Top Gun: Maverick Review - Sexy and Sweaty |
17/06/2022 |
There’s something I find reassuring about cinema still having an old-school psychopath running round being really fucking weird. I’m not talking about Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson - who calls himself Daddy in the third person, or Jeremy Renner - who unfortunately shut down his eponymous app, or god forbid actual sociopathic monsters who have met their comeuppance (and even more who probably haven’t and won’t). Instead I’m talking about a star who I can’t quite believe is a real human being who actually exists.
It’s not that Tom Cruise is the dangerous kind of psychotic, I just mean that when you watch him in any video format you get the sense that he’s just disconnected from the way 99% of us experience the world. And recently he’s been outwardly channelling that into rabid, evangelical cinema-worship.
I’m reminded of that brief video he posted on his sterile social media accounts a few weeks ago (to be honest, its probably been 2 years, but as far as I’m concerned it went 2018, 2019, 2022) where he documents a trip to go and see Tenet (2021, Christopher Nolan). He brings the same intensity to that as he does to his action hero roles, which is what led me to go and see Top Gun: Maverick (2022, Joseph Kosinski) at the weekend. On reflection, it’s super weird that for him a trip to the cinema contains so much brimming violence beneath its surface that he’s about to explode the moment he starts clapping.
But his commitment to making films and spreading the good word like a minister trying to make amends brings such vigour to the more casual consumers of the medium. Tentpole films from Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, wherever lack any sense of joy or play about them. Press junkets and tours rehash the same nullified shit about getting on with the crew, telling a new story, bringing back characters people love, which parts Tom Holland has strategically spoiled so far, and not a single iota of these interviews communicates any intensity or vigour to cinema as a medium for change, communication, art and growth. Cinema does not seem essential at times like that. But when Cruise goes in and talks about flying the planes, or jumping out of them, it brings a different sort of air to things.
PLEASE do not think for a second that I am about to delve deep into some theoretical or conceptual half-baked lyricism about Top Gun 2: Big Sweat’s exploration of age and regret. As if there’s no other films that do that anyway. But the film seems emblematic of Cruise’s mission to evangelise cinema as far as possible: by all rights, Top Gun: Maverick should not have been made.
Let me preface anything further by saying I haven’t even seen the original. Which is really funny.
But really, 36 years since a mid-80s action film about fighter pilots was released. People way more online and relevant than myself would probably call it a ‘cultural reset’ or something. I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. I have, though, seen a lot of Tony Scott’s films. And they’re all so goddamn sweaty and sexy (up until his 00s output, which become far less so).
I’m not even sure what to say about TG2. The entire structure is very strange - we’ve got a team of top-notch fighter pilot dudes (and one woman who must have as much Big Dick Energy as the guys to make it through), who appear to be coming back to school to learn about a mission and practice it (a bit like how Ronnie O’Sullivan might knock up a games in his garage on a quiet Thursday evening). They don’t even have a classroom, they just end up sitting in a big warehouse for a while as Tom Cruise, returning as Edward ‘Missile’ Maverick or whatever the fuck he’s actually called in the film, lectures them about how they have to think really hard about what they’re trying to accomplish here while simultaneously not think about flying.
The story goes that the ‘enemy’ has a uranium bomb or something, and will turn nuclear unless they drop bombs on the bomb before the enemy can bomb them. I had a really good chuckle near the midpoint of the film when I realised we weren’t going to be told who the enemy was. I was trying to imagine like, Belgium or something. Anyway, the mission is impossible and there’s no way anyone could do it and here comes Tomato Cruise Missile to prove them wrong.
It’s so much fun. I had so much fun. It was just joyfully over the top. Kosinski emulates 80s Tony Scott during every fun action or plot sequence, and then tones it down for the more deep character development moments, before immediately transitioning again into an outrageous practical wide shot of Tom Cruise actually flying an F-18 at millions of miles per hour past the camera.
And then they all play football on the beach, and that’s the closest I’ve come in my life to redefining my own sexuality.
Anyway, that’s my surface-level 2 cents on the film. I could go on much longer about how despite all of this, and despite Cruise’s posturing about his stunts and how essential cinema is he still just creates largely soulless blockbuster fodder that repackages older images for new generations so childish that anything beyond a binary black/white story of good v bad (especially when it comes to US military engagements) gets a 2-thumbs down on rottentomatos. Likewise, I could go on about the digital sheen to every high budget film that exists these days, void of visual flair and interest and texture.
To paraphrase Ethan Hawke: if you’re calling Marvel or Top Gun art films, what does that make Fanny & Alexander? Nothing, is the problem.
