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Tom Cruise flies high in the exhilarating ‘Top Gun: Maverick’
By Justin Chang
Los Angeles Times
J
ets still scream and muscles
still gleam in the ridiculous
and often ridiculously entertain-
ing “Top Gun: Maverick,” though
in several respects, the movie
evinces — and rewards — an
unusual investment of brain-
power. I’d go further and say that
it off ers its own decisive reversal
of Maverick’s dubious logic: It
has plenty on its mind, and it’s
gloriously alive.
A lot of consideration and
calculation have clearly gone into
this long-aborning blockbuster
sequel, insofar as Cruise (one
of the producers) and his col-
laborators have taken such clear
pains to maintain continuity with
the events, if not the style, of the
fi rst fi lm. That’s no small thing,
more than 30 years after the
fi ery young Maverick lost Goose,
made peace with Iceman and
rode off into the annals of fi ction-
al U.S. Navy history. And rather
than let bygones be bygones,
the director, Joseph Kosinski,
and a trio of screenwriters (Ehren
Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and
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Paramount Pictures
Tom Cruise is revisiting his 1986 hit in “Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel that sees
his Maverick character over 30 years later.
Christopher McQuarrie) have res-
urrected those threads of rivalry,
tragedy and triumph.
Some of this continuity is
a matter of basic story sense,
rooted in a shrewd understand-
ing of franchise mechanics and
an equally savvy appeal to ‘80s
nostalgia. But it also has some-
thing to do with the 59-year-old
Cruise’s close stewardship of
his own superhuman image, a
commitment that speaks to his
talent as well as his monomania.
And with the arguable exception
of “Mission: Impossible’s” Ethan
Hunt, few Cruise characters have
felt as aligned with that mono-
mania as Maverick. From the
moment he entered the frame
in ‘86, sporting fl ippant aviator
shades and riding a Kawasaki
motorcycle, Pete “Maverick”
Mitchell announced himself as
a signature Cruise creation — a
precision-tooled amalgam of
underwear-dancing sex symbol
(just three years after “Risky
Business”) and the envelope-
pushing, heights-scaling action
star he would become.
Called back to the elite Navy
training school where he fl ew
planes, defi ed orders and irritated
his peers with distinction, Mav-
erick is charged with preparing
the program’s best and brightest
for a stealth attack on a far-fl ung
uranium enrichment plant owned
by some conveniently unidenti-
fi ed NATO-threatening entity. As
impossible missions go, it makes
the Death Star trench attack
look like a grocery run — a tough
assignment for Maverick’s 12
brilliant but still-untested pilots,
played by actors including Lewis
Pullman, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez
and a terrifi c Glen Powell as a
smug, know-it-all Iceman type.
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