May 30

May 30 Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

mini review

spoilers ahead

Here’s a naughty secret: I’m active-duty military and I’ve never seen “Top Gun” (1986).

Gasp!

Yes, I know.
But I’ve never wanted to be a pilot, nor am I in the Navy, so there wasn’t any allure of watching Maverick (Tom Cruise) get in trouble. It also meant I had no nostalgia factor to color my viewing, so this is a very clean take on the sequel.

But I have friends who loved the first movie and wanted to see it, so we went, and I was pleasantly surprised.

The movie followed Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell – a Navy Captain who had somehow been in for more than 30 years without promoting to Admiral, nor retired simply by aging out – who was working as a test pilot. The first scene included him flying a completely-CGI plane that looked like the love-child of a B-2 and an SR-71.

Maverick was called to the Pacific Fleet by his old friend, Admiral Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky (Val Kilmer), to train the best of the best of the Top Gun graduates for a very specific mission.

Which we need to talk about.

Maverick was called to the Pacific Fleet. The target was an “illegal” nuclear arsenal well inside the borders of a country that was never named.

Due to ridiculous and arbitrary mission requirements, Maverick stated that the F-35C could not be used, so the Navy would have to rely on the F-18 against the enemy’s 5th-generation “stealth” fighter, which was also never named, though bore and incredible resemblance to the Chinese J-20 fighter, which in real-life is a corporate espionage clone of the F-35.

Now, Hollywood has never had a problem identifying Russia as a villain, and infamously changed the enemy in the “Red Dawn” (2012) remake to make Chinese censors happy.

Which tells me that the enemy in this was absolutely China, and that this was a weird, subversive jab at them. Unsurprising, as the U.S. Department of Defense gladly shared real F-18s for this movie, and a skilled US aviator was able to use a 4th-generation fighter plane to shoot down the more advanced enemy tech.

Kinda seems like this would have been a fine time for the DOD to show off the F-35 and some of the things it can do, but then we wouldn’t have had the same oddly-specific underdog trope… you know, as “underdog” as the world’s second-strongest air force can be.

Anyway.

Maverick had to face the consequences of his actions and teach Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of his dead navigator from the first movie, along with 11 other students, though only five of them got names and screentime, while also teaching the cockiest of the cocky pilots the Navy had on hand.

Surprise, he succeeded. Something something underdog!

The visuals in this were absolutely outstanding. Airplane porn is absolutely a real thing, but some of the most gorgeous shots were actually from the beginning as Maverick flew his skunkworks project through the high atmosphere and we were treated to some beautiful scenes of the earth from above. Those shots absolutely made our in-theater viewing worth it.

The rest of the visuals were equally good – the real USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was used, as were countless fighter-planes and helicopters from the DOD’s inventory. I’m sure there was CGI for a lot of stuff in there, but I couldn’t see it.

The soundtrack was fitting. Obviously, there was Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone,” along with at least two iterations of the “Top Gun Anthem.” The rest of the soundtrack fit the scenes, but nothing particularly stands out in my memory.

This was a very fun movie to see on the silver screen. It had a few goofy moments in the script, but I am in no way mad that I paid for tickets to see it.
If you liked the first movie, you will love this in ways I can’t.
If you didn’t see the first movie, you will still enjoy this movie.
If you didn’t like the first movie… I’ve got nothing for you.

It earned a 4-Claw review for being such a treat to watch.