Why Top Gun: Maverick?

By a healthy three hundred million dollar margin, the highest grossing movie of 2022 thus far (and likely to remain so until, who knows, Avatar 2 unseats it) is Top Gun: Maverick. I don’t know that anybody expected this. It was announced back in 2017 and to seemingly not a lot of fanfare: just another nostalgia sequel to a popular 80s movie being made off the back of Tom Cruise’s strikingly resilient star power. And maybe it’s because I hadn’t seen the first movie, but I found nothing particularly remarkable about this, and in the intervening years of pre-production and filming, barely thought about it until a trailer appeared. Even then though it didn’t seem much destined for special success. This isn’t the 80s anymore, non-franchise adult movies don’t become hits (I know of course it’s a sequel, but Top Gun is hardly a franchise, certainly not one that has had any pull in the last couple decades). I figured it would ultimately succumb to the same fate that befell other movies of its’ ilk: at best an under-performing gem like Blade Runner 2049 or The Matrix: Resurrections, at worst a barely noticeable blip like Rambo: Last Blood or Terminator: Dark Fate.

Instead, people turned out for this movie in droves, to a degree that seems disproportionate with the popularity of the original Top Gun, yes a cheesy 80s classic, but not one with such a strong, vast, and fervent fanbase. I went to see it opening weekend and was shocked to find I could barely get a seat! About four weeks later I saw it again with my parents -still there was a substantial audience there. And as I kept hearing about how well it’s been doing consistently (as of the time I’m writing this, it has not yet left theatres), I’ve been wondering why this movie of all movies is seemingly breaking the modern blockbuster mould.

Well I think one of the first things to consider is it’s a mistake to underestimate boomers. Hollywood’s constantly chasing that 13 to 35 demographic, but older audiences are just as susceptible to nostalgic figures or genres and will reliably go out and support them. I’m never not stunned how loyal they are to Kevin Costner. Yellowstone, a series that is very little talked about in the online space compared to shows like Succession, Severance, The Handmaid’s Tale, Euphoria, The White Lotus, and Better Call Saul, is a huge hit on cable and by conventional standards one of the most watched shows of the modern era. On a personal note I remember going to see Let Him Go on a Sunday night in September 2020, with theatres open but the pandemic keeping most people away, and being shocked at a mostly full house. Tenet hadn’t had near as many people in attendance -I wouldn’t see another movie with that kind of a turnout until No Way Home!

Tom Cruise isn’t quite the same kind of pop figure as Costner, but he is undeniably a pop figure of that same era -yet has maintained celebrity relevance now for four decades. A big reason for that is because he has cultivated a screen personality that people can follow across multiple kinds of movies and cultural shifts -he can both adapt to new filmmaking trends and breakthroughs and bring in those old fans who have been following him since his heyday; hence why the Mission: Impossible movies consistently make bank. That first Top Gun is often credited with making him the defining male movie star and the fact that it is intrinsically tied into the military and classical masculine symbolism, both subjects that generally strike a chord with boomer audiences, could attest for their continued interest in that as a name property.

Of course a part of it could also just be nostalgia, and not even for Top Gun specifically, but for that era of blockbuster movie-making that it represents -all but extinct in the current homogenized system. Top Gun: Maverick, with its’ emphasis on a high budget returned on elaborate practical effects, its’ non-connection to lucrative contemporary I.P., and even just the fact it isn’t a genre piece, promised to be an old-school kind of blockbuster delivering broadly on its scope and spectacle. This is an extremely refreshing thing, as for older audiences who aren’t necessarily fans of superhero media or the same handful of other franchise properties being recycled by major studios, Hollywood really hasn’t had anything to offer them on a major scale in years.

It can’t just be the boomers though who are making this movie such a phenomenon. Where and how does it appeal to other audiences? That’s the mystery, and I wonder if I maybe misjudged the hype of the film, and particularly around the aerial stunts so strongly emphasized by Cruise and others. Tom Cruise himself is a factor -a consummate showman whatever else may be said about him. One of the reasons so many see those Mission: Impossible movies is for the elaborate death-defying stunts he performs personally. Obviously there’s less of that in Top Gun: Maverick (no one’s going to let him actually fly a fighter jet), but he’s made up for it by in his capacity as producer, throwing his all behind it in terms of public recognition, accessibility, and anticipation. This movie was in development for a long time after all. And I think also, word of mouth may have had an impact -the rousing reaction it got out of Cannes, followed by virtually every critic singing its’ praises, even those who never liked the original Top Gun.

