyman or just human.

Cruise is a hyper-focussed perfectionist - and his latest films are all about that perfectionism. With the added grit of age.

Top Gun - Maverick is all about aging and reckoning with the past.

In 1986, Mitchell did not care about consequence. 

In 2022, it is all he cares about.

When I was younger, I always found Top Gun boring - I did not appreciate the fact that it was a sports movie, and I always wished it had been more of an action movie. 

Top Gun: Maverick is concerned with a mission, but the focus is on completing the mission and coming back alive.

As with the original, the enemy remains unnamed. In one respect, I like that it keeps the focus on Maverick and the squad trying to work through various obstacles - physical and personal. 

But the focus is so squarely on Maverick that the other characters - including Jennifer Connolly’s love interest start to feel like non-playable-characters from a video game.

While the lack of an explicit antagonist added to the sports movie framework of the original movie, it is a harder proposition in this iteration. A sequel to Top Gun is not going to offer any kind of critique of the US military. But this movie wants to be deeper than the original - particularly in terms of its emphasis on personal trauma and the importance of saving lives - but the addition of actual warfare makes the fudging of the antagonists feel off.

I am not sure if I am articulating this properly, but it feels out of step with the rest of the movie. On the one hand, I am a fan of brevity and cutting down on unnecessary exposition - but the limited framing in this movie rubbed me the wrong way.

I am going to completely contradict myself now because the mission aspect of the movie is the strongest part of the movie - particularly in its execution of the flight sequences.

As a visual spectacle and an action film, Top Gun: Maverick is terrific. Much has been made in the press of the star’s dedication to his stunts, but it never gets old.

Having the camera inside the cockpit, watching Tom Cruise’s physical exertion as he maneuvers through a tight canyon, gives the movie an immediacy and sense of the character’s vulnerability. There is a real sense of building tension to the training sequences that a more remote, CG-augmented approach would not have. 

And the mission - which all of its various variables - recalls ‘on a mission’ movies like Guns of Navarone. 

Despite the explosive third act, Top Gun: Maverick is fairly restrained as an action film. Apart from the flight training, the movie is a slow-burn. It gives the finale more punch.

Quieter and more contemplative than its predecessor, Top Gun: Maverick is an old-fashioned crowd pleaser. The cast are in good form, the stunts are terrific, and the story has a little more going on under the hood. It is not as great as all the effusive reviews, but it works.