The imperial claustrophobia of "Top Gun: Maverick"

The complete militarization of society is sexy and fun if you've got the right stuff

“They bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
Yet still revolt when truth would set them free…” – John Milton, Sonnet 12

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Two weeks before its official release date, and with no audience reviews,130 of 135 critics at Rotten Tomatoes had already rated Top Gun: Maverick as “Fresh”

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The fix is in for the new Tom Cruise blockbuster, “Top Gun: Maverick.” Critics from every corner of the English speaking world have effectively declared any meaningful criticism of the movie to be the work of unpatriotic killjoys.

Even the normally august seeming Anthony Lane of the New Yorker enthuses that the first major flight scene in the $152 million dollar sequel to the $15 million 1986 original, “glows with…genuine beauty.”

NY Post critic Johnny Oleksinski calls Maverick “the perfect summer movie” that “really takes your breath away.” The movie is also a “Variety Critics Pick” that manages to prove conclusively, per lead critic Peter Debruge, “That we need Maverick now more than ever.” Debruge admits that at bottom, the film is “…a glorified U.S. military recruitment commercial,” but such churlish quibbles are immediately dismissed because they might interfere with so many normative adults having so much adolescent, testosterone fueled summer fun.

In addition to Cruise’s old school star power, Maverick is packed with dazzling flight scenes filmed in real time with almost no CGI special effects. It features a handsome cast of young actors brimming with attitude (knowing smirks all round) working alongside the nearly 60 year old, but still amazingly buffed, Cruise. The new-old Maverick also has a token romantic relationship with Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly, who glowingly embodies her 51 years. There is a soaring soundtrack anthem, “Hold my Hand,” written and performed by Lady Gaga. An attractive female aviator chosen as the only woman for the movie’s final mission is played by Cruise acolyte Monica Barbaro, offering a photogenic dash of proto-feminism to leaven the start-to-finish alpha male energy.

Maverick was filmed in 2019, before Covid was declared a global pandemic, delaying its release to May 27, 2022. The marketing has been retooled for the current fraught moment. As the pandemic lingers and nearly 70% of Americans believe the nation is headed towards nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine, the film is being pitched as a form of emotional reassurance to audiences. Top Gun is back, soaring to the rescue in vintage red, white & blue Maverick fashion to take out nefarious unnamed foreign baddies.

Tom Cruise, appearing with the entire cast at Cannes, received a “rapturous five-minute standing ovation” when he was awarded a special Palme d’Or at a May 18th screening. Contemporaneously, a NY Times feature hailed Cruise as “Hollywood’s Last Real Movie Star,” a description that has been ubiquitous during the month long pre-release PR campaign and screenings.

The plot is simple. An unnamed rogue nation has violated NATO rules by building an illicit, heavily fortified uranium enrichment facility nestled in a narrow, impossible-to-reach valley enclosed by nearly vertical mountains. A special team of top US fighter pilots is assembled, the very best the nation has to offer. From the group, six will be chosen to fly three jets on a special mission to take out the enrichment facility. It is an almost certain suicide mission for at least some of the final team members.

Cruise reprises his role as Maverick from the original 1986 film. He is still “mavericky,” having stayed at the rank of Captain through the years in order to remain an active pilot in lieu of becoming a desk bound senior officer. In this sequel, he is returned to the Top Gun training program in California to teach, and lead, the next generation of elite fighter pilots so they can take on this world saving mission. For dramatic tension, John Hamm plays the Top Gun commanding officer who thinks that drones and robots are the future of warfare and that Maverick and his ilk are inefficient relics.

The bad guys are sufficiently vague yet foreign, viewers can easily imagine them to be either Russian or Iranian, although saying so would ruin the fun and limit global ticket sales.

What is going on in this big budget Hollywood spectacle? What is the subtext? Why the universal critical adulation for Tom Cruise 2.0 as a real world Superman? Cruise was 23 years old when the original Top Gun was released in 1986. Can the wizened Maverick of 2022 really save us? What is the significance of his $152 million reentry into mainstream culture 36 years after the original film?