Top Gun: Maverick.
I was just as horrified as you were to hear about the new Top Gun, don’t worry. The trailer didn’t exactly quell my doubts either. Everything about it looked like the 1986 original, just with a slicker look and choppier editing. I don’t know what moisturiser they use in the church of scientology, but even Tom Cruise looks identical to how he did 36 years on, he’s 60 by the way.
I didn’t particularly like the original Top Gun. I watched it at university with a preconceived notion of it, angled through a prior reading of Douglas Kellner’s essay Top Gun: Reaganite Wet Dream. That would reprimand the film for being no more than Reaganite propaganda – a hypeman for implicit imperial empire the US established in the 70s/80s. An ideological weapon aimed at the youth, who were preyed on by the military sign up stalls that plague US public spaces (these stalls would soon be posted outside Top Gun showings to swoop those away who could wait until they got home). Propaganda it is, and it was freakishly successful with both the box office and the manipulation of a generation of young guns, who saw the shirtless volleyball, beer and homosexual subtext and thought ‘ooo yeah it’s a bit of me, that’.
Top Gun: Maverick is as the trailer would suggest: identical to the original. With Cruise’s character not only looking the exact same (somehow), but also showing that when you’re the best fighter pilot in the world you also don’t need to change personality either. In a theme similar to the original, namely the characters’ desire (and success) of becoming the number 1 fighter pilot, his poorly thought out individual exploits are let slide and often rewarded. This explains of course, why he can seemingly steal aeroplanes at will and also why he has not yet risen to a post higher that captain – to all characters’ amusement. He could get promoted if he wants to, obviously, citing the reason for his failure to gain a promotion as simply ‘being where he belongs”
If that seems cliché, and you liked it, this is the film for you. From the back and forth between the fighter pilot jock (who we don’t like) and Goose’s son (who we do like); to the love interests’ daughter warning Maverick not to break her mums heart again; to Maverick throwing a textbook in a bin, this film is to the brim with things that my friends would be mean to me for saying in real life.
But of course, this is just one aspect of the Top Gun 2’s meticulous, almost ridiculous, attempt to emulate its predecessor. From the opening montage of planes flying off a boat to the blare of ‘Danger Zone’ all the way down to hand shake between former Top Gun school enemies at the finale, we aren’t exactly fooled in the feeling of Deja Vu. In a world of cinema where originality has fallen by the wayside, and to make money something has to be recognisable, self-referential or just a remake, Top Gun has done what it did 36 years earlier and ticked all boxes that audiences want to see in a film.
Luckily, this approach to original content is only damaging to the cinematic art form and not the socio-political status of the world’s biggest economic and military superpower (maybe)!
With the first instalment seeming to cause a big swing in public support to Reaganite foreign policy and the individualistic value of becoming number 1 in everything at the expense of others, it made me think – Would this film, shot to be exactly the same, be as damaging now?
What is posed to us in Maverick is a parcel of nostalgia, complete with flashbacks of Tom Cruise singing to a baby Rooster. But we are nostalgic towards a film that supposedly launched interest in military sign ups by 500%. Does Top Gun: Maverick have the potential to do the same in a world where American ego has been challenged by events in Ukraine and the continued growth of China?
It would make sense. The emphasis on emotion in the film (summed up by the insistence on “don’t think, just do”) certainly reflects modern day politics epitomised in MAGA hat nationalism. Only to be backed up further by Top Gun and the US’s obsession with no.1 spot. But I don’t think it will have the same effect. I, like Kellner, used to see films like this as dangerous, as ideological weapons, and despise Hollywood for wielding them. I think viewership has changed and that people’s relationship with the blockbuster especially has changed with streamers’ popularity. It has become more and more a need for spectacle, and people see it more and more as a bit of fun, not to be taken seriously.
I could be wrong, but the almost humous intensity to which this pays homage to the original I think is done on purpose to comment on and highlight the absurd nature in which American audiences response to 1986’s film. The films goes so far into nostalgia and cliché it feels acutely aware of itself in a way that points to the trivial effect the blockbuster now has on socio- economic landscapes, and perhaps the trivial effect it should always have played.