‘Top Gun: Maverick' (2022) Review: The Perfect Summer Blockbuster
Top Gun: Maverick subverts all preconceived expectations, delivering a unique experience for every single moviegoer.
★★★★½
PG-13 - Action, Drama (131 minutes)
dir. Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Glen Powell
“After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him.”
— Official Synopsis
The first Top Gun was released in 1986, for those who remember. Though I never got to see the original on the big screen, my family did watch it every couple of years while I was growing up. My father was raised in a military household and eventually went on to serve himself. Naturally, these were the types of movies that we’d watch if he got to pick what we were watching any given day. Honestly, it was never a film that called to me as it did for so many—mainly because I found myself entrenched in genre filmmaking, even in my childhood. So when it was announced that we would be catching a screening of the long-awaited sequel at this year’s CinemaCon, I wasn’t biting my lip in anticipation. And yet I found myself completely stunned by how much of an event this film truly is. Top Gun: Maverick subverts all preconceived expectations, delivering a unique experience for every single moviegoer.
The unabashed enthusiasm surrounding the sequel has only started to grow while leading up to the latest release date. Nobody imagined this time last year that Maverick, which was set to release all the way back in July of 2019, would be a movie that could bring a high-low box office forecast of $95-130 million over the Memorial Day weekend in 2022. Yet, there’s a strong potential for certain key demographics to surface for Tom Cruise’s latest film. Women 35+ have slowly been turning up at theaters more and more over the past few months with recent movies such as The Lost City—which had an opening weekend audience comprised of 56% female (46% being age 35 and up). This signals a [very] slow crawl to a wider exhibitor demographic.
As many have pointed out, and I do agree, the total domestic gross will largely be dependent on how the film’s marketing has landed with those under 35. Luckily, Maverick provides enough context to the events of the original to be enjoyable for people who’ve missed out on the first go-around. Ultimately, it’s a film about finding where you fit amongst your peers and learning to overcome the impossible. While it sounds cheesy, and it most certainly is in some places, the film is astoundingly genuine with its messaging. Whether in the exploration of a dissolved relationship between Jennifer Connelly’s character and Cruise’s Maverick, a test of leadership in Rooster (Miles Teller) and Hangman’s (Glen Powell) rivalry, or finding the courage to work as a team, Top Gun: Maverick is the ultimate patriotic picture—encouraging both kindness and resilience.
It achieves this greatness through its thematic underpinning but it soars in its practicality with heartstopping ariel stunts and very real effects. The cast actually had to learn how to fly, starting with single-engine Cessna’s and eventually graduated to F-18s with Naval assistance. The outcome of such challenging labor from the cast and crew meant long days, often around 14 hours, with a minuscule fraction of usable ariel film. According to the production, there are over 800 hours of total footage and, in many instances, the actors were trained to operate their own cameras and equipment which led to even bigger challenges in pulling off the “perfect shot.” That’s all to say that everyone who worked on this beast of a film really did put in the time to make this the ideal summer blockbuster.
People have argued that Maverick may have missed a golden release window due to the pandemic. But I’d argue that this is the type of cultural event to usher people back into the theatrical magic in a big way; especially considering how reliant audiences and exhibitors have become to the likeness of modern capes and crusaders. It all feels, well, more in-your-face real.Why not kick off your Memorial Day weekend with a summer blockbuster on the biggest screen with the best sound, then?
Top Gun: Maverick releases in theaters next week.
Image via Paramount