And it can’t be discounted the virtues of the movie itself -Top Gun: Maverick understands how to be a crowd-pleaser, and a multi-generational crowd-pleaser at that, more than just about any other blockbuster of the last several years. It knows some audiences want to see Tom Cruise be Cool Action Star Tom Cruise, while other audiences want to see him do something different, maybe play some more meaningful drama. And so it allows him to do both, and in a way that makes total sense for the character, the actor at this point in his career, and the underlying themes of aging and grief. The movie is aware of its’ perceiving as military propaganda (which it is), but it finds a middle ground on delivering a story rooted firmly in classical attitudes of the military but isn’t actually about that so much as it is about a damaged relationship. It doesn’t really cut down on the machismo of the cadets, but it makes them more diverse ethnically, in gender, and even in personalities -a character like Lewis Pullman’s Bob could never have existed in that earlier movie. Obviously it’s not a perfect gelling and could never be -it’s possible to see so much of the movie as cynical in its’ attempt to balance disparate images and implicit politics. But a lot of average viewers won’t notice that, and the movie’s so clean in the effort that it works. Fans of the old movie with attachments to its’ conservative iconography and context can enjoy Maverick, as can newcomers who value its’ open, modern choices in the storytelling and characters, and its’ nuanced themes. And to each degree it is extremely, endearingly sincere. One of those movies that maybe not everyone would love, but does, as the saying goes, have something for everybody.

That’s without even mentioning its’ astonishing filmmaking craft, it’s spectacular editing and stunning cinematography. Director Joseph Kosinski probably isn’t getting the credit he deserves for putting it all together so well. His and Cruise’s dedication to making it a classical thrilling cinematic experience is admirable. And its’ success can only be so very gratifying in their eyes. It was so unexpected, this decades-late sequel not only out-grossing two Marvel movies but even titan hits out of China and India at the worldwide box office. And perhaps what’s more compelling than the movie itself and its’ reception is how the film industry is going to react. What does this success mean?

Top Gun: Maverick’s box office is such that I don’t think its’ hyperbole to suggest it marks a potentially major change or shift in the Hollywood machine. Certainly it’s going to have studio executives looking at it very closely, rethinking their own investments, and trying to find ways to mimic its’ success in their own releases. And yes, Hollywood is notorious for taking the wrong lessons from major hits, but there is also a chance some powerful figures will look at this film, see its’ prioritization of practical effects, its’ sincere character drama, feel-good love story, and sense of weight and scale as the things to bring to their own projects. If it brings high budgets to ambitious new filmmakers and concepts, that is an exciting thing. It’s a step closer to recapturing that kind of diversity in tentpole films that made the Hollywood industry so interesting in the 80s and 90s.  The star system is gone, but Cruise can still sell a movie -and with those upcoming two entries of the Mission: Impossible series purported to be the last of his action phase, maybe they’ll allocate greater resources for drama projects Cruise is likely to shift into for the final stage of his career. And wouldn’t that be something? To have successful mid-budget dramas make a comeback! I know Top Gun: Maverick still has a legacy name to it, it’s not entirely a feat of original movie-making over the franchise industry. But it’s different enough and profitable enough to possibly point the way. And at this stage, right as Disney outlines its’ latest decade of plans for the MCU, I’ll take what hope there is.

Much of Top Gun: Maverick is a metaphor for the movie industry, Maverick himself an analogue for Cruise; and its’ mission statement is that this style deemed antiquated actually has some life in it yet, that it can co-exist with the new models, even in the right circumstances, outdo them. And in a fitting parallel, just as Maverick is able to pull off a highly difficult mission, so too has Top Gun: Maverick against the odds made it to the top of the box office charts. Cruise and Kosinski and Paramount, producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Christopher McQuarrie, all have been vindicated. It is a triumph for old school spectacle cinema, and it’s hard to believe that doesn’t mean anything. Whether or not studios take note or act on it in the right way, it clearly represents a kind of cinema that has been absent for a while and that audiences in relatively diverse markets around the world it seems, have been craving. It shows that there is room for movies that don’t follow the modern Hollywood formula to be hits, that audiences want these kind of movies. The market isn’t going to stay in the grasp of a few I.P’s forever, locked within the machinations of a couple domineering Hollywood studios; and while Top Gun: Maverick is a nostalgia vehicle, for as much as it is hearkening back, it is intently looking forward as well.

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