Top Gun: Maverick (

2022

) ½

The end of the Cold War fundamentally reshaped the political organization of the entire world. At a stroke, maps were redrawn, governments were toppled, and millions of people were displaced. In the face of such a vast and complicated upheaval, it seems petty to complain about how it negatively impacted Hollywood films, but as I’ve said before this site is dedicated to the trivial and petty. If you want a deep analysis of post-Cold War politics you would be better off checking out your local library. Here we focus on silly action movies, and the end of the Cold War meant that many silly action movies were suddenly missing an antagonist.

For as long as the Cold War lasted, Hollywood screenwriters had a readily available real-world villain they could call upon in the form of the Soviet Union. The Soviets made for perfect cinematic bad guys. They were a real-world evil empire, ruled by a cast of greying technocrats, and wielding nearly unlimited military and industrial resources. Their state religion, communism in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, was still regarded with a. degree of revulsion even in the late 1980s when the KGB and their useful idiots in American academia were still in the process of making their Long March through the institutions. While the USSR, was a great deal less evil than it had been under Stalin (the gulags were no longer in operation, the economy was not based on slave labor, and dissident regions no longer suffered artificial famines), they were still far more repressive and despotic than their western counterparts. It seemed that the Soviet Union was a credible military rival to the Western world, and while this may not be true (Soviet military capacities were chronically overrated by Western observers), nearly everyone on either side of the Iron Curtain believed it. For all these reasons the Soviet Union made the perfect antagonist for any war movie (or indeed any boxing movie as evidenced by Rocky IV (1985)).

One might be tempted to think it’s unfair for a whole race of real-world human beings to constantly have to serve as the villains but were it not for these roles it’s doubtful there would be very many Russians in American media at all! Moreover, to be an effective antagonist in an action movie, the villain must have numerous positive traits. He must be strong so that he can challenge the hero, brave so that he is willing to face his inevitable defeat, and cunning enough that his eventual defeat at the hands of the hero holds some significance. Indeed, I can see this appeal firsthand; it’s why I enjoy Chinese action/propaganda movies that cast Americans as the villains like The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021). There is something flattering about being regarded as menacing enough to warrant propaganda.

As evidenced by current events, the Russian military that stood against the Wehrmacht and occupied half of Europe is a ghost of itself. Far from challenging the USA for global domination, it now struggles to subdue a mid-sized neighbor (albeit one that is positively flooded with foreign funds and armaments). Some media is still able to play make-believe and pretend that the Russians are a credible rival, but this is more out of cultural inertia and a lack of alternatives than anything else. It felt downright retrograde when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare [2007] pulled this stunt fifteen years ago! Likewise, it feels cheap to elevate third-world nations to the status of a full-fledged rival, when they are so obviously out-gunned and out-numbered by NATO. 

Only China, with its massive army, rapidly growing fleet, and state-of-the-art armaments could possibly fill the shoes left by the USSR. But movie studios and game developers alike are reluctant to cast the PRC as the villain in any property, as there is no more certain way to get your film or game banned in China. The Chinese Communist Party takes a dim view of any media that depicts them as the antagonist and is perfectly comfortable banning any media they find distasteful. This is why Red Dawn (2012) and Homefront [2011] had to pretend that North Korea, a nation that cannot even feed its population, could easily invade and occupy the entirety of the USA.

Thus, all major action films are presented with a question before they even begin: Who do you cast as the bad guy? Top Gun: Maverick solves this problem in the simplest and cheapest way imaginable: By refusing to characterize the enemy nation in any way whatsoever. The name of the country is never mentioned, it is only ever described as a “Rogue Nation.” We see very little of their military hardware, and what we do see are the same Russian/Soviet exports that are used by every tip-pot dictatorship in the world. The only exception is the nation’s fleet of fifth-generation fighters that resemble the Russian Su-57 (where the hell did they get these from? Fifth-generation fighters are stupidly expensive aircraft and Russia has less than 100 Su-57s. Is the situation in Ukraine so dire that Putin had to auction them off?). When we do see enemy personnel, their faces are hidden by black visors and their hands are covered by black gloves, making them completely anonymous.

