It's very easy to argue that Tom Cruise wouldn't have the career he has today without 1986's Top Gun. While some of his early 80's work including Risky Business and The Outsiders earned him critical praise and did solid business at the box office, Top Gun was the project that cemented Cruise as a genuine movie star-which is a status that he's been able to maintain ever since. After 30+ years of moviemaking that included a few infamous clunkers (Cocktail, The Mummy, Knight and Day), becoming the face of Scientology, 3 Oscar nominations and developing a completely different hit franchise for Paramount in Mission: Impossible, Cruise has returned to the DANGER ZONE that is the United States Navy's Top Gun program.
By definition, Top Gun: Maverick qualifies as a sequel to Top Gun. There are ample references to the original film throughout and the story predominantly deals with how Pete "Maverick" Mitchell's refusal to change his hotshot, authority-challenging ways has hurt his career and Goose's death continues to haunt him. What Top Gun: Maverick's true agenda proves to be is to function as a thinly veiled metaphor for Cruise's legacy as a performer.
At least once every 10-15 minutes, the film puts Maverick into a situation where he gets to prove that he's a rebel whose refusal to accept the current methods of doing business in the military has made him an equally revered and hated character. His commanding officers (Jon Hamm, Ed Harris) hate that he refuses to obey orders and embrace the new ways of doing things, but they also can't deny that the old man is the best damn pilot they've ever seen. The new group of elite hotshot pilots/WSO's (Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, several others that don't really factor into the story much) that Maverick is brought into train think he's a washed-up burnout who can't teach them anything, but time and time again Maverick show these whippersnappers that actually don't know shit about combat or flying fighter jets. Every time a program is in danger of being shut down or a mission looks like it can't be pulled off without suffering mass casualties, Maverick comes through and shows that it can be done and that the people that doubted him are either too caught up in bureaucracy or their own fears to understand what it takes to get the job done. Cruise knows damn well that his fearlessness, passion and magnetism makes him the last old-school action star left and using Maverick as an avatar for himself is an unabashedly brazen, egomaniacal move that perfectly reflects the type of performer Cruise is and will continue to be until he retires or dies in the least exciting way imaginable.
As distracting and quietly hilarious as it is to see Cruise use the sequel to the movie that laid the groundwork for his stardom to openly peacock about his singularity as an actor, his presence on camera and behind the scenes is the driving force behind nearly everything that works in Top Gun: Maverick. Insisting on having the actors fly in real planes in real locations during the flight sequences leads to what has to be the most breathtaking, adrenaline-fueled aerial action ever put on film. His understated acting chops allow Maverick to serve as a guilt-ridden surrogate father to Goose's son Rooster (Teller) that's tortured by the part he played in causing Goose's death and Rooster's resentment towards him because of it, which eventually culminates in some well-earned emotional moments in the final few scenes. His vintage movie star bravado makes Maverick's real-world superhero schtick work like a charm, no matter how fucking silly it gets (and holy shit, does it get really dumb at times). Having a universe that orbits around Cruise means that you're in the hands of somebody that gives a shit about the art of filmmaking and even though every bite isn't anywhere near perfect, that's a recipe that will ultimately churn out that's something worthwhile 100% of the time.
Grade: B
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