Beyond its role in propelling a specific kind of summer blockbuster into the post-1980s landscape of Hollywood cinema, Tony Scott’s “Top Gun” holds a distinct place in establishing the mythology of Tom Cruise. When it was released in 1986, Cruise was on the brink of attaining the critical and commercial success that would define his career moving forward. And, yet, for much of the running-time of the newly released sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick”, I found myself thinking of another very different 1986 Tom Cruise film: Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money”. That film was also a long-gestating sequel that saw Paul Newman return years after “The Hustler” to play an older, scrappier version of what was previously a young and scrappy heartthrob.
“Maverick” finds Cruise in conflict with a younger man that seems to mirror some aspects of his own youthful tenacity. It is the dynamic that maintains in Scorsese’s film which saw Cruise tailing Newman in an example of how decades between an original film and its sequel could offer an ageing actor a chance to truly reckon with their star persona, their legacy and the way that time can be both cruel and kind to a man with so much youthful confidence. Considering the direct knowledge Cruise has of that film as well as his role as both actor and producer here it is disappointing that “Top Gun: Maverick” refuses to contemplate how its lead character may have been changed by the time since we last saw him, or at least how his unchanging nature may be something to critique and evaluate rather than blindly nod at.
When the commercial success of “Top Gun” announced Tom Cruise as a genuine Hollywood leading man, it was not just important as a general predecessor to the next few decades of Cruise’s supremacy. It also, significantly, established Cruise’s ability to play a particular type of leading man. One would recognise the arrogant charm (or charming arrogance?) of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in characters Cruise has played in the decades since, and primarily in the cavalier assuredness of Ethan Hunt in the “Mission: Impossible” series. Even though we left Cruise’s Maverick back in 1986, it feels as if he never really left our movie theatres when so much of Cruise’s onscreen persona has been defined by that same cadence. And so, when “Top Gun: Maverick” opens with a sequence where the devil-may-care Maverick, older but still tenacious, flouts his superior to perform a death-defying stunt, I found myself immediately wondering what it would do to distinguish itself both from its predecessor, and from our general understanding of how Tom Cruise appears onscreen. The answer is very little.
Instead, in some ways, “Maverick” struck me like a version of a “Mission: Impossible” movie. It is a facsimile that doesn’t quite work. It’s possible the filmmakers were not directly thinking of that series (although Christopher McQuarrie, one of the credited screenwriters, has written and directed the last two, and the upcoming two, films in that series). But “Maverick” feels less like a “sequel” to a movie – offering a new and changed perspective on what has come before – than another entry in a series about Maverick being a rascally lone-wolf who retains superiority even in the face of multiple doubters. While Ethan Hunt, for the most part, does not change much from film to film in “Mission: Impossible”, we do not expect any explicit character change. The nuance happens elsewhere, where new locales and revolving casts offer contextual shifts that deepen the centre. It is one thing that there is no emotion, no beat, no nuance that follows in “Maverick” that was not already made explicit in the original film. But it begins to feel unwieldly when we realise that this new entry, directed by Joseph Kosinski, with the story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks, and the actual screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and McQuarrie, only has eyes for Cruise, much to the detriment of the film. There’s a better, sharper, more thoughtful movie struggling to scratch its way out of “Top Gun: Maverick” and one that has fluidity and confidence beyond being a palimpsest version of its predecessor. When we first meet him, significantly poring over photos of himself in the past, the film appears at least shrewd enough to immediately recognise the fossilised nature of his existence. Maverick is a US Navy test pilot who has avoided promotion, and instead has maintained a 33-year career flying, a time way beyond the norm. But there is no sense of tiredness or age here. He is still cocksure and he’s still at the top of his field, even as his skills have been rendered somewhat obsolete in the wake of newer technology, drone and otherwise. A politician sneers at him early on, reminding him that his job will soon be replaced by machines. But lucky for him, script conveniences allow for a return to the past an opportunity to train recent TOPGUN recruits in these seemingly obsolete skills.