I can understand why this decision was made, and even sympathize with the plight of filmmakers. With no Soviet Union left to stand in as the go-to villain, and any other countries (aside from the unthinkable option of China) being so underpowered as to make the whole conflict seem unfair, it is certainly easier to just call the bad guys a “rogue nation” and be done with it. Moreover, it helps to cement the film as a purely non-partisan piece of escapist fluff, a status that Top Gun: Maverick is desperate to grab for itself. The film wants us to revel in the action spectacle, not get bogged down in political squabbles, and making the rogue nation a specific country would invite just that. Of course, this is largely a fool’s errand, as those looking to get angry at a film for a political message it pointedly does not contain will always manage to find a way.

Still, just because I understand why the bad guys in Top Gun: Maverick are nobodies from nowhere, doesn’t mean I have to be entirely happy with the choice. As I mentioned above there were a great many Russian fans of cheesy 1980s action movies, precisely because Russians were so often cast as the villains (indeed one Russian fan remade Commando (1985) as Den D (2008)). Being cast as the bad guy may not be as glamorous as being the hero but in an action movie, it is still nonetheless a sign of considerable respect. When the villain has no personality or even name, then there can be no sense of chivalric rivalry between peers. Sure, the original Top Gun (1986) did not go out of its way to characterize the Russian pilots, but at least we had some insight into their history and persons by the mere fact of them being Russian. Here, the enemy is given so little that they are essentially dehumanized entirely. Maverick and his buddies might as well be fighting robots or aliens.

Still, let’s not spend the entire review dealing with what Top Gun: Maverick steadfastly refuses to give us, and instead look a bit more at what it does. What’s obvious right from the very beginning is that this film is laser-focused on milking every drop of nostalgia that you had for the original Top Gun (1986). The opening credit sequence directly mirrors the imagery employed in the same film, that of fighter jets taking off from an aircraft carrier at dusk while Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins blares in the background. There are clever homages and obvious retreads, and unfortunately in this instance Top Gun: Maverick is leaning into the former category.

It doesn’t get better from there. Iconic shots are reproduced completely, musical cues are borrowed constantly, and several new characters feel like copy-pastes of ones from the original. The worst part of this nostalgia wank though is all related to Rooster, the son of Maverick’s deceased radio operator Goose, who is the spitting image of his father. He even has the same goofy mustache, which while a relatively common site in 1986, now just makes the character look like either a child molester or an aging hipster (The navy’s aggressive recruiting strategy for Portland Oregon, and Brooklyn must be paying dividends). They even have a scene where Rooster plays Great Balls of Fire on the piano, and just in case you haven’t seen the original movie (or you’re just rather slow) they cut away to footage of Goose playing the same song in the original. This is laying things on a bit thick, even for Top Gun: Maverick. At least the updated beach volleyball scene switched things over to a new sport.

Still, as much as I complain about nostalgic retreads, I must give credit to Top Gun: Maverick for at least being able to deliver its nostalgia competently. Our titular protagonist is the logical continuation of the man he was in 1986, brash, arrogant, indifferent to his personal safety, and fiercely loyal to his friends and comrades. He’s a real pain in the ass to have as a subordinate, and a real gem to have as a commander or comrade. That’s probably why he’s alienated just about every admiral in the Pacific Fleet and ensured that, despite being in his late 50s with the most distinguished fighter pilot record in the service, he's still stuck as a Captain. The only things keeping him from being permanently grounded or, more likely, drummed out of the service altogether, are his self-evident skill in the cockpit and his friendship with Iceman, now Air Commander of the entire Pacific Fleet. The film resists the urge to deconstruct its hero and transform him into a miserable failure who needs to step aside and get with the times. Rather, Maverick still gets to be the hero. Tellingly, most of his time in the first act of the film will be spent getting his younger subordinates up to speed, rather than slowly realizing how outdated and useless he is. As soon as he returns to the Top Gun program, he shoots down every one of his younger charges in simulated dogfights, even the diverse female pilot Phoenix. In an age of “subverted expectations” and “reimagined for a modern audience” where filmmakers seem to take a perverse pleasure in not giving audiences what they want, I find it hard to be too critical of a film that genuinely seems to value its audience.

That doesn’t mean that this sort of effective nostalgic pandering will please everyone. As someone who regards the original Top Gun (1986) as just an ok film with an amusing homo-erotic subtext and some neat military footage the constant callbacks to the original are frequently tedious. Those in the audience with a more personal connection to Top Gun (1986) may be carried away by the familiar sights and sounds, transported back to an earlier and simpler time when a character uttering the line “I’d like to bust your butt… but I can’t” didn’t come across as hilarious. For the rest of us (self very much included), we will have to content ourselves with the above-average action film that Maverick delivers.

