Top Gun return a thunderous success
Review
(M, 137min)
Directed by Joseph Kosinski ★★★1⁄2
Reviewed by
In 1986, Hollywood was having a very good year. Films such as The Fly, Aliens, Platoon, Stand By Me and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were keeping the ticket booths busy and the cinema owners of several nations happy. And the undisputed heavy-weight champion of 1986, raking in a shade over US$350m against a budget of around US$15m, was a cultural and commercial phenomenon called Top Gun.
Top Gun and Tom Cruise’s lead role as aviator Pete ‘‘Maverick’’ Mitchell, has entered the global consciousness now. If we hear the opening chords of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone or Berlin’s Take My Breath Away, or if someone garnishes their film with a shot of topless young men playing beach volleyball while the sun goes down, then we know that Tony Scott’s era-defining opus is being referenced.
But if Top Gun wasn’t followed up by a sequel a year or three after it was released, which surely would have broken the box office records for another year at least, then why are we being blessed with one now, 36 long years later?
Because it’s smart business. That’s why.
I was watching a doco on Queen recently – of how they found singer Adam Lambert and the revival of the old magic that brought about. And I figure the victory lap of the world’s multiplexes that Top Gun: Maverick is embarking on is going to have a similar narrative to that of Queen with Lambert – unexpectedly playing all the old venues to as many people – including a generation who were not even born to see the first film in a cinema.
All Top Gun: Maverick has to do, is to evoke the spirit and the feeling of Top Gun and the fans will come flocking back just as surely as they have for Queen. Only to find the old hits can look and sound even better in the 21st century.
How Cruise has transitioned from his mid-20s to damn-near-60 with every pore and follicle present, and that loopy, radiant grin as charming as ever, we will never know. And yet here he is, Scientology’s greatest spokesman, still pulling off a topless-ona-beach sequence without a single ‘‘eww’’ from the crowd and even showing up for a – very discreet and tasteful – sex scene with his dignity and six-pack intact.
Around Cruise, Miles Teller – who can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned, after The Offer on TVNZ OnDemand – is fine as the son of Maverick’s old co-pilot Goose.
Jennifer Connelly does everything that can be done as a thinly written love-interest and conscience for Cruise, while Val Kilmer, clearly diminished from his battles with cancer, shows up as Cruise’s old friend and nemesis Ice, in a cameo of real poignancy and pathos. Ed Harris, Jon Hamm and everyone else involved – including director Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion) – do everything expected of them.
Top Gun is so shamelessly a near remake of the original – the structures are damn near interchangeable – that it would be redundant to criticise the film for that.
Top Gun is a legacy act, still popular, still influential and still able to blow the roof off when needed, and Maverick is the late career stadium tour that some – not all – legacy acts deserve.
If it had come out in 2019 as was intended, it might even have been the biggest film of the year, again.
Even now, in 2022, Top Gun: Maverick is going to be a thunderous success. And bravo for that.