Top Gun: Maverick (TGM) enjoyed an unexpected amount of critical and commercial success last year, and everyone was running around saying how good it was. It was a little crazy seeing that happen for a movie that’s riding the wave of sequels and reboots and nostalgia-bait. TGM’s cohort at the time consisted of films like Men in Black: International, Ghostbusters, Robocop, Cruises’ own The Mummy, and a slew of other films remade using the GCI and budgets of the early 2020’s, all in an effort to recapture the successes of yesteryear. Since then, we’ve seen an infamous, hilarious collapse of big-budget films, some of which we didn’t expect to be so bad. The most prominent, unexpected failures of 2023 were Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and another Cruise flick, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1. While these two films could be talked about in length on their own, a common thread between all of these reboot, remake, and sequel failure films is their lack of heart. The lack of emotion, and character-driven drama that is aided by the action, but is not subservient to it.
While TGM succeeds at being, at its core, a character film, it is supported by excellent action and some really incredible direction and cinematography. For the record, I just want to say that I narrowed in on this fact before many other people, and I did privately predict that TGM would be good (but I didn’t know it would make so much money) because Cruise was going to team up with director Joseph Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda, a pair who have made some of my favorite sci fi films of the past 20 years, Tron: Legacy and Oblivion.
Aside from this, I want to point out that the opening scene of TGM really sets the tone for the rest of the film by blending together the character of Pete Mitchell and the action of the film. Kosinki and Miranda shine at their very best, and the film begins strong enough that it dictates high expectations for the rest of the film. It’s an incredible opening, and I haven’t seen many people talking about it so I wanted to take some time to discuss it.
Who is Pete “Maverick” Mitchell? In a nutshell, he’s rebellious and cocky, yet a caring individual and a capable pilot. As we explore in the rest of the film, he’s struggling to find his identity outside of the cockpit, and is afraid of moving on and letting go because he doesn’t know how. So how does Kosinksi best demonstrate all of this nuance in one go? He sets Mav against a classic obstacle: his superiors and their orders. When Admiral Cane shuts down the experimental flight program Mav is the pilot for, Mav chooses to go through with the flight test anyway to save everyone’s jobs, and his own seat in the cockpit.
What I really enjoyed is that the ‘mundane’ banter and military jargon defines Mav and his relationships with himself and others- and I know this is basic, but it needs to be pointed out because a lot of other films don’t really manage that. When his sidekick, Hondo, says, “I don’t like that look.” Mav responds with, “It’s the only one I got.”
This particular line is repeated a few times throughout the film, and this first time underlines that Mav is who he is, and he can’t really change- “the only one I got.” It’s easy to overlook on a first watch, but if you take a holistic look at Mav’s journey throughout the film, this line really serves to define his character flaw.
This is further discussed, with a little less grace, when Cane gives Mav a talking to for taking the unscheduled flight, citing that pilots are not the future. Mav is being set up as a relic, a symbol of the past. No matter how capable and talented he is, the world is changing, and Mav has to change too. What I really loved, and was all over the trailers, was the shot when Mav flies over Cane, and his shockwave tosses the roof and sends everyone scuttling, but Cane stands steady against it. It’s badass and sets up his brief appearance as someone not to be reckoned with. Except, because of Mav’s rebellious, cheeky attitude rubbing off on his team, even in the control room, the others take jabs at the Admiral, sometimes to his face. Mav’s not just one annoying pilot, he’s an infectious, annoying pilot.
Miranda gets to paint some beautiful shots in this opening scene, and takes some liberties he doesn’t get to later in the film. The gorgeous, crisp, jaw dropping wide shots, the point-of-view angles, and Zimmer’s thundering soundtrack set your heart racing.
Then, we get the tension. And tension can be done in film in several ways, and a lot of people really like Hitchcock’s ‘bomb under the table’ technique, where the audience knows something, and we’re waiting for the characters to figure it out. I really enjoy another, audience-pleasing, simpler method I call the ‘ticking bomb’. It’s not an official term, but I want to own something so shut up. The ticking takes the form of a literal timer of some sort, or a numerical finish line. A refueling tank, a finish line on a racetrack, a microwave timer, or in this case, the mach gage. The goal of the test flight was for Mav to hit mach 10, a goal that would prove that the aircraft works and that the program is viable.
So as we’re being awed with Miranda’s art and Zimmer’s sound, we drop into a race. We already like Mav, not because of nostalgia or a prior film, but because the film took time to breathe and show us who Mav is through his actions and his interactions with allies and opponents. His character is already taking shape, and we want him to succeed for a very long list of reasons. We want him to cross the finish line. We want him to hit mach 10. And the film drags that on with its cinematography and soundtrack and the character reactions. A subtle, but effective trick to the ‘ticking bomb’ technique is to set the progress at a rhythm, and then interrupt the rhythm at the last moment. The gage steadily creeps up from 9.0 to 9.9, and then fucking pauses at 9.9 for a moment longer than before, introducing the thought in the audience’s mind that maybe, maybe he’ll fail. Then mach 10 beeps, the tension releases, and the audience cheers.
Crash and burn. Because Mav pushed too far, his ship crashes, and the shot fades. What if this is his end? Not now, in the beginning of the film, of course. But as a character, maybe this moment symbolizes his overarching end as a character?
I wanted to cut off the analysis here, but the two subsequent shots made me rethink that, and stretch the idea of the ‘opening scene’ to when Cane tells Mav he’s going back to Top Gun. But between that scene and the ship crashing, there’s a funny little shot of Mav walking into a diner, haggard from his crash. The whole place looks to him like he’s an alien, a person who’s beyond and above the others. It’s not very subtle, but I thought it was a really good addition. It not only served to point out that Mav is someone special and otherworldly, but also to properly release the tension of the ‘ticking bomb’. If we’d jumped from the ship crashing to him descending the helicopter and being escorted to Cane, then we’d have lost a moment to take a casual moment to chuckle to ourselves and settle back in our seats.
I also really want to point out that this film’s direction is just so sound. It’s not crazy, but the fundamentals of the action direction are just so succinct that there’s never a moment where the audience loses track. There’s a filming technique where the camera doesn’t cross the 180 degree plane of the characters. It’s apparent and useful in scenes where two people are talking in a room, but it’s still important in action scenes and so many directors miss it. From the moment the experimental ship takes off to the moment it crashes, the camera does not break this 180 plane. The ship travels left to right on the screen for almost every shot. The in-cockpit shots, the POV shots, even in the control room: left to right. The audience remains oriented, and their minds aren’t wasting valuable processing time trying to figure out who’s going where. James Cameron employs this extensively in his films, and his efforts to keep the audience oriented goes a long way towards the Avatar films’ success.
I like Top Gun: Maverick. It’s good, and well-rounded, and takes meaningful, effective strides at all the basics of filmmaking. The film’s action isn’t great because of the stunts or CGI, it’s great because the action is a consequence of the character’s beliefs and supports their journeys. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I don’t really understand how Mav’s character actually finishes changing by the end of the film, because the third act is all action, and leaves little to no room for character work. But I think that’s ok because when Goose tells Mav, “That’s what my dad would have done” in reference to saving Mav’s life, I did tear up. It worked. The character thing worked. The movie is solid. Here’s a billion dollars.
Needless to say, Dial of Destiny and Dead Reckoning don’t really accomplish that, do they?
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