The film opens with a deft sequence that simultaneously re-establishes Maverick’s character, provides some stellar visuals, and delivers some intriguing metacommentary about the state of the film industry at large. When we meet Maverick again, he is now a captain and working as a test pilot for a top-secret program aimed at creating a new hypersonic jet. The prototype is only cleared for testing up to Mach 9, but a forward-thinking admiral, Chester Cain AKA “The Drone Ranger,” has issued a last-minute requirement that the prototype reach Mach 10 during the scheduled test or the whole program will be shut down. As his moniker implies, Cain is not shifting the timetable out of desperation to see a jet go ten times the speed of sound, but rather as a bid to sabotage the program so the funds can be put towards UAV research.

Maverick, seeing an opportunity to flout authority, demonstrate his ample physical courage, and fly at record-breaking speed and altitude, naturally says that if the admiral wants to see Mach 10, he will show him Mach 10. It seems that the years have done little to quell his insubordinate and reckless nature. Reluctantly, his crew goes along with it, and Maverick takes off just before Admiral Cain arrives to shut the program down. Maverick pushes the plane up to Mach 10 and then decides to see if he can dial it up to 11, and promptly the plane breaks down and Maverick must bail out, winding up in a remote diner with no idea what state he's in. The sequence is, to put it mildly, gorgeous, as the craft soars into the stratosphere and reaches hypersonic speeds it begins to resemble less a vehicle in motion and more a psychedelic light show.

All this works on the level of cinematic metacommentary as well. Big-budget blockbuster films, starring larger-than-life stars like Top Gun: Maverick, are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. There are few movie stars left of the same caliber as Tom Cruise, and despite his neanimorphic appearance (undoubtedly brought about by his astronomically high Operating Thetan Level), he will not be able to go on doing this forever. There will soon come a day when he retires (or is killed/injured in a ridiculous stunt) and it’s not at all obvious who would or even could replace him. Indeed, the whole industry is shifting, and it likely won’t be long before movies on the big screen are seen as a quaint novelty or worse yet a memory. So out with the old technology (here F-14s/manned aircraft in general, and old-fashioned Hollywood blockbusters) and in with the new (streaming content/drones). The future may not be bleak, but it will be different, and it would be a shame to fail to appreciate a film that may very well be one of the last of its kind.

With the character re-established (and the audience, if only subconsciously, aware that there will not be many more films like the one they are watching), it’s time for the film’s real plot to begin. Maverick is brought on as an instructor, returning once again to the Top Gun program, though this time he’s not there just to teach young bucks the ins and outs of aerial combat. Instead, he’s there to advise and instruct pilots that have already completed the program on a mission to eliminate a nuclear weapons development facility in the Rogue Nation of not-Iran.

As you might assume by the fact that the Navy has had to pull the best out of its best of the best, the weapons plant is one tough nut to crack. It is ringed with dozens of old Soviet Surface-to-Air emplacements, that can easily get a radar lock on any passing plane. The plant itself is located at the bottom of a massive crater that can only be accessed through steep climbs on either side, so steep in fact that even veteran pilots run the risk of passing out from the G-force. Worse still, it’s built in an underground bunker that will require no less than two successive missile strikes to destroy. As if that wasn’t enough the rogue nation also has a fleet of fifth-generation fighters (somehow) standing by to intercept and destroy any aerial assault.

For some reason, the Navy refuses to give its pilots fifth-generation fighters of their own that would probably be able to trivialize most of the enemy defenses with their stealth technology. Instead, the navy pilots are going to have to hit the target in some old F-18s. This is baffling until you remember that the naval fifth-generation fighter (the F-35) is a single-seat aircraft, which means the actors would have to actually fly the aircraft themselves rather than rely on an off-camera pilot in the other seat. Nobody at the pentagon is willing to trust Tom Cruise with a $75,000,000 aircraft. Hell, except for Japan the US doesn’t even export the F-35 outside of NATO countries. If the US government won’t even sell these things to the IDF, then there’s no way they will let a famously unhinged actor get behind the stick unsupervised.

