Is TOP GUN any good?
Tony Scott's 1986 classic is fun but has no soul.
Top Gun: Maverick opens in two weeks, and it’s already gathering raves. I haven’t seen it yet; I’m screening it a bit closer to its release date. I’m excited, as it’s been too long since we’ve had Tom Cruise back on the big screen, but I’m also cautious.
I hadn’t seen Tony Scott’s Top Gun in about three decades, but it was a sort-of staple of my youth shortly after it came out on VHS. It’s one of my dad’s favorite movies, and my friends and cousins loved it, so I watched it a few times. I don’t know that it ever made much of an impression on me, though (although its soundtrack definitely got repeated listens, even well into the 1990s and, um, last weekend). I decided to rewatch it recently to prepare for the new entry and see what my official take is.
I understand why Top Gun is popular. It’s a very entertaining watch. Tom Cruise is at his charming best. The jet footage is still astonishing (it helps when you’ve cozied up to the Navy to get great shots, I guess). There’s just enough emotion displayed to make you think you’ve felt something, and that soundtrack does a lot of heavy lifting (Kenny Loggins and Berlin get the lion’s share of credit, but that Harold Faltemeyer anthem is pretty great).
But Top Gun is not a good movie. I don’t even think I’d classify it as a movie. A commercial for the U.S. military? Absolutely. A demo reel for cinematographers and sound editors? Sure. A Tom Cruise charisma-generating machine? Definitely. But its story is wafer thin, its emotional stakes non-existent. It coasts on surface pleasures that are just enjoyable enough to distract you from the fact that this movie has no soul.
Cruise is likable , but that’s because Maverick isn’t a character, just a vessel for the persona Cruise would make so central to his career. There’s the smile, the swagger, the cocky demeanor. He’s equal parts douchebag and hero, propositioning the love interest in the ladies’ bathroom even after she’s turned him down, and so good at his job that his superiors are mad because he’s just too damn good.
I remembered the story of Top Gun as being about a reckless, cocky pilot whose actions caused the death of his friend, which caused him to rethink his attitude and learn to work as part of a team. But that’s not the story. Top Gun is actually about a reckless, cocky pilot who is the best but can’t be recognized as such because rules. When his best friend dies, the lesson he has to learn is to get over it quickly and never forget that he’s the best of the best. It’s not his fault Goose died (the only one who seems to think it is is Maverick), now let’s go kill some bad guys. There’s also a half-baked love story (complete with gratuitous love scene featuring a disturbing amount of tongue) that involves Maverick falling for his teacher (Kelly McGillis), who can’t date him because he’s a student but is totally going to bang him because he’s Tom Cruise.
How poorly thought out is this film’s story? Val Kilmer’s Iceman is framed throughout as a bully (probably because of his awesome hair) but every single criticism he has of Maverick is completely correct. He doesn’t put his wingman’s safety first. He is reckless and only driven to succeed. He’s got a chip on his shoulder. All things that would pose valid concerns if I were flying into life-or-death situations with him. And yet, in the end, when Iceman and Maverick make nice, it’s because Iceman has been won over, not because Maverick has made any fundamental change.
The film makes being a fighter pilot look like the coolest job, the most fun thing you’ll ever do. And it’s able to do that because it never has to delve into murky political gray areas. The majority of the film takes place at a flight school, and there’s more concern about hijinks to get women and subvert authority than any concern about the rules of engagement (the script is just a hair away from being a Police Academy-type comedy, but for the military). The one death of a main character is attributed to mechanical failure, and there’s no opposing viewpoint offered when multiple characters show more concern about the billion-dollar aircrafts than the pilots themselves. The film also has to avoid any political and moral qualms about warfare by presenting its final enemy as an unidentified combatant; it’s telling that all the American pilots have quirky, fun call signs and codenames on their helmets, while the enemies are all hidden behind masks and their helmets have a uniform look (American individualism against the conforming Commies). The final fight has the emotional stakes of a video game; it’s a fight to the death as a final exam.
And yet, again, I can’t say I dislike the film. It’s a soulless mess, but it’s a gorgeous soulless mess. This is where the Simpson/Bruckheimer heightened aesthetic peaked, and while the footage of fighter jets in action is the big appeal, Scott and cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball lavish even the most banal scenes with slick lighting and color, creating just as much of a commercial for hanging with your bros as it is one for the military industrial complex. It’s fascinating to see Cruise so in command of his persona this early in his career, and I’d watch an entire romantic comedy about Anthony Edwards and Meg Ryan’s characters.
It’s easy to see why Top Gun became so iconic; it’s nothing but iconography. It’s a series of great-looking images, great-looking people and great-sounding music. Any one scene on its own is entertaining (and while the script is an anemic mess, the line “your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash” is an all-timer). It’s just that there’s no central hook for any of that to connect to; it’s just an assemblage of these elements with no deeper thought to its characters or themes. Even the worst films of the MCU manage to have some sort of idea they’re playing with; Top Gun never moves beyond the thought of “Tom Cruise going fast in planes is cool, right?”
Which is actually why I’m kind of curious about Top Gun: Maverick, even excited. The original isn’t some untouchable classic, and I think Cruise has only grown more canny in his approach to projects and how his persona his used. Maybe he and Joseph Kosinski have managed to deliver the first film’s visceral thrills and marry them to an actual story. Or, who knows, maybe it will crash and burn. We’ll find out soon enough.