Top Gun: Maverick: Pure American propaganda that still kicks ass
Top Gun: Maverick is a remarkable movie. Not as remarkable as the price of popcorn at PVR which requires one to either take a loan, buy it on EMI or sell one’s kidney, but still pretty remarkable.
It is peak Americana with modern sensibilities shoe-horned to make it palatable to a post-woke audience while holding onto all the things that made it awesome in the first place.
The villain isn’t just nameless. We never find out which country they are from. In fact, we don’t even see their faces so we can’t even guess their ethnicities.
Are they Korean, Iranian or Russians? All we know is they are from a mythical land where Hollywood doesn’t need to sell tickets and there’s no risk of upsetting China with jacket patches.
The same goes for the Top Gun recruits who appear to have been handpicked the team to fill a diversity quota at a minor Ivy League college which fails to make the cut because there are a no hijab-wearing transwomen among the recruits.
While some things have changed, Tom Cruise hasn’t.
He’s a man stuck in time, clearly drinking from some legendary Fountain of Youth at the Church of Scientology which slows down Father Time.
Like Johnny Lawrence, he still has the 80s vibe – powered by rock, bikes and homo-erotica – as everyone around him grows up, grows old or dies.
Also, much like its predecessor, Top Gun is pure propaganda which makes everyone around the believe that America houses the most competent military industrial complex in the world, despite the fact that the last war they actually won was in 1945 and that was mostly thanks the Soviet Union. Not to mention their last evacuation saw them leave behind the dogs who helped them in Afghanistan.
But I must digress. I am not a film reviewer who is here to shove my political views on your timeline when you just want to know if you ought to watch the movie or not?
That’s one loud: “Hell yeah.”
Watch it for the thrill of 80s rock vibes that you listened to in when you were younger.
Watch it for the new generation of recruits you will kind of forget about, barring Hangman and Rooster, once you step out of the theatre.
Watch it for the mind-blowing dogfights that made you dream of being a pilot before you found out how many MiGs fall out of the sky and that you had to be physically fit to be in a cockpit.
Watch it to hear Danger Zone and all the things you loved in the first movie.
Watch it for Jon Hamm who finally grows out of the Don Draper shadow.
And mostly watch it to see the imaginary version of the Shining City on the Top of the Hill which might be highly inept in reality but is still the epicentre of global entertainment.
36 years is a long time to wait for a sequel but Tom Cruise – with his ageless Salman-sque man-child who never grows up charm – makes it worth the wait.