Top Gun: Maverick

dir: Joseph Kosinski

2022

File this under “unwelcome things from the past that resurface and aren’t as shit as one would think.” Sorta like endless covid variants, herpes, or the ex you still owe money to.

I mean, Top Gun is a terrible movie, but it still captured the imaginations and ears of way too many people. Everyone my age or slightly younger still knows a bunch of songs from that fucking movie, even if we never watched it voluntarily, and still knows half of the catchphrases.

This new flick MAVERICK (I feel like it should be in all caps, all of the time) should not exist. The idea that the same guy who did what he did 36 years ago is still at it, at the age of 60, is absurd. The elitist of the elite navy fighter pilots is still the absolute bestest pilot in all of the Americas after 36 goddamn years? I don’t even believe he could read an email whose font size has been changed to 26 point without glasses, and we’re meant to believe this Peter “Maverick” Mitchell still flies better than the rest? His call sign should be changed to Peter “Pan” Mitchell, because this fucker will never grow up.

Not only is he still the greatest, he is still doing that shit eating grin from 36 years ago, and riding motorbikes without a helmet, and generally doing whatever the fuck he wants, despite the fact that the navy hierarchy all loathe him with a passion. The “real” servicemen and women know that he’s the best.

Reviews will tell you that this flick doesn’t have as much of the testosterone-inflected, homoerotic undertones of the earlier instalment. Don’t believe them. This flick still, even with more women in the mix, is still ultimately about the love between men who serve that allegedly great nation. It can’t be sublimated entirely, it can’t be satisfied openly, so instead these preening jocks of all ages rub their metaphorical dicks against each other until there’s some kind of emotional hugging catharsis at the end.

The film goes out of its way to address the manner in which Maverick and Iceman (Val Kilmer), bitter rivals for most of the first film, have been lifelong friends since they swore to be each other’s wingman way back in the day. Iceman, who rose through the ranks and became the commander of the navy in the Pacific, is the only reason the other bitter, older men in the Navy haven’t booted Maverick out.

How did they come to love and respect each other so much? Who knows? They just tell us it’s the case, and we accept it, as the fucking chumps that we are.

And goddamn it if I didn’t tear up at the scene anyway.

One of those somehow older, bitter men is younger man Jon Hamm, playing Admiral Fuckface. That’s probably not his name, but his purpose is the purpose that admirals play in anything, which is to be openly hostile, passive aggressive, threatening and demeaning, but in the end have to shake their heads and admit they were wrong about you, Maverick, all along. That the wonderful Jon Hamm is reduced to such an unpleasant role shows that Tom Cruise needs America to think there are no older American actors worth liking any more other than him. I’m surprised he didn’t have a role for George Clooney as a Catholic priest somewhere too close to a kindergarten near the base.

If Being John Malkovich joked that, once John Malkovich managed to pass through a portal to enter his own mind, and that his whole consciousness consisted of Malkovichs endlessly saying “Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich”, imagine what it’s like for Tom Cruise on any given day. Apart from whatever Scientology bullshit they’ve been verbally feeding him for decades, you just know it’s an endless chorus of “Tom Cruise Tom Cruise Tom Cruise” going on in that head, as he stares into his own eyes in a mirror, nodding his head at the power of his own words.

There is barely enough room in this infinite universe for a personality of his magnitude. And in this world, his character is so massive, so great that I think he maybe has his own gravity. One that doubles as a teeth whitener as well.

An unnamed nation has a uranium enrichment facility, deep in some mountains, surrounded by anti-aircraft missiles and fifth generation fighter jets. I don’t pretend to know what fifth generation fighter jets are, but the fearful way they talk about them implies they’re next level. Like they can blow up schools or orphanages with like 200% more murderousness.

It’s not long before you’re wondering “what people are they planning to blow up, and where?” as well as “wait, this sounds suspiciously like the rebels in Star Wars trying to blow up the Death Star”. It’s almost word for word in some places, except instead of “using the Force”, people are told to “feel, don’t think”.

Feel, don’t think. Like all that Jedi bullshit, it’s meaningless and contradictory, but it sounds soothing and wise, whether it’s coming from Yoda, Alec Guinness or Tom Cruise.

I was told this was not an exercise in nostalgia. Again a bald-faced lie. Eighty per cent of this flick is looking backwards, summoning feelings that otherwise wouldn’t be there by milking the death of Maverick’s co-pilot in the first film for all its worth. Cruise often says, under his breath “Talk to me, Goose”. He stares lovingly at photos of Anthony Edwards, Meg Ryan and some little blonde moppet, but he never tears up. Oh no, but he does stand there conveying some turmoil of emotions when we know full well there is nothing but a gaping void behind those doll-like eyes.

