The Unbearable Weight Of Tom Cruise's Massive Talent

Top Gun: Maverick pays tribute to the actor but not to the spirit of the original

- Jonathan Ho

We love top gun. We love it so much, that we can quote just about any line of dialogue from start to finish. But love, like any other passion, is double-edged. It means that any follow-up that bears the name has incredibly high hurdles to clear. Top Gun: Maverick clears many of these hurdles with ease: Are there gripping aerial combat scenes which show pilots flying by the seat of their pants? Yes. Does it feature that iconic introduction complete with those unmistakable anthems? Yes. (Plural because Kenny Loggins' Danger Zone is as much an anthem as Harold Faltermeyer's Top Gun, alright.) So what happened?

Top Gun: Maverick is, well, all about Maverick. It's in the title and if you plot Tom Cruise's inevitable rise to superstardom, you can trace it all the way back to his role as Lt. Pete Maverick Mitchell. Let's first talk about what the inaugural movie did great: It was a popcorn movie, it doesn't deal with exposition. It was a sports movie (pilots competing for Top Gun trophy - which does not exist in real life) wrapped in the trappings of high-octane aerial combat. So it had the basic elements of tension: rivalry between pilots; frowned upon romance between instructor/pilot and of course, best buddy Goose, whose ultimate demise gave the titular character a challenge that his sheer skill with an F14 Tomcat could not readily overcome. These elements are missing from Top Gun: Maverick.