After being gone from the movies last week, I had to catch up, and there was one movie that everyone was ranting and raving about. It set a Memorial Day weekend box office record, and it showed that superhero movies are not the only movies that can explode in the box office. It showed that movies should be placed into theaters and experienced on the big screen with massive sound, and that movie was Bob’s Burgers… No wait, it was Top Gun Maverick, and just like the original, Tom Cruise was the face of the film. It also came out at a great time, because it had last weekend and this weekend to rake in the cash. Last weekend, the only movie it released against was The Bob’s Burgers Movie, and this weekend, it released against David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, which is weird and graphic, and it is not even in the top five of the box office this week amazingly.
Top Gun Maverick starts with Maverick attempting to get to Mach 10, and just attempting this is going to get him in trouble, but if successful, he has the chance to save everyone’s job. He reaches the speed, but then in typical Tom Cruise fashion, he pushes it too far, and the plane explodes. So Maverick gets demoted and sent back to Top Gun, but this time he is going to be the teacher. There is a secret mission against an unnamed country that is making some dangerous uranium plant, and it is their goal to destroy this plant, but the mission is impossible. Maverick is doing his best to simulate the situation in their training runs, but none of the pilots have been able to succeed, and there is an added conflict because one of the trainees is Goose’s son, Roster, played by Miles Teller. Training is going so poorly that Maverick gets grounded, permanently, but that is one order he cannot stand to follow, and he must find a way back in the air.
This movie was a fun joy ride that was grounded in the past, although it technically took place contemporarily. The opening scene of the movie is just a montage of fighter jets taking off and landing. It lasts a few minutes, as the opening credit role, and no characters are introduced, no one is talking, it is just a straight up flight montage. It is also a copy form the original. Throughout the movie, there are music drops, and most of those songs are 80s hits, which brings it back to the original. Thankfully “Take My Breath Away” was not played five different times in the new version. Also there were many moments in the film that felt like they had the 80s cheesy vibe to it, it honestly might be more cheesy than the original. Much of the cheesiness in movies now has been toned down or eliminated. The montages throughout the movie were also more apiece with movies from the 80s than now.
There were large swaths of the film that felt very video game like. It is almost like being in a flight simulator, where you have your other pals chiming in on their headsets working together to win. Most of the movie is like playing in training mode in a video game, they are trying to condition themselves for real life conflict, but they are just simulating the conditions. A very specific video game comp would be Star Fox 64, where Fox’s comrades like Pepe and Falcon’s head would appear on your screen form their cockpits and give you updates. This movie is basically that.
This movie also reminded me of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and the destruction of the Death Star. In that movie, they have enemy fighters on their tail, but they are flying as a fleet, and working together, they also fly through the trenches of the Death Star, and eventually inside of it, and they only have one chance to hit the core and cause the whole thing to explode, and then they must escape. The mission in Top Gun Maverick is pretty much the same, except they are just blowing up and uranium plant, not a world destroying weapon. Star Wars could make their own version of this and create a movie about those that were training to fly to the core of the Death Star, or they could have it been some other similar version, a X Wing fighter pilot school.
Before the movie started, Tom Cruise appears on the screen and thanks everyone for coming to the theater to watch the film. Although this film had been done for two years, Cruise refused to have this film released onto streaming services, and he wanted people to feel comfortable coming to the theaters again. Everyone else that I have heard talk about it seem to agree with him, they all say that this film needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible, like in the IMAX theater. Also to match his introduction, the film itself is a perfect allegory for movie theaters. The main theme is that Maverick is too old, and that he needs to be grounded and step down, but he refuses to do so. They also argue that pilots of these fighter jets will soon become obsolete because computerized drones will soon take over their jobs. Although these things may seem like they are coming to fruition, they have not yet occurred. This is a similar way in which people are viewing the movies right now. So many people are saying that the movies are dying, and that streaming services are going to take over completely, leaving the cinema obsolete, but not if Tom Cruise has anything to say about it!
This could also be viewed as symbolic of Tom Cruise’s career. He is just about to turn 60 years old, but he shows no signs of slowing down or stopping despite what people seem to be telling him. He does most of if not all his own stunts, and for 60, he still looks great doing it! There were so many close ups on his face in this movie, it was a little much to be honest. It felt like there was a contractual number of facial shots that they had to include, and it seemed like he was always doing something weird with his tongue in his mouth when they did the close ups, but he did seem genuinely happy throughout the whole film. He constantly had a massive grin on his face. Also they did include a trademark Tom Cruise sprinting scene, which was executed flawlessly. It does make me curious what kind of pace he is running. He needs to put out his 100-meter time and his 400 time.
Like in the last movie, this movie is also about the fostering of relationships. There are two key ones in this film. There is the one between Maverick and Rooster, and then there is the one between Maverick and Penny. The one with Rooster is complicated. Maverick hurt Rooster’s career by pulling his application, due to a promise he made to Rooster’s mother. Rooster always blamed Maverick for this, and he still had a grudge at the start of training. Eventually this grudge softens when Mav puts Rooster on the final squadron and shows his trust in him. Then their bond really flourishes during the combat.
The relationship between him and Penny is a little less complicated. She was an old fling, and it sounds like their relationship had been off and on multiple times, but they have both grown and matured, and although at first, they said they were not going to give it another shot, they ended up doing it anyway. It has the feeling of a high school love story, with them sneaking around, and Tom Cruise jumping out of the window, so that the daughter does not see him over. For the most part it works in the movie well, and it adds some romantic elements to the mostly action-packed film. It is hard to decide which love story worked better, the one from the first movie or this one. I liked that in the first movie, that the woman was a part of the flight school.
I think this movie was good, but I do not quite think it lives up to the hype that everyone seems to be giving it. It is a basic action movie, and at times, it is very predictable. There is not much depth to it, but it is fun to watch professional actors be put through some physically taxing acting, because they did actually go up into jets and experience the real feel of the Gs on their bodies, which can be like 2,000 pounds of force pushing you into your chair. It is a classic summer block buster, and it proves that you do not need a superhero in your film to make tons of money, but it does help to have a star like Tom Cruise in it. I would recommend seeing it, and doing so on a massive screen. They literally wrote a check for thousands of dollars, just so they could go back up in the planes to get shots at sunset, so they cared very much about how this looked, and it did look great!
Other Movies This Week:
Crimes of the Future: A graphic depiction of the future, where some bodies have evolved and have the ability to grow new organs within them. Then these people use their body’s as displays of art. They have organs cut out, they have their body’s mutilated, all for the sake of art. It was very weird and just okay. It is a symbolic argument that the government should not be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body, a good message, but a very weird way to explain it.
Top Gun: The original and the new one have some similarities. Highway to the Danger Zone playing through the training scenes was perfect. That could have been the whole movie, and I would have watched it all day. It is hard to tell which one is better. I feel like this one had some more depth to the story, but the new one is much more visually beautiful, and I think Tom Cruise surprisingly looks better in the new one.
New Rankings:
Top Gun Maverick: 3.5 Stars
Top Gun: 3.5 Stars
Crimes of the Future: 2.5 Stars
Comentarii