That little blonde moppet grows up into a conflicted guy with a moustache, one who is much taller than Tom Cruise, but the flick goes out of its way not to have Miles Teller looming over Cruise, because that makes his penis, or whatever vestigial organ he has in its place down there, dwindle even more.

This is a dumb sentence I never thought I’d be writing in a review of anything ever: Miles Teller and his moustache plays Rooster. Rooster hates Maverick with the heat of a thousand dying suns, not only for killing his dad, but also for holding him back from his chosen career as, you guessed it, a hotshot navy pilot.

What are the odds that Rooster gets selected in this elite team, and has to overcome his hatred for Maverick in order for everyone to work together and save the world from whatever Iranian / North Korean / Eskimo Death Star facility they were building?

There is no evidence that Rooster is a good pilot, or as good as the other pilots. In fact, he seems to be way worse than them. We know that he has emotional problems and a moustache, but we are assured, by Maverick, that all Rooster has to do is believe in himself and let go of something, and then everything will be okay.

I don’t really know anything about being a fighter pilot, especially an elite one, but I have to think there’s more to it than that.

Maverick clearly has too much time on his hands, because as well as trying to train these younger pilots to do this mission in only a couple of weeks, he also finds time to reconnect with an old flame, being Jennifer Connelly, who wasn’t in the first flick, who we’re meant to think he’s capable of loving, and we’re also meant to applaud the casting because she’s only about 10 years younger than him.

How brave, casting a woman in her 50s as a love interest. Very courageous.

Their scenes together can’t help but make me think of scenes like the below transcript from a certain episode of The Simpsons so many years ago:
Selma : Are you gay?
Troy McClure : Gay? I wish! If I were gay, there'd be no problem. No, what I have is a romantic abnormality, one so unbelievable that it must be hidden from the public at all costs. You see...
Selma : [interrupting] Stop!
And yes, to celebrate, we’re all going to Seaworld.
It’s always nice to see Jennifer Connelly in anything, but I was kinda disappointed that she wasn’t a fighter pilot as well. Apparently anyone can do it, if they just believe in themselves. Instead she’s into yachting, which is pretty random. I always had this feeling that Tom Cruise is allergic to water, so those scenes on her yacht must have been quite scary for him.

After about a week or two of the pilots training in this way which clearly shows no-one can do the mission as it’s been planned, angry man who shakes his fist at clouds and mavericks Admiral Fuckface declares that the mission won’t work, he tries to fire Maverick again, and then Maverick has to prove by flying the mission in a mixture of in the real world and simulated stuff that it is possible. He does so with a few tenths of a second to spare, and this somehow changes the Admiral’s mind. Now everyone can do that mission, even though they couldn’t before. No-one questions whether this is a good idea, or why it would work for people that aren’t Maverick.

There is maybe a version of this film that was intended many years ago where it was mostly going to be about the young pilots, and Maverick would pop in every now and then, but concede the stage to them, the next generation. This is not that movie. This is, as its name would imply, Maverick everywhere all of the time, whether flashing his shit eating grin or trying to look sad or saving everyone’s lives and showing the young people what fools they are for thinking they’re as great as him.

And flying, so much flying. Not a single one of the young pilots is as good as Maverick, so naturally Maverick will actually have to be the one that leads the mission, which shuts everyone up pretty quickly. And so they’ll go and do their implausible thing, and it will look great as they do it, I guess.

If this flick has anything going for it, and it clearly does, it’s that the flying scenes of which there are many are in actual planes flying. They go out of their way to make flying at this level the punishing physical equivalent of Formula 1 driving, only more brutal. Abrupt sharp turns and desperate attempts to see where other enemies are coming from require twisting ones body around in such painful sounding ways that there is nothing calm or measured about it.

It’s pulse pounding stuff. And added to that is the problem of the pilots facing the crippling effects of G forces at Mach speeds beyond what most humans can endure and operate effectively at, and you wonder whether it’s really as much of a recruitment video as they might hope, like the first one was.

Everyone in the Navy, even if they don’t have the best of intentions, is absolutely perfect at their job and never fucks anything up. Everyone from the top pilots to the people fuelling the planes is so picture perfect at their jobs that only people who’ve never worked in a military environment could believe that such flawlessness is possible. It really did have me shaking my head in wonderment.

This is perfect, crowd-pleasing, competent stuff. It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it does, and I have to think it’s mostly older crowds that were won over by whatever the fuck it is that Cruise is doing here. This is entirely an exercise in nostalgia, but so much crafting has gone into making it visually coherent and thrilling such that even if it’s all as implausible as fuck, it still works way better than it has any right to.

Which is probably why it’s made literal billions of dollars. More money for the Church of Scientology to finish building that spaceship for Cruise to fly back to his home planet in.

8 times that uranium was never going to enrich itself, now was it out of 10

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“Trust your instincts! Don't think, just do. You think up there, you're dead. Believe me.” – no, I don’t believe you - Top Gun: Maverick.