The way that Top Gun: Maverick structures its plot warrants some praise. There are way too many action movies that are content to just throw the viewer into the thick of the action, with little care as to whether they understand the stakes of the situation. Hell, even films that I love are sometimes guilty of this transgression (She Shoots Straight (1990) being probably the worst offender). In such a world, it is to be commended when a film lays out the parameters of its main action sequence in painstaking detail and devotes no less than a full half of its runtime to having its character train for the mission. When the actual mission happens, the audience will have no confusion about either the events or the stakes. It reminds me of Seven Samurai (1954), both in the way that it prepares the audience to understand its thrilling action and in the way that it folds its character development into these scenes of preparation.

That said, there is quite a bit of bloat in the opening half of Top Gun: Maverick, mainly in the form of a tedious romantic side-plot where Maverick reconnects with Penny Benjamin, a character who was passingly mentioned as an old flame in the first film. Presumably, this role was originally supposed to be filled by Charlotte Blackwood, the love interest from the first film. However, Kelly McGillis doesn’t have her co-star’s absurdly high Thetan count and seems to have actually felt the nearly forty years between films, so the eternally youthful Jennifer Connelly had to be swapped in her place.

This substitution robs the relationship between Penny and Maverick of some of its weight, as Penny is a character we haven’t met and don’t really care about. Since this film is devoted to its nostalgia bait to an almost ludicrous degree, it swaps Penny into some of the old shots with Charlotte, which only makes the imagery confusing. Worst of all though, the romance is dull. I’d much rather the film drop this plot altogether and focus its attention on the relationship between Maverick and his young charges, as here at least the relationships will be crucial for the climatic action scene, while Penny will disappear for forty minutes once the pilots are on approach to the enemy nuke plant. Several of the key characters are given basically no build-up, and surely it would have been better to know a bit more about Phoenix or Hangman.

The climatic sequences of air-to-air combat are nothing short of stunning. Even somebody like me, who struggles to see the romance in such operations, and secretly longs to see what the foot-sloggers and tankers down below are up to, has to admit that Top Gun: Maverick’s dog fights are simply thrilling. Indeed, the extended sequence where the F-18s assault the nuke factory easily puts any of the dogfighting sequences from Top Gun (1986) to shame. I felt all my gripes and grievances with the film melting away as I watched the fighters sore through the air. It’s nothing short of magical.

Top Gun: Maverick is, for the most part, not a very funny film. However, it did manage to draw one big laugh out of me towards the end. Throughout the film, Maverick is constantly telling his young charges that they need to trust their instincts, as in a real combat situation they will make the difference between life and death. When their lives are on the line, they won’t have time to think. In particular, he pounds this into the head of Rooster, partially because he feels responsible for his father’s death, and partially because he sees the young pilot being especially hesitant and by the books during training. In the big action sequence, Maverick is shot down and stranded behind enemy lines, but Rooster doubles back to try and rescue him. Rooster does save him from an enemy attack helicopter, before being shot down himself. When Maverick finds Rooster, he’s livid, and demands to know what the hell Rooster was thinking, to which Rooster replies “You told me not to think.” The joke is not especially hilarious, but it is so grounded in the characters that it fits perfectly. In the midst of an otherwise, quite serious film, it lands spectacularly.

As a final note, I would like to praise Top Gun: Maverick for keeping with a positive attribute of the original Top Gun (1986). While it removed the playful homoeroticism of the first film, at least it kept Top Gun’s way of characterizing rivals. There is no shortage of stuff-shirts and hotshot pilots who hate Maverick’s guts in either film, none of these antagonists are treated as outright villainous or even denied sufficient dignity. Admiral Chester Cain from the film’s opening has a motivation that he’s allowed to articulate at some length, and while it differs from the film’s audience and hero, it is nonetheless consistent and reasonable. He's even allowed to cut a faintly heroic figure as he stands at the end of the runway, quietly seething with rage as he watches Maverick take off in the experimental jet overhead. Likewise, Maverick’s superior officer Admiral Cyclone disagrees with Maverick on pretty much every aspect of the mission they are tackling together. He dislikes Maverick’s insubordinate attitude and can’t wait to drum his ass out of the service altogether. Yet, after Maverick shows that the mission can be flown, even if he’s the only one who can do it, Cyclone sets aside his personal dislike of the captain and gives him the command. Even Hangman, the cocky fighter pilot who exists primarily to serve as a foil to the more introspective Rooster, gets a chance in the end to save the day. All these characters are on the same team, and while they may disagree with each other on some approach or other they are all allowed to be heroic in their own right.