“Thirty-plus years of service. Combat medals. Citations. Only man to shoot down three enemy planes in the last 40 years. Yet you can't get a promotion, you won't retire, and despite your best efforts, you refuse to die. You should be at least a two-star Admiral by now, yet here you are. Captain. Why is that?” Vice Admiral Chester “Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris)
Top Gun: Maverick is top of the line defining the humanistic action film that stands not far behind my favorite of the subgenre, The Magnificent Seven. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) returns to Top Gun school to teach the best navy pilots to fly an almost impossible mission and to lose their cockiness as well. The losses he has sustained because of his devotion to excellence are codified above.
Almost 30 years after his peak, when he lost a pilot and now faces the pilot’s son, “Rooster (Miles Teller),” in his class, Maverick shows why he is the best teacher who was once the second-best pilot in his graduating class. That he thinks of himself as an “enabler,” not a teacher, is further proof that he could be the best teacher, an element of which is humility. Indeed, this wildly fun adventure is as much about teaching and learning as it is about heroism.
It shouldn’t be lost that Teller also played an upcoming student, Andrew, in Whiplash, where J.K. Simmons plays his tough teacher, Fletcher, much in the manner that Cruise plays “teacher” Maverick. Both father figures demand the best, giving no quarter until students master the drill and lose their overweening pride.
The motif most young males come to this movie for is the tough-guy aerial play, and there is plenty of that. Yet, their testosterone represents all human beings, male and female, who want to be more than they are and think battle is the key to attaining glory. This Top Gun shows the need to be humble as one pursues lofty goals, right down to the level of love, where Maverick finds another almost impossible task of wooing back his former love, Penny (Jennifer Connelly).
This humanity-rich drama also comments on the pursuit of excellence and its concomitant demand to be selfless to serve mankind. Additionally, reconciling enemies and turning enmity to kindness becomes the formula for success, right up to a rear admiral, Ice (Val Kilmer), who endangers his own reputation to support his former rival, Maverick, and defeat an unnamed enemy threating nuclear warfare in its uranium hideaway.
And so it goes—Top Gun: Maverick, while dishing out heaps of action cliches, also serves up a paradigm for success dominated by a willingness to overcome pride while also saving humanity. That’s tops for any movie. Summer is now officially here with Top Gun rightfully taking top of the box office. Rarely does a seemingly superficial adventure promise the salvation of humanity and save summer at the same time.
Top Gun: Maverick
Director: Joe Kosinski (Tron: Legacy)
Screenplay: Ehren Kruger et al.
Cast: Tom Cruise (A Few Good Men), Miles Teller (Whiplash)
Run Time: 131m
Rating: PG-13
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
