I’m not much of a fan of the original Top Gun. Like many 80s movies considered classics, I didn’t see it when it was new for some reason, and when I did, well, I was less than impressed. I used to work summers washing dishes in a Jersey shore pizzeria, and the other guys there about my age loved to quote Top Gun. I finally rented it from the video store and didn’t think too much of it. I kept remembering what Chuck Yeager said about the movie, how actual pilots who flew that way would get shot down. The story was cliched, and I really didn’t care one bit about any character in the movie. Why should I care if Maverick was the best of the best? Regardless, when I went to work next time, I tried quoting a line, and though I got it wrong, the other guys were impressed I saw the movie. They asked what I thought, and I said I wasn’t impressed. They suggested I watch the movie more. I had no desire to do so. Once was enough.
Now, I don’t know whose idea it was to make a sequel to Top Gun this many years later, but the reviews were coming back good, and quite frankly, if I did like it, well, it wouldn’t be the first time I liked a many years delayed sequel to an 80s movie I didn’t much like directed by one of the Scott brothers.
It’s been about thirty years, and Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is still sitting at the rank of Captain when he probably should be an Admiral at his age. He has a habit of pushing envelopes and bending if not outright breaking rules where the only thing that keeps him from getting into serious trouble is his friend Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer). Maverick, however, has caused trouble for what may be the last time as he is sent on what should be a last posting: back to the Top Gun school. Only this time, Maverick will be a teacher. An unnamed enemy country is setting up a facility to weaponize uranium, and they’ve upgraded their air force to something that would be a decent match for even the Navy’s best jets. Maverick will need to train and select from a group of past Top Gun graduates to run a risky mission to take out the lab before the uranium gets there. He’ll have three weeks.
Of course, there will be complications. His new CO, Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm) is a stickler for rules and a bit of a hardass who didn’t want Maverick in the first place. An on-again, off-again girlfriend, Penny (Jennifer Connelly), is now the owner of the bar all the local pilots use. And then there’s Rooster (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late pal Goose from the first movie. Rooster has some resentments against Maverick, and he’ll need to get over it Besides, the younger pilots don’t seem to be quite good enough to pull off the mission, though Maverick’s unorthodox teaching methods may get the results they need.
You know, it is entirely possible I would have liked the first movie more if I saw it when it was new or even just in theaters. The thing is, this movie was actually a lot of fun. There are a number of legitimately tense moments involving Maverick and the others in the cockpit, and the aerial combat scenes at the end of the movie are incredibly well done. Yeah, there are a lot of callbacks to the first movie, but the movie has a feel of an 80s action movie anyway, so why not? Granted, nostalgia for a movie I didn’t like much in the first place obviously shouldn’t work on me, so what was it that did?
In short, it was how Cruise and the movie in general played Maverick. Yes, he’s still the guy who will break some rules to get something done, but he’s also not going it out of some sense of ego so much as he believes that human pilots can accomplish the things they need to do (a subplot that is more or less dropped early in the movie) or to outright prove a point that will keep his pilots alive. In short, he’s still Maverick, but he’s a more mature Maverick than he once was. The movie doesn’t exactly say what he’s been up to for the past few decades, but he’s clearly a man who has experienced quite a few things in his lifetime, and it’s changed him in ways that are generally good for everyone except his superior officers. That becomes clearest in some actually well-done scenes, the ones that made the movie for me, were quiet scenes between Maverick and Penny (and Connelly and Cruise have some good chemistry) and a really touching scene when Maverick goes to see Iceman for Kilmer’s only onscreen appearance. It’s like an 80s movie with a bit more maturity while still hitting the nostalgia beats. So, while the nostalgia doesn’t work for me, the nuance that occasionally appears very much does. Consequently, I ended up liking this one far more than I would have thought I did ever since I heard this movie was actually going to hit the big screens. Between the two aforementioned scenes and all the aerial shots, this one turned out far, far better than anything Top Gun had a right to.
Grade: A-
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