Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022)

[black&huge]

So this may be a dumb question but...

SpoilerShow

were we supposed to know through context clues where they had to go to for the actual mission? Like a specific country? I know it didn't matter as the film played vague so Cruise could shine and they could continue with the legacy but I kinda wanted specifixa here

[movielocke]

Saw this a couple months ago with my wife. Feels like a big Oscar contender. Im not plugged into awards gossip but is top gun on track to have Dune level success this awards season?

I’m assuming it will get nominations in most of the banned-from-broadcast Oscars (sound, vfx, editing, production design, song, score) and a best picture nomination seems obvious. But how is it tracking for Miles Teller for supporting actor, screenplay and best director? Is Tom Cruise being campaigned for lead actor (and is he a contender) as a sort of career achievement nomination we would have expected in the 90s (hello Al Pacino, Ho-hah)? Or will the studio figure he’s good with the best picture nomination?

[hearthesilence]

So this may be a dumb question but...

SpoilerShow

were we supposed to know through context clues where they had to go to for the actual mission? Like a specific country? I know it didn't matter as the film played vague so Cruise could shine and they could continue with the legacy but I kinda wanted specifixa here

The opposite of a dumb question, it's actually apiece with the films' jingoistic nature that I find repulsive. Why question where they're going? Why can't we go back to the thick-headed black-and-white mentality of us and the bad guys that led to the Iraq War?

[therewillbeblus]

There's a funny moment where the young cadets are making a jab about the Cold War and Korean War (I believe it's these two, but already forgot, despite seeing it today), and mix them up, which is pointed out by one of the other cadets as a marker of their stupidity and ignorance. But then the cadets shrug it off because 'they were during the same time period and who cares' or something like that? The strange thing is that the scene itself doesn't seem to be sneering at these young gen Zers as embarrassingly unknowledgeable about our political history, but celebrates a new age of the same old machine-churned patriotic vehicles of dedicated action. The irony is that a film ostensibly about personal growth, and personal and collective respect, filters into a macro message of: who cares about respect for your elders or their sacrifices when you yourself are willing and able to sacrifice yourself for Uncle Sam. At least that's how I read the way it's directed, as a sincere pitch- which is funnier because the way it's written seemed like a writing 101 bit of mockery

[Never Cursed]

So this may be a dumb question but...

SpoilerShow

were we supposed to know through context clues where they had to go to for the actual mission? Like a specific country? I know it didn't matter as the film played vague so Cruise could shine and they could continue with the legacy but I kinda wanted specifixa here

SpoilerShow

I think they deliberately used contextual information about a bunch of nations that the US is unfriendly with to make the foreign nation resemble a hostile power (basically Iran/North Korea mixed with Russia) without actually naming one. The advantages are all outside of the world of the film: using this solution, Paramount can still sell the movie in Russia (or, well, they planned to) and doesn't incur the wrath of North Korean superhackers.

[Matt]

Surprise DGA nomination for Joseph Kosinski and a SAG nom for the stunt cast is keeping this in the awards conversation. I also predict a PGA nomination for the film (as well as an Oscars Best Pic nom and win as I’ve mentioned in another thread).

This is not just Bruckheimer pastiche, this is a high-proof distillation of the classic Bruckheimer style without a single whiff of camp. It works completely, and it succeeds at being a Bruckheimer film like no Bruckheimer film has since maybe the 2003-2004 pinnacle of Bad Boys II and the first Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure films.

I can understand people not preferring this kind of film, but you’d have to have a heart of stone and no taste for cinema at all not to be entertained by this.

[Penti Mento]

Kosinski directs like an AI program fed on years of nationalist, corporatist, mainstream American film and glossy product advertisements. An utter lack of personality, charm, intuition, discovery, challenging intellect or formal daring. I understand he trained as an architect? I suppose many other directors did as well, or at least they have a deep interest in the subject - Antonioni, Greenaway - they all manage to utilize the built environment and the landscape to enhance their stories' themes and deepen their characters relations to one another. Our Pal Joey does little more than reduce his "story" to a few zoomy jets flying over a hill and "winning." I played arcade games in the 1980s with more substantial content and complex worlds than this bilge. Aces: Iron Eagle III is a more complex film than anything he has made, and more entertaining to boot.

Of course he gets nominations and puts asses in the seat. His work is a joyless, robotic celebration of the irreparably damaged, cogless American Psyche since 9/11, which the majority seems to champion as an example of the USA's "stick-to-it-iveness" and propensity for "survival" but which any clearheaded adult will recognize instead as an infantile cowering in the face of what 90% of the Earth's population has had to contend with every day for centuries.

