Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick, hit theaters this week with impeccable geopolitical momentum. President Joe Biden met with leaders of Australia, Japan and India in Tokyo on Tuesday after visiting South Korea. The US president sought to reassure his partners about his nation’s commitment to its region, even as US attention is increasingly drawn to a bloody and protracted war in Ukraine.
What better time, then, for a display of vulgar American soft power to shoot in global multiplexes, offering a clear view of the longevity and vitality of U.S. military prowess?
The original Top Gun, released in 1986, was both a box office hit and a Reagan-era anthem to U.S. air and naval power. Directed by Tony Scott, it became the highest grossing film of that year and at that time among the highest in history. His famous slogans, from “You can be my wingman any time” to “Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full” – were entrenched in popular culture. And he made Cruise one of the most profitable stars in Hollywood, a position he has stubbornly held ever since.
Top Gun also came at a time of increasing US global supremacy, which gave it a geopolitical peculiarity. The film topped the list of films a year after Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and when the balance between the two superpowers shifted decisively in favor of America. With the bruises of defeat in Vietnam almost healed, the mid-1980s marked the beginning of a long period of U.S. rule, all united by the kind of enduring military power that Cruise’s cinematic alter ego represented. with confidence.
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The film also had a particular resonance in Asia, from the close-up of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise sailing the Indian Ocean. His conclusion saw Cruise’s character, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, fighting MiG-28 from an unnamed enemy, but his painting work seemed clearly North Korean. Now, 36 years later, as the U.S. prepares for a new era of military competition with China, it would be reasonable to expect the Cruise sequel to approach comparable self-confidence. Interestingly, then, it turns out that Top Gun: Maverick is actually a rather disturbing type of blockbuster, full of doubts about the durability of American power and that works in many ways as an elegy to the relative American decadence.
Doubt is not what viewers expect from Cruise. And, in fact, at first glance, its sequel shows much of the same arrogant masculinity as its predecessor. Combined with his fire jacket, aviator sunglasses and Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle, Cruise is remembered for teaching “TOPGUN,” better known formally as the Navy’s combat tactics instructor program. United States, an elite pilot school in Miramar, California.
Despite his undoubted piloting skills, Maverick still maintains the same rank as the original, a fact lamented at the beginning of the film by an exasperated superior, played by Ed Harris. “You can’t get a promotion, you won’t retire, and despite your best efforts, you refuse to die,” Harris complains. “By now you should be at least a two-star admiral. But here you are: Captain. Why this?” Cruise smiles. “It’s one of the mysteries of life, sir.”
It’s best not to think too much about the plot of the film, which is that Cruise trains a new generation of aviators to defeat a nameless rogue state leaning toward nuclear weapons. As Maverick pointed out in the first film, “You don’t have time to think up there. You think… You’re dead.” Most important to most viewers are the flight sequences, which are really exciting. Cruise is known in Hollywood for his commitment to realistic action, making scenes that other actors would deliver to doubles. In the mission franchise: Impossible jumps from buildings and hangs from planes. Here, according to all accounts, he trained his co-stars by punishing flights on planes flown by military pilots, leaving the actors’ faces contorted with force g. “We’re working with the Navy,” Cruise said in San Diego at the film’s recent release aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway. “Everything you see in this picture is real.”
In fact, the future is approaching, and safe naval aviators landing fast aircraft in aircraft carriers will play a much less important role than before.
However, the reality you see in Top Gun: Maverick stands out less for its fantasy of U.S. strength and more for its anxiety issues. Part of that involves Cruise himself. In the original he was 24 years old. He is now 59, although he is well preserved for a man close to retirement age. Carefully placed camera angles allow you to stay in an American football game with men of half your age, a tribute to the celebrated shirtless beach volleyball scene from the first movie, now seen as a homoerotic classic.
Still, Cruise’s years of progress cannot be disguised. The same goes for Val Kilmer, who repeats his role as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, except this time playing a sick admiral in the last afflictions of life. The film is a reasonably chaste affair, but its occasional love scenes also have something of a Viagra commercial to it. Cruise is an icon of American masculinity and his declining ability is inevitably reminiscent of a time when both he and his country were younger and more vital. Clearly something is missing.
I saw Top Gun: Maverick at its recent Singapore premiere, sitting in a theater full of enthusiastic uniformed American soldiers, who applauded as the opening credits progressed and the easily recognizable score came to life. Speaking just before the film, and wearing Top Gun-style aviator sunglasses, Jonathan Kaplan, the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, linked it directly to the role the U.S. and its military play as to guardians of the “rule-based order” in Asia. Many thousands of U.S. sailors and naval pilots work throughout the region, Kaplan suggested, to “ensure peace, security and a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Cruise’s character has always been a curious ship for this kind of rule-abiding American power, especially given his unwillingness to follow orders. However, the premise of the first film remained that men like Maverick allowed the U.S. and its military to patrol and control the world.
Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, which hit theaters this week. . . © Capital Pictures. . . in the same way that President Joe Biden toured Asia to emphasize the United States’ commitment to the region © AP
In the aftermath, all of this seems less certain, both because of concerns about the technological decline of the United States and because of the obsolescence of pilots like Maverick in the first place. The opening sequence of the film features Rear Admiral Chester “Hammer” Cain, played by Harris with a gravel spirit. Called the “Ranger Drone”, Cain wants to replace ace pilots with autonomous intelligence capabilities powered by artificial intelligence. “The future is near,” he tells Maverick bitterly. “And you’re not there.”
This is not entirely accurate, given that traditional air power will still play an important role in any plausible conflict involving U.S. forces in Asia. Just this week, China and Russia blew up nuclear-powered strategic bombers near Japan, apparently in a show of strength designed to respond to Biden’s arrival in Tokyo, which Beijing and Moscow saw as a provocation.
But the vision of a drone-driven future is also not science fiction, as evidenced by the success of Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drones on Ukraine. In fact, Harris’ character reflects the ambitions of many in the U.S. defense establishment, who see rapid investment in military technology as the best U.S. route to maintaining their current military dominance.
There is also a broader point here. Elbridge Colby worked at the Pentagon as Under Secretary of Defense, helping to draft the influential 2018 National Defense Strategy, which shifted U.S. strategy from the focus on terrorism and into a new era of competition between major powers.
“We should welcome the return of Top Gun, because it’s a vision of what we really need in U.S. defense,” he explains. “The 2010 war films were set on the tops of the Afghan hills or on the streets of Baghdad. But now we are in a time when the United States needs to invest in new technologies, but we also need to send more aircraft carriers and planes to the Indo-Pacific to help deter a rising China. ”
Miles Teller as Lieutenant Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw in the new film, which warns pilots facing an enemy armed with “fifth generation” aircraft © LMK President Biden boarded helicopter Marine One at Yokota Air Force Base, Tokyo, May 22 © Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Many American strategists hope that their country will be able to repeat its successes during the 1980s, which Colby describes as “the most successful decade in American military history.” That decade involved a large investment in military prowess and ended with the collapse of its Soviet rival. “The appeal of Top Gun is that we want to be strong, not for himself, but to ensure good peace,” he says. “So yes, we need new drones, but we also need to invest in a lot of other things.”
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