But fuck it. Plane fly fast. Make big boom. Yaaay. I’m not being derogatory or reductive or insulting. People enjoy films that way, sometimes I do too. And I did when I went to see Top Gun 2: The Scientology Cut
It’s not that Tom Cruise is the dangerous kind of psychotic, I just mean that when you watch him in any video format you get the sense that he’s just disconnected from the way 99% of us experience the world. And recently he’s been outwardly channelling that into rabid, evangelical cinema-worship.
I’m reminded of that brief video he posted on his sterile social media accounts a few weeks ago (to be honest, its probably been 2 years, but as far as I’m concerned it went 2018, 2019, 2022) where he documents a trip to go and see Tenet (2021, Christopher Nolan). He brings the same intensity to that as he does to his action hero roles, which is what led me to go and see Top Gun: Maverick (2022, Joseph Kosinski) at the weekend. On reflection, it’s super weird that for him a trip to the cinema contains so much brimming violence beneath its surface that he’s about to explode the moment he starts clapping.
But his commitment to making films and spreading the good word like a minister trying to make amends brings such vigour to the more casual consumers of the medium. Tentpole films from Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, wherever lack any sense of joy or play about them. Press junkets and tours rehash the same nullified shit about getting on with the crew, telling a new story, bringing back characters people love, which parts Tom Holland has strategically spoiled so far, and not a single iota of these interviews communicates any intensity or vigour to cinema as a medium for change, communication, art and growth. Cinema does not seem essential at times like that. But when Cruise goes in and talks about flying the planes, or jumping out of them, it brings a different sort of air to things.
PLEASE do not think for a second that I am about to delve deep into some theoretical or conceptual half-baked lyricism about Top Gun 2: Big Sweat’s exploration of age and regret. As if there’s no other films that do that anyway. But the film seems emblematic of Cruise’s mission to evangelise cinema as far as possible: by all rights, Top Gun: Maverick should not have been made.
Let me preface anything further by saying I haven’t even seen the original. Which is really funny.
But really, 36 years since a mid-80s action film about fighter pilots was released. People way more online and relevant than myself would probably call it a ‘cultural reset’ or something. I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. I have, though, seen a lot of Tony Scott’s films. And they’re all so goddamn sweaty and sexy (up until his 00s output, which become far less so).
I’m not even sure what to say about TG2. The entire structure is very strange - we’ve got a team of top-notch fighter pilot dudes (and one woman who must have as much Big Dick Energy as the guys to make it through), who appear to be coming back to school to learn about a mission and practice it (a bit like how Ronnie O’Sullivan might knock up a games in his garage on a quiet Thursday evening). They don’t even have a classroom, they just end up sitting in a big warehouse for a while as Tom Cruise, returning as Edward ‘Missile’ Maverick or whatever the fuck he’s actually called in the film, lectures them about how they have to think really hard about what they’re trying to accomplish here while simultaneously not think about flying.
The story goes that the ‘enemy’ has a uranium bomb or something, and will turn nuclear unless they drop bombs on the bomb before the enemy can bomb them. I had a really good chuckle near the midpoint of the film when I realised we weren’t going to be told who the enemy was. I was trying to imagine like, Belgium or something. Anyway, the mission is impossible and there’s no way anyone could do it and here comes Tomato Cruise Missile to prove them wrong.
It’s so much fun. I had so much fun. It was just joyfully over the top. Kosinski emulates 80s Tony Scott during every fun action or plot sequence, and then tones it down for the more deep character development moments, before immediately transitioning again into an outrageous practical wide shot of Tom Cruise actually flying an F-18 at millions of miles per hour past the camera.
And then they all play football on the beach, and that’s the closest I’ve come in my life to redefining my own sexuality.
Anyway, that’s my surface-level 2 cents on the film. I could go on much longer about how despite all of this, and despite Cruise’s posturing about his stunts and how essential cinema is he still just creates largely soulless blockbuster fodder that repackages older images for new generations so childish that anything beyond a binary black/white story of good v bad (especially when it comes to US military engagements) gets a 2-thumbs down on rottentomatos. Likewise, I could go on about the digital sheen to every high budget film that exists these days, void of visual flair and interest and texture.
To paraphrase Ethan Hawke: if you’re calling Marvel or Top Gun art films, what does that make Fanny & Alexander? Nothing, is the problem.
But fuck it. Plane fly fast. Make big boom. Yaaay. I’m not being derogatory or reductive or insulting. People enjoy films that way, sometimes I do too. And I did when I went to see Top Gun 2: The Scientology Cut