[therewillbeblus]

I can understand people not preferring this kind of film, but you’d have to have a heart of stone and no taste for cinema at all not to be entertained by this.

That's some pretty haughty hyperbole to throw around. Plenty of us are outspoken welcomers of entertaining blockbusters done well that have no Deeper Meaning, and personally I entered Top Gun: Maverick not expecting anything 'more' than that (low expectations after disliking the first film, but motivated and willing to acclimate to its level given my affection for Tom Cruise blockbusters in particular) and barely got a shred of stimulation out of it. Granted, I didn't see this in a theatre and that's where a movie like this is going to thrive, but for me the hackneyed melodrama and hollow character dynamics were way too pronounced, even for a film like this that guarantees them, and these dominated the tone and detracted significant attention and value from the action set pieces, which felt wedged in between the overwhelmingly banal overtones (rather than the other way around, which is how the majority of its fans seem to have ingested it). But 'no heart' and "no taste for cinema at all" because the banal parts of a movie overshadowed the spectacle for a subjective viewer? C'mon now with those condescending projections of your feelings as facts. I could easily throw diagnoses at anyone who sincerely thinks that this film is "without a single whiff of camp" too but they would still obviously be coming from my biased perspective and also don't need to be said

[The Curious Sofa]

I also don't get the love for this movie, the best thing I can say about it is that unlike the first Top Gun, I didn't hate it. But it's nowhere in the same league as the better M:I movies, if we can regard them as "this kind of film".

[bottlesofsmoke]

I enjoyed this in exactly the way I enjoy cheesy 80s action movies, (right down the song at the end) which is admittedly very surface level, but with the added benefit of top-of-the-line modern action filmmaking techniques. Pretty much all the flaws, which others have detailed well in this thread, I expected going in, so they didn’t really bother me. It’s definitely a take-it-for-what-it-is movie.

This would make a great, I think quite revealing compare-and-contrast with the wonderful (and markedly superior) The Bridges at Toko-Ri, which shares a lot of similarities throughout, but particularly the third act, which is nearly identical save the final resolution

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As no one could ever expect that Cruise and Teller would die on the ground at the end, as Holden, Holliman, and Rooney do

[Matt]

Penti Mento: With this team of producers, I don’t believe for a second that Joseph Kosinski had the latitude to make a single creative decision on this film. The brief was to deliver Top Gun Part Two, and he did exactly that.

Yes, the film is jingoistic cheerleading, but I think it succeeds as discourse about as much as a Rudy Giuliani press conference. It would be almost delusional to take it at all seriously.

therewillbeblus: I will admit to a certain Wildean overstatement in my enthusiasm, but these are just personal opinions, not absolute prescriptions. Isn’t everything said here drenched in personal bias? Isn’t everything said here unnecessary? I apologize for coming off as condescending. I was honestly trying to say something more than “you just need to turn your brain off,” which I don’t believe.

The Curious Sofa: Apart from the names and genres involved, I don’t think this film shares much with the later M:I films, which I think are meant to be taken somewhat seriously as socio-political commentary (in an entertaining John LeCarré sort of way)




You all just wait until I post my enthusiastic response to Elvis!

[Matt]

This looks too straight faced to be camp like some of the scenes in the original. Pity.

Yes, I think that's pretty correct. Camp is generally understood as "failed art." This has no pretense to art. It's extremely earnest and solely interested in being finely crafted but fundamentally empty. It's kitsch.

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

[therewillbeblus]

You all just wait until I post my enthusiastic response to Elvis!

[beamish14]

I like how this film continued with the original’s precedent of negating people of color by having an Asian-American woman in the squad and not giving her a single line. She’s clearly visible in multiple scenes.

[Roscoe]

It also continued the first film's negation of LGBTQ+ people by having them not exist in any way in the film's world, and even downplaying the merry beefcake displays of the original. It's like someone explained the word "homo-erotic" to Tom Cruise at long last, and he replied "Not in MY Vanity Project!"