It’s here Maverick meets Rooster (played by Miles Teller), the son of his former wingman Goose, who died while flying with Maverick in the original film. One would be forgiven for assuming that the slapdash emotional resonance the film gestures towards will be predicated on the loss of his father, but the writers offer up another crisis hinged on Maverick’s role in blocking his admission to flight school sometime between the first film and this one. This is a constant trend in “Maverick”, where vague elements of context are spun to recontextualise things. The Kelly McGillis love-interest from the original film is gone, and replaced with Jennifer Connelly as a bar-owner with whom the film tries to create some resonance as it asks us to invest in a relationship despite a crippling lack of chemistry. The closest the film comes to emotional resonance is courtesy of Val Kilmer’s brief appearance as an aged, and more sickly Iceman, who has risen in the ranks of the field unlike Maverick. But at every turn the film keeps reframing itself to ensure that it sings a full-throated ode to the ways that Maverick, and only Maverick, has the answers to all the problems facing these characters. At moments, the cast of young flyers, led by Teller, feel on the verge of establishing actual character dynamics but “Maverick” refuses to let Maverick recede, even momentarily, and so any emotional core in the younger cast falters.
Yes, you review the movie you get rather than the movie you want, but there are so many moments where the new film seems to sense that it needs to build Rooster’s character arc beyond vague resentment for Maverick before it loses it nerves at every chance of contextualisation. Surely, the people involved in this recognise that if the perspective shifted just slightly so Rooster, and not Maverick, is our point-of-entry to this world it would allow Maverick to retain the same superstar stance the film is so desperate to give him but allow for a protagonist with some semblance of a character arc? This is not just because Teller is managing to eke out the closest thing to a performance with actual emotional context (he struggles with the abruptness of the Rooster’s shifts in moods, but you can see him trying to create an arc the script avoids), but just because the promise of Maverick reckoning with himself and his age and the dynamics between that could be so much richer. As it is, the Maverick we meet in the opening scene does not feel emotionally changed from the one in the obligatory celebratory final scene. The film’s edict seems to be: see, I told you Tom Cruise could tussle with the younger generation and come out on top.
And, maybe, I’d get the appeal of that if we weren’t still getting (superior) contemporary entries, like the “Mission: Impossible” series, where we constantly are reminded of this. But we are getting those entries; we know that Tom Cruise still has the appeal and the goods. We don’t need a “Top Gun” sequel to rehash that, and neither do the characters here. But at every turn, the sequel refuses to cede any kind of emotional core to the characters beyond Maverick, even though there are so many moments where it offers the potential of that shift in perspective, to a messier and more ambitious and more thoughtful film that really engages with the generation gap between now and then. And considering how much Tom Cruise can do as an actor, so much of “Maverick” seems to underserve the wealth of his talents.
Certainly, though, the ageing Cruise makes for a great action-figure if not an actual resonant character, but “Maverick” wants to tie the action sequences to the vague emotional core they try to elicit between Rooster and Maverick. It is as if the filmmakers recognise some emotional acuity is necessary, but remain unwilling to really invest in giving it the room to breathe it needs. The wide-angle camera work makes excellent use of the big-screen and Kosinski manages to mirror the disorientation that comes with the jarring experience of being caught off-guard while in aerial combat. But without any real investment in any of the characters beyond Maverick, the action sequences feel intriguing as set-pieces but hardly indelible as moments of tension to engage us emotionally.
While some may remember ’80s blockbusters with scepticism, there’s an unabashed nature of emotional openness that rings through most of them they were messily vulnerable about feelings. But in its attempt to course correct the hokeyness of the original “Top Gun”, “Maverick” feels shiny and pristine but emotionally vacuous. It achieves its ultimate goal, announcing Tom Cruise at nearly sixty in shirtless glory to boot as a god amongst men and more of a man than those who are half his age. But that feels like a paltry emotional centre for a sequel more than three-decades in the making. I’m less sure that “Maverick” has anything indelible to say about any of the characters, or events, within its frames. Good planes, though.
