Top Gun: Maverick (2022, Joseph Kosinski) (Patreon)

63/100

As advertised, far superior to the original (which I dragged my heels about finally rewatching; that's why I'm coming so late to this). All of the breathlessness had me anticipating a savvier, more sophisticated Top Gun, however, so I was caught completely off guard by how unapologetically cornball this sucker is. That's not always to its benefit: The Maverick-Rooster tension never transcends melodramatic formula (though I did laugh toward the end, when Maverick yells "What the hell were you even thinking?" and Rooster accurately yells back "You told me not to think!"), and Connelly can't make the previously unseen Penny more than an endless succession of got-your-number smiles (though I did laugh at the final shot of her flashing one while posed calendar-style in front of a '73 Porsche). As an action/war movie centered upon an impossible mission [jots down note for sure-fire Tom Cruise franchise], on the other hand, it's magnificently hokey—truly the kind of movie that almost never gets made anymore, perhaps because we all like to imagine that we've outgrown such simple pleasures. Evidently I'm not the only one delighted to find that he can still get sucked right into the hero's lengthy speech detailing a prospective bombing run in which every stage is more potentially suicidal than the last, eager to see how they'll pull it off (and confident that while all will seem to be lost at a crucial moment, someone will unexpectedly show up to save the day; bonus points here for executing that particular move twice). Structuring the second half as recapitulation—first we get the plan described, then a dry run at home, then the actual mission—ensures that we know where we are at all times during the aerial setpieces, and spatial coherence turns out to amplify intensity; these are basically first-rate car chases performed by fighter jets, not the '86 film's essentially random blue-sky whoosh-whoosh. Obsolescence angle gets pushed a bit hard early on ("The future is coming, and you're not in it"), but thankfully that fades into the vicinity of subtext, at least, plus it's automatically more poignant when applied to a star who's freakishly obsessed with his youthful self-image. Truth is, I'd almost certainly have preferred a stand-alone adventure wholly unrelated to Top Gun, minus the Iceman cameo (moving as it is to see Kilmer, for extratextual reasons), and Rooster playing "Great Balls of Fire!" at the Hard Deck, just like his dad, and a painstaking re-creation of the first film's opening aircraft-carrier montage, once again set to "Danger Zone" (which made my heart sink a bit—the pandering, not the Loggins). And the danger of going for fun corniness is sometimes crossing the line into lame corniness, e.g. Rooster starting to walk to his plane before the mission and Maverick calling "Hey!" and Rooster stopping to look back and Maverick earnestly telling him "You got this." (Top Gun's the lesser film in almost every respect, but at least that expression hadn't yet become pervasive.) Finally impressed by Kosinski, though—that "Won't Get Fooled Again" push-ups sequence hits every mark like a pro—and on some level I'm just a shameless sucker for cutting from a dangerous maneuver to first one character and then another and then a third each leaning slightly forward in their seats, collectively priming us to feel just as anxious. Still works!