Miscellaneous Musings

June 4, 2022
 
On Top Gun: Maverick and the Problem of Serving Two Audiences
 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: We didn’t want to do a sequel until we had a great story. This line – or a variation of it – is becoming a standard whenever someone is promoting what promises to be the next great chapter in a series that more than likely no one had thought needed a follow-up. Think of how perfectly some of the “final” movies ended – Luke, Leia, and Han celebrating after the destruction of the second Death Star, the Ghostbusters once again victorious over evil, Rick and Rachel riding off into the sunset and an uncertain future. Fade to black for the last time. Well, at least until someone in a studio gets the bright idea that what audiences really want – in lieu of a new creative venture - is to catch up with their favorite characters from their childhood. And so the Dark Side reawakens, ghosts once again threaten to make the earth an oasis for creatures from the underworld, and we learn that Rick is living in an abandoned hotel in a radioactive city all by his lonesome because the romantic inside him does not allow him to find joy even so many years after the death of his android wife. So much for happy endings.
 
And now, we get Top Gun: Maverick. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit to having been a Top Gun enthusiast, so much so that for about a month and a half, my best friend and I had a habit of rushing home from school and popping in his VHS copy of the film. It got so we could recite the film as we watched it, and on more than one occasion, our playground conversations would suddenly become re-enactment of our favorite moments. I had the soundtrack on cassette tape and pretty much wore it out by rocking out to either “Danger Zone” or doing a slow groove to Harold Faltermeyer’s patriotism-inducing theme. My friend went further. He got the sunglasses and the flight jacket, and for a little while had visions of becoming a fighter pilot and having an inverted adventure like his cinematic idol.
 
I have never owned a copy of Top Gun, though. By the time, I began collecting movies, my excitement for the film had waned considerably. I still enjoyed much of it, but there was something about the last half hour that annoyed me the more I thought of it. I mean, there’s an incident an ocean away and instead of sending pilots that are already in that part of the world, they interrupt a graduation ceremony to send a bunch of recent grads halfway across the world, just for a few of them to be shot down in mere seconds so that Maverick can be sent in to save the day. One particularly head-scratching moment: when Maverick tells a pilot to break right at three and then says, “Three!” This is followed by hugging and forgiveness, before Maverick, stoic as usual, hurls his late friend’s dog tags into the Pacific Ocean. I remember it bringing a tear to more than a few of seventh grade classmate’s eyes during an unexpected in-class screening. Oh, and then Maverick says he wants to come back as an instructor because I guess you qualify to be one after you’ve successfully survived one dogfight and buzzed a number of towers.
 
Now, answer this question truthfully. When was the last time you asked yourself, “Hey, what’s “Maverick” up to these days?” Anyone? I didn’t think so, and yet, here, thirty-six years later, comes the answer to that question.
 
I should say here that overall, I enjoyed the film. Cruise immerses himself in the role, as he always does, and because he insists on doing his own stunts (and I imagine his own flying), the film’s biggest scenes resonate more than they would if he had simple sat in a plane on a Hollywood studio and pretended to be in the air. Maverick’s post-dogfight story feels real, especially for a character who has such a hard time with authority, (He doesn’t even wear a helmet when he rides a motorcycle – that’s how much of a rebel he is!) Also, there’s Maverick’s continued grief over Goose’s death, and if you’ve seen Cruise’s previous, you know he excels at playing characters suffering from trauma.
 
Soon, Maverick’s called back to Top Gun to prepare some of its elite graduates for a top secret and rather perilous mission. And it is here the movie begins to make some of the same errors as so many of its contemporary legacy sequels: it tries to please two competing audiences. For fans of the first film, it keeps its focus on Maverick – his name is in the title after all - but for the new generation of audience members, it goes younger and in many cases hotter, once again presenting Top Gun as the place to find not only elite fighter pilots but the latest pin-ups as well. There would be nothing wrong with this were it not for the fact that the film begins to feel very familiar very quickly. There’s a scene in a bar which ends in a chorus of young people screaming, “Great Balls of Fire!” There an arrogant young pilot who cares only about his own achievements and another who puts safety first, there’s a love interest who isn’t sure getting involved with you-know-who is such a good idea, and there’s the tried-and-true storyline involving Maverick and one of the pilots who bears a striking resemblance to his former flying buddy. Of the new characters, only Jennifer Connolly as Patty is given enough screen time for her personality to be fleshed out fully. The rest remain clichéd enigmas. By the time Maverick picked his elite team, I had no idea whether any of them had the right stuff for the mission, but at least they all got to shine in a game of beach football.
 
Top Gun: Maverick culminates in the kind of high-flying action scene audience expects and will be pleased with, and yet as the end credits rolled, I found myself looking forward in time to the fateful day when someone decides to watch the two films back-to-back, for without the thirty-six-year delay between them, much of what now seems fresh and exciting may seem detrimentally familiar, and instead of marveling at the technical wonders on a screen, we may sigh at the film’s habit of returning to the well far too often. Another scene of pilots acting cocky, another turn on the piano, another group of pilots embarrassed upon realizing their commanding officer is someone they weren’t exactly respectful to the night before, another set of officers explaining why they wish they could ground Maverick. It all seemed so familiar. Imagine how you’d feel during a binge-watching session.
 
And therein lies the problem with so many of today’s sequels. They are serving two masters, and when your loyalty is divided, the results usually aren’t pleasing to either side. Top Gun: Maverick is certainly impressive from a technological standpoint, and the acting is generally superb, yet the appreciation you experience while watching it may fade upon reflection. The mind looks for connections, and inevitably it will find them in the basic storylines of the two Top Gun films. Sure, the film will still amaze audiences, but will it have the same appeal if just two hours earlier you saw similar characters do pretty much the exact same thing? I doubt it.
 
Sadly, Top Gun: Maverick could have charted a different course. It could still have told a tale of missed opportunities and dreams that were not completely fulfilled, yet it could have soared to new cinematic heights by making one gutsy creative decision. It could have truly been about passing the torch. All it had to do was turn the action over to the next generation of pilots. Give them the glory and the heartbreak. Let Maverick, proud father figure that he is, watch the fruits of his extensive labor from the sidelines. He’s done his part. Let him pass the torch. That would really have made him a Hollywood maverick.