He’s supersonic. He’s airborne. He’s the hero the movies needed, received then speeded to see for four uninterrupted decades. And will continue to be, because he’s not done yet. Far from it, in fact.
Exhibit A: Top Gun: Maverick.
Regal Cinemas of Deer Park’s Tanger Outlets hosted an “early access” IMAX prescreening of the long-awaited and Covid-delayed legacy sequel to the iconic 1986 original film this Tuesday, May 24. Those fortunate enough to be on-hand were treated to the best form of sensory overload; an absolute delight that left those shuffling out of the theater with a ringing in their hands from clapping on more occasions than they anticipated. The Tom Cruise Effect.
During the 1996 and onward Mission: Impossible era of his mythos, the surprise winner of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award last week has proven a modern-day Buster Keaton. Like the stone-faced silent film pioneer, Cruise full-tilt commandeers every which sky-high theatric with an unmatchable balance of death-wishful action, deadpan humor and romantic embodiment. But, unlike Keaton, and especially in Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise does so in-universe and out with a movie star grin that could be picked out of a lineup from another area code.
The perennial set-runner fought to keep the film off streaming just as hard as he militantly lobbies to keep his crews safe, circumstantially proving the 59-year-old’s viral adaptability to the times as well. His team-leader status resonates strong in Top Gun: Maverick, considering the plot – Cruise’s grizzled but nevertheless chiseled Pete Mitchell / call-sign “Maverick” tasked to teach the new crew of youngblood hot shots daring to fly where he once flew, and further. Therefore, the film inherently operates as a meditation on Cruise’s own body of work; for what will the shape of cinema look like after Cruise?
A daunting question, but one not asked in the slightest during the callback-fueled, misleadingly deemed “last ride.” After all, Robert Redford’s retirement-penned love letter to his filmography, David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun (2018), came out in his age 82 year – so don’t start missing Cruise just yet. Top Gun: Maverick isn’t his fading “Fast Eddie,” past-his-prime Paul Newman a la their legacy sequel mentor/protégé collaboration either, as much as it is the three-time Oscar nominee’s declaration that “The Old Man & The Top Gun” will break a trillion at the box office come the 2050s.
Along with The Color of Money, the Cruise-whispering crack team of director Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, 2013) and Maverick co-screenwriter/Mission: Impossible chancellor, Christopher MacQuarrie, have seen the scope of their decades-later follow-up draw comparisons to Blade Runner 2049. But lost in the visual goo-goo gaga of it all: its story more so resembles our favorite sports films where the one-time standout athlete is reluctantly pushed into a coaching role, only to take to the position like lightning in a bottle – then return to the lineup for the big game where he proves the improbable was attainable all along. Think Russell Crowe’s arc in Mystery, Alaska (1999) – with, yes, goodness gracious, great balls of fire and icemen alike.
“If you pick the right people [to work with], you’re not going to lose control of the movie,” said MacQuarrie, as archived in Industrial Script’s “top 10” series of filmmaking advice offered from the best of the best. “The only way you really lose control of the movie is if you can’t make a decision. If you can’t make a decision, then the decision will be made for you, or the movie will simply break down.”
Exceptional choices the entire creative team behind ‘Top Gun 2’ made: tabbing Miles Teller (Whiplash, The Offer) to play Rooster, the son of “Goose” (Anthony Edwards), Cruise’s late wingman whose demise he still blames himself for; and Glen Powell (Everybody Wants Some!!, Set it Up) as the outwardly smug but internally-longing-for-hug, Val Kilmerian foil “Hangman.”
Each rising star vied for the former role, but landed precisely where they were required to for this undertaking to scream into the stratosphere. And while Tom Cruise has mightily shown there’ll never be another him, possibly the greatest trick he’s ever pulled was establishing such palpable chemistry with all of his scene-mates, that he’s convinced you cinema will be A-OK with the next men up in his stead. That’s the type of unrelenting generosity doubling as intensity that you just don’t get out of marquee stalwarts anymore. So long as Cruise is still dare-deviling his way into the hearts and minds of the escapism pursuers making up the free world, though, you better believe it will remain. As will he.
Insurance can be taken out on him because he’s one of the few still left in the game, perhaps the only film star, who can’t be controlled by a studio. When the camera’s rolling, he is the studio. And talent, yet in solo scenes or during “shot-reverse-shot” spilled blood and tear-shed, he never comes across as speaking to anyone other than us. Because he knows it’s all we want from our heroes: to know that we exist.
Additionally, Cruise’s syllabically on-par superhero alter ego in a landscape where people aren’t still flexing their disappointment at his lack of a Tony Stark / Iron Man variant turn, would be “Cinema Incarnate.” When was the last time there was a Tom Cruise movie that didn’t make you laugh, cry, believe a man can fly, that this specific man can’t die, and also leave you asking the biggest question of all; why? Even his Golden Globe-nominated rare heel turn as movie executive Les Grossman in Ben Stiller’s reel war-torn Hollywood satire Tropic Thunder (2008) checks off all these boxes.
Here’s the back-end of the why, answer supplied: because Tom decided to.
With Top Gun: Maverick, he decided to honor the memory of the original director, Tony Scott. He decided to bring back a beloved character perfectly occupied, yet too emotionally preoccupied with the past that much has wound up passing him by. And he decided to remind us big screens trump streams every damn time. Although, we’re not quite ready to label his latest the unsurpassable best example of such, because a pair of presumably snaked-eyed Mission: Impossible “Dead Reckonings” are in the can and en route via horseback.
