Gun Show

Top Gun: Maverick was a massive commercial success that ran in movie theaters for months and months. So it took much longer than usual for it to arrive free with subscription on a streaming service where I could watch it. During that wait, I wasn't exactly holding my breath. That's because to "prep," I watched the original Top Gun again, for the first time in decades.

In watching the 1980s classic, I felt somewhat unable to explain just how it had become a 1980s classic. It seemed no better (or worse) than dozens of other movies of the time with awful dialogue, shallow characters, and badly interwoven subplots. It did have fantastic aerial photography, and a tacked-on romance to give it "four quadrant" appeal, so I guess that's it? But it was considerably cheesier than I'd remembered -- and I'd remembered a "cheesy 80s movie."

The sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, sands down some of the rougher edges -- but it's largely the same movie. While it doesn't quite go to the extent of the Avatar sequel in basically remaking its source, it certainly treats the first Top Gun like a recipe, with particular ingredients that absolutely must be included.

At times, the "substitutions" in this recipe are inspired; the main character must once again deal with the death of a friend, and the sequel's handling of this element brings more pathos than the original. At times, the substitutions are sort of "net neutral"; there's no explanation of what happened to Kelly McGillis from the first film, but Jennifer Connelly works well enough as the sequel's romantic foil. At times, the substitutions are a big shrug; more shirtless volleyball would be a bit too on the nose, apparently, so beach football!

But as with the original Top Gun, the real star of the show here is... the aerial photography! (Maybe you thought I was going to say Tom Cruise. Only inasmuch as his adrenaline junkie acting leads to shooting a lot of footage for real.) It would have been comparatively easy (to the 1980s) to fake a lot of this footage -- and indeed, some of it is CG (the aircraft near the end of the movie). But try not to take for granted that a lot of these fighter plane antics were filmed for real, and it looks truly impressive. Perhaps even a bit more than Top Gun was in its time.

And that's sort of the template for what Top Gun: Maverick is -- a cut above the original, across the board. The dialogue isn't quite as silly. The subplots still feel too numerous, but are woven together more skillfully than in the original. And it looks, for lack of a better word, amazinger.

So for the people who loved Top Gun (and have surely already seen the sequel), I get the enthusiasm. For me, who had a more tepid reaction to the original? Yeah, Top Gun: Maverick was better, more modern. I'd still say it topped out for me at about a B-.