The first note of the opening of the movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is the same as ‘Top Gun’, and the drum beat is from ‘Top Gun Anthem’ of ‘Top Gun’.
Then we see the busy crew on the deck of that dimly lit carrier, working on the takeoff and landing of warplanes, and it’s all so familiar, it’s as if 1986 was just yesterday.
And Tom Cruise is back, 36 years later he’s still the only leading man, and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ delivers a surprisingly strong performance.
From the hilarious and doorway level, it is a wonderful sequel to the successful summer powerhouse blockbuster, and even ignites the fervor to join the Navy pilots in the military ……
In ‘Top Gun’, Tom Cruise’s Pete was nicknamed ‘Maverick’, but it seems that’s the only thing that’s changed about Pete: the ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ credits feature the late legendary producer Don Simpson. The name of the legendary producer Don Simpson can be seen on the title of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, and his partner Jerry Bruckheimer has put up the name of his late friend, naturally out of the nostalgia of the two of them producing ‘Top Gun’.
The nostalgia of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is omnipresent. You will hear the familiar ‘Top Gun Anthem’ and “Danger Zone” in the opening scene, and even the actors and crew seem to present the word cards in exactly the same way.
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ movie plot story introduction
Maverick is back, the naval aviator who never retired, loved flying and stayed in the military all his life, was once again recalled to the naval training school for first-class pilots and became an instructor of TOPGUN.
This time he has to train these young and vigorous aerial athletes to carry out a dangerous and difficult military mission. Rooster”, the son of his dead teammate “Goose”, is also listed.
The grudge between Maverick and Rooster is difficult to understand, but this mission is likely to cause death and injury to the trainees, carrying the heartbreak of Maverick, whether he can lead the trainees to complete the mission again …… and let them return home safely?
You don’t need to refresh yourself on ‘Top Gun’, this nostalgic sequel will briefly introduce the key plot points of the previous episode.
The problem is that when ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ has such a strong sense of nostalgia, it is as if it deliberately emulates the opening sequence of the previous episode.
If you’ve never watched ‘Top Gun’ at all, that’s one less great opportunity for emotional resonance …… and not one, but many.
Maverick in the last episode of the feud and grudge, was moved intact to the sequel to re-act.
You can see the trauma of the accidental death of his former teammate still haunting him; you can see his former passionate wingman teammate “Iceman”, with whom he developed a long years of revolutionary feelings.
If you are a fan of ‘Top Gun’, you can feel the full reverberation of these subsequent episodes.
Two reasons to make the perfect sequel movie
The first reason this is a perfect sequel is that it picks up where ‘Top Gun’ actually left off, and develops these settings into a new plot throughout the film – you don’t see some evil new warlord suddenly jumping out to destroy the world.
Maverick’s nightmare in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ comes from ‘Top Gun’, the emotional support comes from ‘Top Gun’, and even these young new characters, they all seem to be like new versions from ‘ Top Gun’.
Someone just as cocky, someone just as calm and self-possessed, someone just as close to an accident in training, all of these remind us everywhere of the stories in the air 36 years ago.
Yes, we know the ‘Top Gun’ actress didn’t come back, which is a bit embarrassing.
But the new heroine Jennifer Connelly’s role is still a lot, and she is still the male lead’s old love in the film, representing the love scenes are still built on a nostalgic basis.
The second reason is that the nostalgia of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ does not continue to celebrate the grand military style of the US Army in the 80s.
Thirty-six years later, the international situation has changed, and so has the U.S. military’s defense mindset, and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ realizes that it is no longer the “Go to war for your country, be a soldier and laugh” propaganda.
Now for the United States, there are no more evil warlords that must be saber-rattled waiting to be defeated, and the allocation of military budgets has changed.
The modern U.S. military’s research and development focus on “next-generation military technology superiority” means that the development of unmanned aircraft is the key direction for air defense: so do we still need Tom Cruise to be cool?
This makes Maverick truly Maverick in every sense of the word, he is a prodigal son who is clearly against the direction of the times, we know that Tom Cruise is going to meet his 60th birthday this year and his career as an action star seems to be coming to an end.
In the audience doubts whether he can still withstand the 9G real gravity pressure of the situation, the evergreen actor seems to Maverick the role, and the 80s pilot thinking in the modern air martial dilemma, in turn to explain their own state of mind.
He knows he will be eliminated one day, probably even soon, but that day is not today, nor will it be this mission, and this mission, which the drones are now unable to accomplish, can only be accomplished by the old undead who hold on to the past.
This fervor is the essence of the true nostalgia of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.
In countless Hollywood blockbusters over the past summer, we have seen this positive concept of enthusiasm and light.
Aliens attack how to do, the president will lead the whole population into battle; dinosaurs run out of the cage how to do, full of love professor will never leave any little kid.
And ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is also, it is not like the action movies of the 21st century, full of intrigue, self suspicion and the collapse of ideas, it inherits the ‘Top Gun’ principle of brainwashing, so that the audience will watch the end of the chest will be a surge of righteousness, ready to fill out the volunteer form at the draft.
This is the reason why ‘Top Gun’ will be laughingly called “the greatest recruitment movie ever made”. It doesn’t tell you how much it pays to sign a volunteer form, and its plot can be told in a few cursory sentences, but why does it make people yearn for the life of a pilot?
The reason is simple: it shapes the perfect sunny military career. These young men are dynamic and competitive with each other, and they will spend their golden youth and sweat on the beach and perform dazzling flying skills in the air.
The same goes for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, a group of members with different personalities, some even annoying, but all of them with one simple goal: to complete the mission and achieve the mission.
For this reason they can put aside their differences and make common cause, and this is the kind of bravery we may not experience in the real army.
The real world sucks, and many viewers who watch ‘Top Gun’ and actually go into the military will probably be disappointed.
But Tom Cruise to continue to let the audience to do an air beauty dream, and this is the reason why he insisted to fly the warplane himself, in order to strengthen the persuasive power of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, let the audience from the actor’s face to bear the painful bruises of real G force, feel the experience of sitting in the cabin of the F-18.
Top Gun: Maverick’ cuts out the difficult flying jargon and strategic terminology, it uses the simplest vernacular to describe the danger of the mission in the film, telling you that the protagonists need “two miracles”, that they only have a few minutes and seconds to complete the mission, and which difficult thresholds they must overcome.
The F-18s will do the rest for you.
If you’ve seen ‘Top Gun’, you’ll know that it has a lot of real flight footage of real warplanes, but ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ has a lot more of that.
A large number of F-18 show a variety of dazzling flying skills, although you may not know ‘dogfight’ is not the main thinking of the new century air combat, but in this extremely nostalgic film, you can still see two fighter jets like hounds chasing each other bite.
These fighter planes became the unsung protagonists of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, with frontal close-ups of the actors who actually drove the planes midway through the film, making these aerial battles even hotter.
More importantly, you will see the F-18 flying heroically, the blazing sun shining dazzlingly on the streamlined fuselage, reminding people that we had forgotten that fighter jets are actually the world’s sexiest weapons.
So F-18 can act, this is the magic of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, with the help of close up with the flight shooting and the crew’s love of flying, and the performance of the actors themselves flying the fighter plane, so that the audience forget to think about which clip may be a composite effect of the studio scene, because each segment looks very real.
It’s like Maverick and this group of panelists are really there in the real world, and they’re in the air defending the entire world. Pretty fantastic, right?
This is a nostalgic gift from the greatest action actor of the last century to the new century audience.
Related Post: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ director Joseph Kosinski: Disney cancels ‘TRON: Legacy’ sequel project because of Marvel and Star Wars.
