TOP GUN: MAVERICK, further evidence that Tom Cruise is our last great movie star

Up until two weeks ago, I hadn’t seen Tony Scott’s Top Gun. Call it a mixture of lack of interest in the material – I grew up a military brat, so I’m often averse to this kind of jingoistic thing in general. And to top it off, I usually find air-based dog fights and cockpit scenes shutting my attention down almost immediately. It doesn’t even work for me in Star Wars, and those have laser beams!

But to fully prep, my pal Kevin sat me down on a nice Sunday afternoon and showed me the movie that basically turned Tom Cruise into the megastar he remains today. And on balance, I actually found it a much more appealing slice of 80’s comfort food than I would have expected. A glorified Navy recruitment ad? Sure! But it still has a base level appeal that keeps the material from ever dragging too deeply into leading the audience into the geopolitical questions that surround the material. Heck, we don’t even know who the bad guys are! They could be Cobra or HYDRA for all we know.

It’s not exactly Police Story (what is?) or even The Karate Kid, but the original Top Gun is borne from the same music-video-as-filmmaking DNA that drove so much of populist cinema-going during one of the great media decades, and again, it sparked off a meteoric rise for Cruise that has seemingly reached its apotheosis in the current era.

The gap between then and now for Cruise has been fascinating. There have been a few permutations of where his career trajectory might be headed. I, for one, remain rather fond of that stretch in the late 90’s-early 00’s when he was working with filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Michael Mann, etc, all in quick succession. But recently, he’s becoming his own style of action auteur, for lack of a better word. Since turn of the 2010’s, Cruise has basically abandoned the idea of starring in adult dramas and has instead full-throatedly embraced big screen spectacle. An impressive feat given this occurred during his advancing years: he’ll be turning 60 in 2023. But it’s difficult to ignore that Cruise has shifted into a model that’s not totally dissimilar from Jackie Chan’s approach to filmmaking in Hong Kong throughout the 80’s and early 90’s.

And I don’t mean to just reference Cruise doing his own stunts, which is admittedly impressive enough, but also the fact that Cruise, like Chan in those salad days, has formed his own core team that he carries around with him from film to film. This includes current Mission: Impossible helmer Christopher McQuarrie most notably, but Doug Liman and Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski have also all paired with Cruise multiple times over the last decade. And like Chan, Cruise also has a core set of franchises that have been either continued into or created by way of this period, not centered on intellectual property that so many of the current multi-part sagas that are all the rage now but instead driven by his own star-power wattage. When you see a Tom Cruise movie, you’re going to see a Tom Cruise movie.

This is fascinating, because we’re currently in a state where old fashioned moviestardom doesn’t really matter anymore. I recently went to a press screening where the audience was screaming in ecstasy because of a surprise appearance by some goof from The Office, of all things. But yet, Cruise perseveres, even to the degree where he’s the only major draw I’m aware of that as of yet has not succumbed to taking part in a direct to streaming feature. To Cruise, the big screen is everything, apparently. And boy, is that ever true by way of this long hibernating installment.

That was over 600 words and I’ve not even touched on the film in question. Maybe I really shouldn’t. You already know if you want to see this or not. And you should.

But to make the case in some finer point, Top Gun: Maverick has a base…almost elemental…draw that makes everything work. After a bit of awkwardness in its preamble, where you start to question how a few of these lines of dialogue could pass muster in even a first draft, Cruise’s Pete Mitchell – the years having taken some toll on him, but not too much, he’s Tom fucking Cruise after all – hops into an experimental jet in hopes of hitting Mach 10. And I tell you, once that plane takes off, the movie really never lets go. Mitchell runs afoul of brass, as you figure he would, ends up back at Top Gun to instruct the next generation of “America’s best and brightest in air combat” and has to reckon not only with the living embodiment of his greatest failure – the now fatherless son of his old co-pilot and best friend (played, or rather appropriately underplayed, by Miles Teller) and the potential future he could have before him (in a new refreshingly age appropriate love interest played by Jennifer Connelly) if he can just escape the shackles of the past before its too late.

Kosinski, along with McQuarrie’s work on the script among others, doesn’t necessarily break the mold with Top Gun: Maverick. But in a space where sterling big budget thrills have been few and far between and the exhaustion of the “shared universe” has truly taken its toll on the average viewer, he and his collaborators (of which Cruise is a key creative component) have produced the best bonafide action-adventure film since Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Maverick is the sort of experience where you almost certainly can sense every beat before it happens, but it also welcomes your own expectations. It’s a nostalgia trip that understands that’s why you’re there but also utilizes that as its own ammunition to create something better. Not through subversion, but enhancement.

It’s funnier, Cruise is a more seasoned actor now, and it also has the benefit of the most genuinely thrilling flight sequences perhaps ever filmed. It feels like a gross overstatement to say something like this, but this gets us back to the Cruise-Chan comparison and its star’s own insane dedication to creating once in a lifetime experiences. As the marketing materials have no doubt showcased to anyone interested in the film, every actor in the film is actually inside of the jets and flying in the back passenger seat (having been taught by Kosinski and Cruise how to operate the cameras that are shooting them). The difference this makes as a viewer is remarkable. It’s a kind of absorption into the film’s reality that literally no one would attempt in this day and age. And for the first time in my life, I actually cared about these flight scenes, and genuinely couldn’t pry my eyes from the screen.

I’ll put it this way. I needed to pee halfway through the movie (thank you so much Regal Diet Pepsi!), but I was so absorbed by the thing that I was scared I’d miss something awesome if I left. So I never did, and I couldn’t have been happier for the bet I made. From the first Blackbird jet sequence to a line in the climax that left a lump in my throat, this is the kind of movie that’s worth going back to the theaters for, and if I see a better blockbuster this year I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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