What hasn’t been said about Top Gun: Maverick? The internet is swollen with well-deserved wonder at the technical work put in by director Joseph Kosinski and his crew. Stories abound of Miles Teller, Glenn Powell, and 59-year-old Tom Cruise getting their faces stretched under actual G-forces produced by actual F-18 fighter jets flown by actual Navy pilots.
I could gush for hours about the beautiful and very real F-18 footage, the segment featuring the Lockheed Skunkworks-designed Darkstar, and the sheer exhilaration I felt at watching some of the best pilots in the world do things I didn’t even know those planes could do. I really could. I’m obsessed with military aviation, and I harbor dreams of someday becoming an amateur pilot.
But instead I want to discuss an aspect few have covered since the film’s extremely successful release last weekend: the story. At first glance, it seems fairly standard, but could the writers, including the talented Cruise-adjacent Christopher McQuarrie, have layered some meaning beneath the obvious hard deck of “Reconcile with your past?” Could revisiting a character after 36 years actually be a benefit to the story engagement? Why does Top Gun Maverick succeed where other such sequels have failed?
Continue reading
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63117270/SpiderVerse_trlb795.1015_DH_v2.0.jpeg)
Anthems 