Thirty-six years after appearing as Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun, Tom Cruise returns to the skies in Top Gun: Maverick.
While the movie’s release was delayed by two years due to the pandemic, age certainly has been kind to Cruise. His namesake’s Navy career?
Less so. Maverick has only reached the rank of captain. An admiral, played by Ed Harris with Annapolis “ring knocker” aplomb, reminds Maverick that his career has plateaued at least two or three ranks below that which more than three decades of service should have entailed. Of course, it’s clear why Maverick hasn’t progressed to flag rank: Maverick remains a maverick. He wants to keep flying to the limit. Figuratively and literally, he retains “the need for speed.”
The script writers start the movie by addressing the elephant in the room: the seemingly exponential rise of drones and their displacement of manned flight. Maverick, now a test pilot, isn’t ready to accept this new age. He flies rather hard, perhaps too hard, to make clear as much. This leads to a rather amusing moment in which Maverick finds himself amid his fellow citizens in a somewhat unexpected setting. It’s the movie’s first indication of a quieter approach to patriotism than in Top Gun.
That’s something to lament. While Top Gun: Maverick nails the key themes of comradeship, family, and professional skill, it delivers few of the “You are America’s best, make us proud,” lines that so defined the original. Although familiarity arrives from the start, the soundtrack also carries a less booming, gung-ho quality compared to the 1986 outing. Perhaps it’s just me, but I also missed the heavy background radio traffic overlay that defined the aircraft carrier scenes in the original. And yes, Maverick’s flight jacket has been altered to remove a cruise patch flag of Taiwan: an unfortunate kowtow to the Chinese media giant Tencent, a financial backer of the movie. That Beijing can exert such influence over the Navy and Hollywood, especially as China prepares to try and turn the former into a coral reef and the latter into a supplicant puppet, is deeply concerning. The Navy insists it has no artistic control over Hollywood. Still, it seems incompatible with nominally revered Naval Academy values to provide Hollywood with such valuable access to aircraft carriers, F-18 fighter jets, and the like but also simultaneously accept a diminishing of the Navy’s honor. The very heart of U.S.-China tensions over the East China Sea and the South China Sea rests on the principle that China does not get to decide where the U.S. Navy sails and flies.
These complaints aside, Top Gun: Maverick has many strong suits.
The flight scenes are very special, hearkening back to the best of the original movie. The culminating mission has some extraordinary air-to-air aerobatics. We are constantly reminded of the great skill that it takes to fly fast jets. Reminded why these are indeed the real top guns of combat aviation. With a good dose of humor, Top Gun: Maverick also shows us why asking naval aviators to perform their missions tends to produce some outsize egos and arrogant admirals (military personnel will greatly enjoy the ribbing that general officers receive). But if anyone doubts the skill and stress inherent to naval aviation, watch these two scenes from the 2008 PBS documentary, Carrier. To its credit, the movie also centers its unnamed “enemy” — Iran best fits the bill — within a top security concern: nuclear proliferation.
This movie is also about leadership, aging, and mentorship. That latter point is a constant theme. Maverick is no longer destined to be the fighter jock of the 1980s but rather a guide for future generations. Centering this development, Maverick’s romantic interest, provided by a strong performance from Jennifer Connelly, is far more serious this time. Maverick’s first impulse is to push his young pilots to the brink, preparing them for an exceptionally dangerous mission. But Maverick’s original rival turned eternal wingman, “Ice Man,” superbly delivered once again by Val Kilmer, reminds him that leadership also requires mentorship. There’s a glorious three-minute moment in which Maverick encapsulates the intersection of these two themes for his trainees. The relationship between Maverick and “Rooster,” played by Miles Teller, the son of his Top Gun weapons systems officer “Goose,” is central. Like tomcats, the two spar their way to a truly poignant ending.
It was always going to be hard for Top Gun: Maverick to match the original movie. But this is more than a simple homage to Top Gun. It’s a movie that soars on its own. Maverick might be older and wiser, but he very much remains Maverick.
Top Gun: Maverick will show in theaters from this Friday.
