In a sense, we are lucky we didn't get a “Top Gun” sequel in 1988. The 1986 action flick about Navy fighter pilots was such a hit, and Tom Cruise such a star afterwards, that it's quite surprising that producer Jerry Bruckheimer didn't cash in with a followup 2 years, or 5 years, or even 10 years later. As it went, serious talks about a sequel didn't begin until around 2010, and the the suicide of ”Top Gun” director Tony Scott (“True Romance”) slowed plans even further. All of these delays gave Tom Cruise a chance to mature into a 59-year-old actor who could play an older, sightly grizzled, slightly wiser version of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell who is way more interesting than the cocky fly-boy from 1986.
We find Maverick working as a test pilot and still bucking authority. All these years later, he is still known as an outstanding pilot with an attitude problem, and it is only his friendship with Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) that has kept him from being booted from the Navy. Iceman's newest assignment for Maverick is to return to the Top Gun Academy and prepare a group of young, hotshot pilots to fly a dangerous, covert mission. Mav rekindles an old flame (Jennifer Connelly), annoys his commanding officers, and shows that he still has the Right Stuff.
To judge “Top Gun: Maverick” based on the usual criteria, like plot, acting, and dialogue, probably misses the point. Like the first “Top Gun,” this film is about two things: fast-paced, jet-fighter action and Tom Cruise's charm, and the film aces both of those. Rather than relying on CGI, Bruckheimer and company used real jet-fighters and real aerial photography, and it shows. The action here feels much more visceral than what you will find in the latest CGI, comic-book movie. This is just pure, high-octane entertainment! Some of the plot points are completely ridiculous, and there is a lot of hackneyed dialogue, but it doesn't matter when a movie looks this good, and when it feels so good to be back in the air with Maverick.
Cruise may be a complete nut in his personal life, but he relentlessly makes good movies. (Check out “Edge of Tomorrow” and “Oblivion” if you haven't, already.) In this case, he gets an assist from an excellent supporting cast, including the promising actors Monica Barbaro and Glen Powell. Both have mostly done TV work and small movies before this, and both have serious star potential. Jennifer Connelly, of course, lights up the screen every time she appears.
Now, about that Taiwanese flag. In the original “Top Gun,” Maverick had a patch on the back of his bomber jacket that included the flags of Japan and Taiwan. Back in 1988, no one in Hollywood was worried about angering Chinese censors, and I'm sure no one thought much about those patches then. Nowadays, everyone from Disney to the NBA is watching what they say to avoid angering the Chinese Communist Party, which controls access to a 1.5 billion-person market. Thus, when the trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick” first aired in 2019, sharp-eyed viewers noticed that the Japanese and Taiwanese flags on Mav's jacket had been changed. Needless to say, Paramount Pictures took some heat for that, and they wound up putting the original flags back in. There are two lessons here. One is that Western values can still win out over Communist censorship, but only if we raise enough of a squawk about it. Left to their own devices, media companies are going to self-censor and pander to the authoritarians, doing anything they can to get access to a lucrative market. The other lesson is that, with the digital tools now available, any image can be changed or faked at any time. We have to be skeptical of everything we see now, whether we are watching political videos on Facebook or watching Tom Cruise go mach 2 with his hair on fire.
4 stars out of 5
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