The Economist May 28th 2022 Culture 79H
e isback, andsoarehisaccesso
ries—the motorbike, the furcollared
jacket worn in the Californian summer,
the RayBan shades which, after “Top
Gun” came out in 1986, were as trendy as
its softrock soundtrack. To recap the
plot for the uninitiated: against his com
mander’s better judgment, Pete “Maver
ick” Mitchell, a wildcard naval pilot
played by Tom Cruise, was sent to an elite
aerialcombat school in Miramar. Much
of the dialogue was a variation on “God
dammit, Maverick!” or “Damn, this kid’s
good!” His buddies loved him, his su
periors forgave him, he earned his rivals’
respect. After some high jinks, he won
the dogfight and got the girl.
It isn’t just the coldwar fashion sense
and Mr Cruise that return in “Top Gun:
Maverick”, a muchdelayed followup
released this week. So do the nosebleed
inducing cockpit footage, the haze above
the runways, the sweat on anxious faces
in the bluelit control rooms. Maverick
again races a fighter jet on his bike; his
new girlfriend seems to live in the same
neighbourhood as his old one. The lost
element is his best pal, Goose (Anthony
Edwards), who died in the original. But
Goose’s son, Rooster (Miles Teller), is one
of the whizz kids whom Maverick, back
in Miramar against everyone’s better
judgment, must train for an impossible
mission in an unnamed rogue state.
After some high jinks, he faces a dogfight
and—you get the picture.
As in many film franchises, “Top Gun:
Maverick” is both sequel and homage,
sampling its predecessor’s catchphrases
and remixing vintage motifs and scenes.
But amid the mimicry there are differ
ences, and they are telling: about then
and now and the distance in between.
Maverick’s Eightiesstyle courtship
technique, for instance, looks like harassment today. Glimpsing his love in
terest, played by Kelly McGillis, in a night
club, he bet Goose $20 that he could have
sex with her on the premises. Rebuffed, he
chased her into the ladies’ room; she was
soon charmed. In what seems a kind of
apology, when latterday Maverick visits a
bar, two young pilots are making another
$20 bet—over a harmless game of darts.
But the relationships at the heart of
both films are between the testosterone
addled flyboys. Both are stories about
men growing up, in the process learning
to be nice to each other. Electrifying the
first, however, was the friction between
Maverick and his fellow hotshot Iceman
(Val Kilmer), who traded entranced stares
in the locker room as they vied to be num
ber one. Their embrace on the deck of an
aircraft carrier was the drama’s real cli
max. The new movie has a game of beach
football in place of a memorably oily
volleyball match, but the tingle of homo
eroticism is gone.
As for headline politics: “Top Gun:
Maverick” tries to glide over them and
through an airtight world of entertainment. Yet recent history is visible as a
negative impression, like the shadow of
an enemy jet on the clouds.
Famously, in 1986 navy recruiters
waited at American cinemas to sign up
the wouldbe Mavericks and Icemen
whom “Top Gun” inspired. The adrenalin
and elation of the new film are again
infectious. Watch it, and when you next
bring home the shopping, you half
expect your family to erupt in cheers,
like crewmen highfiving over Maverick’s
landings. In Goose’s tearjerking death,
though, the original let darkness in on
the idyll. Its successor offers the same
simple vision of heroism, the same
fantasy of benign American power, only
even more innocently, as if answering a
deeper need for reassurance.
Changes were inevitable: nostalgia,
after all, is another name for loss. Nobo
dy, not even Maverick, can jump into the
same cockpit twice—though, come to
think of it, he does. As the new story
begins he is testpiloting a hypersonic
jet, after which his rides become ever
more antiquated. He makes a getaway in
a plane from the Eighties and winds up
in one from the second world war, borne
back ceaselessly on the wings of the past.
His real enemy now is the passage of
time, with all its barely mentioned but
inescapable wars, failed leaders and
political rancour, all the accumulated
disillusionment with America, its he
roes, even its fading movie stars. Se
quels, of course, always have an eye on
the rearview mirror. So, in fact, did the
original “Top Gun”, glancing back to
Vietnam where Maverick’s father had
died. Yet in 1986 Maverick outflew histo
ry and the future opened out on the
horizon. Now history is his destination.
“Let go,” he is told, and replies, “I don’t
know how.” He is not alone. Back Story Talk to him, Goose
In the sequel to “Top Gun”, Tom Cruise feels the need to speed into the pastget stuck in the doldrums and even possess
parrots—which, naturally, can be bought
and sold for pieces of eight. The only
disappointment is that they do not say
“Arrrrggghh!” Real pirates apparently
preferred “Damn” or “Huzza”. Those sound
a lot less menacing, which is perhaps why
in 1950 the film version of “Treasure Is
land” discarded both and opted for
“Arrrrggghh!” instead.
There are some surprising moments.
Some of the pirates could be thoughtful,
even literary. One called William Dampier
wrote an account of his trip that became an
instant bestseller. His description of the
New World was so rich in new terms that
the Oxford English Dictionary credits
Dampier for having introduced around
1,000 words into the language. It is a pleas
ing irony that many vegancookbook
staples were first itemised by a pirate. The
next time you smash an avocado, stirfry a
cashew or dip a finger into guacamole,
raise a toast to Dampier, as all were
recorded by his pen.
Despite its seasoning with such details,
the book can lag. The paper on drugdeal
ers queried whether they were all that goodat “optimising decisionmaking”. Mr
Thomson is an engaging and enthusiastic
writer, but these pirates are so hopeless
that his narrative can feel less like a well
structured story with a point, and more of a
litany of dreadful decisions.
But then the book changes course and
you come across a literary pirate like Dam
pier, or a successful one. For those who do
not die, at least, do finally find that gold—
enough, in fact, that earning it in a normal
job would have taken them“five years on
the straight and narrow”.Huzza, as they
once said on the high seas.n