I’ve been meaning to re-ignite this site for months and months and it’s slightly surprising to me that the film that has finally motivated me to do so isn’t a low-budget Scandinavian arthouse film but in fact Top Gun: Maverick.
I was anxious about a sequel to one of my favourite films of all time. I know the original is flawed but it’s an eighties classic and I have great memories of watching it with friends on mornings after big nights out, all lying around eating bacon sandwiches, drinking pints of diet coke and yelling “I feel the need, the need for speed!” in unison. So when I heard Tom Cruise was making a sequel, I felt sure it would be a cringeworthy disaster. I was very wrong (this doesn’t happen often, mark the date in your diaries).
Top Gun: Maverick is a modern classic. I’ve read some reviews saying it’s better than the original, and my nostalgia tells me that’s not true but as a piece of filmmaking it is certainly slicker, less clunky dialogue-wise and (marginally) less problematic when it comes to its depiction of women. I hear from various ‘young people’ that the action scenes in Top Gun are “slow”, “boring” and even “pathetic” but Cruise’s insistence that all the cast took part in an aviator bootcamp this time around seems to have paid off because the action is truly gripping and absurdly exciting.
It is incredibly unsubtle (at one point Maverick quite literally throws the rulebook in the bin) but, let’s be honest, we’re not here for subtlety and you’ll be punching the air and/or welling up even as you see every plot twist coming and recognise every moment of emotional manipulation. The way it mirrors and links to Top Gun could be seen as lazy filmmaking if done badly, but it digs into a deep-felt nostalgia for us eighties kids, and in one particular instance is extremely moving.
As always, Tom Cruise acts as if his life depends upon it - you can see every brain cell and muscle working - and yet somehow it works. He *is* Maverick and his charisma is bulletproof.
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