[therewillbeblus]

As opposed to an exclusion like excising characterization for identified characters who are visibly non-white, I'm struggling to see how the film negates a population of less visible demographics like LGBTQ+ by not actively choosing to include their presence in the film, especially within a milieu stereotypically known for its hiveminded machismo and suppression of non-heteronormative characteristics on the surface. Even Claire Denis had to take a very careful approach to expose this "existence" in Beau Travail. I could accuse Top Gun: Maverick of negating the addiction community by showing characters drinking in a bar without detailing any alcoholism in a B-plot, which statistically will be affecting at least one of them and is a common issue amongst pilots, but that seems silly to demand a different focus of narrative or characterization on the film (and one that would detract from its interests on creating homogenous camaraderie and repairing traumatic relationships; making films too busy with too many focuses isn't always the right answer for the story being told). I think it's important to recognize that a film needs to go out of its way to emphasize certain invisible marginalized qualities, while others like skin color are emphasized visually without added context- How that affects the responsibility of the film to address inclusion of certain demographics is up for debate, but one seems like a fairer charge than the other to even start that conversation. Like the current preoccupation with not just recognizing infinite privileges but indicting people for having specific ones in any form re: 'nepo babies', there are endless bechdel tests we can create for films, yet if every film was held objectively accountable for not taking a second to validate a demographic or interest the composite of our subjective perspectives demand should be included, no film would pass

[Penti Mento]

It also continued the first film's negation of LGBTQ+ people by having them not exist in any way in the film's world, and even downplaying the merry beefcake displays of the original. It's like someone explained the word "homo-erotic" to Tom Cruise at long last, and he replied "Not in MY Vanity Project!"

Not having any LGBTQ+ people equals "negating" them? Every film, regardless of content, context or intention, is to be expected to have LGBTQ+ people? Even a 1986 mainstream Hollywood feature length version of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc9g2tagYms ?

It also has no Eskimos or Tardigrades, come on

[MichaelB]

I'm not aware that Top Gun ever appealed overmuch to Eskimos or tardigrades.

LGBTQ+ people, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy it immensely, albeit for reasons that the film's makers went to some lengths to deny were intentional.

This may well have been true in the case of the original Top Gun, but I have my suspicions about the first quasi-sequel Days of Thunder (Cruise may still have affected obliviousness, but there are really blatantly more beefcake shots of him than there are of any of the female characters), and I suspect it's hard to feign such innocence now, although admittedly I haven't seen Maverick yet.

[Penti Mento]

I'm not aware that Top Gun ever appealed overmuch to Eskimos or tardigrades.

Well that's because you're a racist and speciesist bathing in your own ignorance and privilege. Wake up, Michael B!

LGBTQ+ people, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy it immensely, albeit for reasons that the film's makers went to some lengths to deny were intentional.

A particular audience demographic enjoying a film after the fact, regardless of filmmaker intention, happens all the time, as well it should, especially if it empowers that group or provides as sense of community. Roscoe's suggestion above that the original film "negates" that demographic is an absurdly reductive conflation of tunnel vision, narcissism and historical ignorance.

[knives]

Or a joke which is what I took it as.

[Fiery Angel]

it's like people stopped reading his post after the comma

[colinr0380]

Of course, the 'subtext' about Top Gun became really mainstream after the Tarantino cameo scene in 1994's Sleep With Me (NSFW: Language), doing an early bit of film criticism.

[Roscoe]

Please folks, I believe the accepted term for Eskimo now is Inuit.

I wasn't entirely in jest about the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in the film, and no I'm not one of those folks who goes around demanding it everywhere (it was absent from my favorite film of the year BANSHEES OF INISHERIN), and as noted above, it's too much to expect every movie to go down a Checklist Of Representation, I get it, sure, and I've done eye-rolling at the constant shoe-horning in of issues where they're not really the point (a recent play entitled THE INHERITANCE brings itself to a halt for exactly this purpose in an early scene, and it was agonizing). Agreed about the setting and the atmosphere of the pilots, noted above. There's not going to be a lot of quoting of Firbank among those folks.

And yet, I still feel that it is telling that the film goes out of its way to include female pilots, and then gives them next to nothing to do, and there's increased ethnic diversity, but no queers, at least none that I noticed. Not even a chaste acknowledgment of a same-sex spouse in a one-line "how's the wife/husband?" to one of the pilots. And I noted the marked tamping down of the beefcake displays from the first film -- the scene played with the male cast clad only in towels and the volleyball game don't really have counterparts in the sequel (the touch football game doesn't have the same effect).

[Penti Mento]

it's like people stopped reading his post after the comma

Come again?

Please folks, I believe the accepted term for Eskimo now is Inuit.

Isn't it?

[ford]

It also continued the first film's negation of LGBTQ+ people by having them not exist in any way in the film's world, and even downplaying the merry beefcake displays of the original. It's like someone explained the word "homo-erotic" to Tom Cruise at long last, and he replied "Not in MY Vanity Project!"

How do you know none of the characters are gay? There is literally a single romantic interaction in the film and that’s between Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly. What exactly are you calling for?

Forgive me but you have not thought this through.