Courtesy Paramount Pictures
If you, like me, are thinking you’ve seen the first Top Gun movie, so you totally don’t need to brush up again before heading in to see Tom Cruise’s new Top Gun: Maverick, you’re right and wrong. On the one hand, it’d make answers to questions like “Who the hell is this Penny person, and why are we supposed to know who she is?” or, “Who the hell is that guy and what’s his deal?” eminently more answerable. On the other hand, the new “woah, planes!” vehicle from Cruise and company is so very stupid, it doesn’t even begin to matter.
We join Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) some 30-ish years after the events of the original Top Gun wherein the best Navy pilots around attended a school for, umm, the best Navy pilots around. ‘Twas colloquially called—get this—Top Gun, and while there, they flied all sick, got Anthony Edwards’ Goose killed, competed all day and played volleyball so fucking hard that movies were never the same.
Now, though, things have changed. Sure, Top Gun is still called Top Gun, and Maverick’s still the hot-headed rule-hater he always was (a weird personality type to join the military), but when a test flight he wasn’t even supposed to conduct goes awry, he’s sent to teach a new generation of pointless archetypes at Top Gun under the watchful, judgmental eye of Cyclone (Jon Hamm), who totally hates the whole Maverick gestalt. Seems there’s a nameless country out there playing fast and loose with nuclear armament agreements, and the mission is gonna be so full of pilot/flying terms that even the toughest stick jockeys (the movie’s words, not mine) have to git gud fast. Good thing Maverick’s the most reckless pilot ever around.
Breezing past how the film never once identifies “the enemy,” Maverick follows in the footsteps of the new generation of Star Wars movies by setting up characters who echo the originals and then having them do most of the same basic things. Instead of Val Kilmer’s arrogant Iceman, we get Glen Powell’s arrogant Hangman; instead of Goose, we get his son (Miles Teller, who is better than this), Rooster. They train hard, they compete hard, they play beach football instead of volleyball so hard and they learn a little something about feelings and friendship along the way.
Jennifer Connely shows up as Penny, a former flame of Maverick’s heretofore only mentioned in the first film’s dialogue. Cruise smiles at her like a little boy and sails on her boat—they totally do it even though she’s concerned about her precocious daughter who says things like, “Don’t hurt her!” Or maybe it’s “Don’t break her heart!” Honestly? Who gives a shit? Everyone in this movie says stuff like “Don’t think, just do!” and, “My dad was really good at planes, brah!” and, like, “He doesn’t want what I’ve got to teach!” Even Val Kilmer’s one scene feels more about checking boxes than it does telling a story. There is no character development. There are no interesting characters. Not naming the villains lowers the stakes, too, but look at those shirtless bodies glisten in the sun, right? We’ll give it to Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski for the action and flying scenes, though. Maverick makes use of real planes and explosions and stuff, which makes how ham-fisted, predictable and downright boring the rest of the film is sting worse. As always, Cruise is a movie star presence—not an actor, not an artist. Oh, and they waste Ed Harris in only one dang scene, so...drag.
4
+The action; the planes
-The movie part of the movie
Top Gun: Maverick
Directed by Kosinski
With Cruise, Connely, Hamm, Powell, Teller, Kilmer and Harris (for two 45 seconds or so)
Violet Crown, PG-13, 131 min.
