Mark Reviews Movies: TOP GUN: MAVERICK

Top Gun: Maverick, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 25, 2022

Top Gun: Maverick, a three-decades belated sequel, works on three distinct levels, which is at least two more than the 1986 original. It has a clear and direct, if admirably simple, plot, which is definitely something that can't be said of the first movie and its multiple but underdeveloped story ideas. The sequel sees its characters as actual people, filled with uncertainty and regrets and remorse and resentments, instead of, in the case of the original, mere extensions of material that too often felt like a lengthy military recruitment effort.

The element that both Top Gun and its sequel share, though, is a sense of spectacle, and director Joseph Kosinski wants us to know that this film will follow in those steps. The opening credits sequence here, set to a familiar synthesizer anthem and an even-more-famous road-based Kenny Loggins tune, is a slightly updated copy of the one from the original movie. On the deck of an aircraft carrier, fighter jets are prepped before being launched, screeching, into the sky.

We've seen it before, and that seems to be a way to lull us into a feeling of comfortable expectation. By the time this film takes to sky in its own way and with its own methods, though, Kosinski and his team shatter those expectations. This is real, jaw-dropping spectacle on display.

The story is important, too, which is a nice surprise. In it, Cpt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise)—who hasn't sought any promotion, even though everyone says he should have been an admiral by now given his experience and decorations—is called back to dogfighting school to train the next generation of fighter pilots. This comes after a rather disastrous test flight with a hypersonic jet, which Maverick flies against orders to keep the program afloat for a bit in the age of unmanned drones (Ed Harris has a brief role as the no-nonsense admiral who admires but also pities the guy, who should be washed-up or dead by now). That he pushes the plane beyond its limits is all down to his ego and his apparently unquenchable need to be better than the best.

Anyway, the plot revolves around a planned mission to destroy a uranium-enriching facility in an unnamed and geographically non-specific country. The foundational ingenuity of the screenplay—written by the trio of Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie—is that the entire film builds up to that climactic mission, even when the story is occupied with other, more personal matters.

From a skeptical Beau "Cyclone" Simpson (Jon Hamm) at "Top Gun," Maverick gets a rundown of the proposed plan to destroy the facility. It involves fighter jets racing through a narrow canyon, performing an inverted maneuver over a mountain, making two perfect shots at a small target, and, finally, climbing a much taller mountain at a steep angle. Those details are important, because the rest of the film has the pilots trying over and over and over again to perfect each and every aspect of the plan.

It's a smart choice, because this allows, not only for plenty of opportunities to show off the production's dedication to using real jets in actual locations, but also for a constant sense of suspense. The new pilots try and fail, try different things and fail some more, and try to push themselves even further and risk death from a missed turn, the weight of gravity on their bodies, or an unexpected flock of birds in the way.

As for the assorted stunts on display, they were done for real, and there's quite no way to describe the thrill of seeing these aerial acts of derring-do from the wide shots and up-close-and-personal angles Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda provide. The method does add another, more intimate, and in-the-moment sense of suspense to everything, especially seeing those landscapes zipping behind the actors—who aren't actually flying, of course, but are still riding in those planes—in the cockpits.

The payoff to all of this, of course, is that, when the climactic mission arrives, we understand each step, foresee every way it could fail, and don't know what to anticipate when the team comes across a bridge, for which nobody accounted, in that canyon. Even with the underlying sense of predictability that comes from this much information, the screenwriters still surprise, leaving certain parts of the plan hanging—such as what's to be done about an inevitable confrontation with missiles and the likely probability that there'll be resistance from advanced fighter jets—and putting some characters into a completely unpredictable situation behind enemy lines.

Well before any of that, though, we get to know the younger pilots—such as the talented but stable Phoenix (Monica Barbaro) and the skilled but arrogant Hangman (Glen Powell)—and the tensions between them, but obviously, this remains Maverick's tale. He gets a pleasant but perfunctory romance with former flame Penny (Jennifer Connelly), who has had her heart broken by him too many times to expect anything different. The core of his story, though, revolves around both his seemingly inescapable slide into irrelevance and his attempts to protect and/or reconcile with Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller).

The name, nickname, and mustache should be vaguely familiar, since Rooster is the son of Maverick's former flight partner, whose death in the first movie still haunts the aging hotshot and, in not the most obvious way, has defined Maverick's relationship with the young man he has come to see as a son. Cruise's performance is finely tuned to the specific ways this big-headed, reckless man has become humble and thoughtful about the risks for others, without gaining any real idea about self-preservation in his own actions. Teller is also quite good as the rookie and surrogate son with a few chips on his shoulder.

Here, then, is a sequel that's a notable improvement over its predecessor in all the ways that count. Top Gun: Maverick digs deeper into its story and characters than easy nostalgia, and on a consistent and thorough level, the spectacle on display is genuinely, well, spectacular.

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