Riot’s Movie Reviews: Top Gun: Maverick
If boys growing up in the 80s/90s ever had a consensus on a particular dream, it would be fair to assume it involved a pair of aviators, a flight suit, and the desire to head right into the danger zone. While this was the sentiment of many around me growing up, having never seen the original Top Gun until last night, I definitely couldn’t relate. Re-watching old classics from the 80s is always a bit of a coin flip on whether or not it can “hold up” to today’s standards and as I went to bed last night, I couldn’t help but wonder why some of my friends were so obsessed with this film. It was cheesy, the acting was spotty at times, and its predictability was hard to get past. Yet I understood that all of the elements of a linear, sensical story remained; something that films nowadays have struggled to get a grasp on. Nevertheless, I ensured that I had done my research going into a Father’s Day celebration viewing of the new Top Gun: Maverick with my dad and brothers and was inevitably left feeling a need…the need for speed!
Hollywood’s current obsession with reboots has left me skeptical of any new title drawing from old content and for good reason. Production companies’ over-reliance on throwback plugs often ends up leaving inexplicable holes in the storytelling process. Top Gun: Maverick avoids this pitfall by essentially picking up right where the previous one left off. By duplicating the intro, credit sequence, and opening scenes/settings, the familiarity welcomes fans in without doing anything to creatively step on their toes. Maverick (Tom Cruise) is exactly who we all remember him as the cocky, but determined speed junkie looking to push the bounds of what is acceptable in both physics and military protocols. Yes, Maverick hasn’t changed much but once called to duty (more like forced, really) we find him stepping up into a new role and new stage in life that inevitably tests him far more than he could test himself. Interspersed throughout are callbacks that maintain the nostalgia while enhancing the originality of the storyline: i.e. a football game on the beach instead of volleyball. Sure, it’s still a gratuitous, fan service, shirtless dude scene. But at least this time, it served a much bigger purpose. Much like before, Maverick is given the reigns to his own destiny and the audience is brought along for the ride to see whether or not he can succeed or be his own undoing.
Director Joseph Kosinski assuredly deserves a lavishing of praise for what he’s done with this film along with the cinematographers and whomever was involved in the enormous amounts of flight scenes that far outshone anything else that was happening. Yet, even as fantastic as they were, the performances of every actor involved cut away at all of the cheesy lines and spotty acting that made the original a rough watch for me. (Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, and Glen Powell were particularly noteworthy, but seriously there wasn’t a single bad performance in the lineup). The audience was given everything it could have wanted from this summer blockbuster: action, romance, and comedy all rolled into one. Having Val Kilmer reprise his role as “Iceman” was more touching than I expected it to be and the writers seamlessly integrated Kilmer’s real-life struggles into his role, helping to expand the depth of emotion portrayed by Cruise throughout. The action couldn’t be outdone though and it was extremely refreshing to go into the theater, switch off the brain, and enjoy a film that didn’t feel like it needed to be more complex than it had to be. Negatives were few and far between. Because of, what I think, is too long of a run-time, the pace lulls at times, but is quickly forgiven when the pilots embark on their final mission. Some events toed far too over the line of reality (i.e. an escape plan that makes so little sense it’s laughable) but are also easily forgotten in the grand scheme of things. All-in-all, there’s very little to be said against what is sure to be an enormous box office success.
Riot’s Rating: 9.7/10
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