I’m excited about the new Top Gun: Maverick trailer. Like its 1986 predecessor, it appears the film will be about powerful machines and virtuous national service. As star Tom Cruise put it while unveiling the trailer at last week’s Comic Con festival, the movie is “about family, sacrifice, heroism, and it’s about aviation.” Those ingredients are the core of what made the original Top Gun so great.
If replicated, the sequel will have supersonic success at the box office.
More on the trailer in a second. But first, a caveat. As with other keen-eyed observers, I’m upset that the movie bows to Chinese imperialism. Appeasing Chinese movie investor Tencent, Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick, has somehow lost the Taiwanese and Japanese cruise flags on his flight jacket. This is pathetic considering America’s longstanding alliance with Japan and escalating Chinese aggression. That said, it is probably apt that Maverick won’t be flying missions against China from an aircraft carrier in this movie. Were he to do so and the movie to be realistic, a thousand or so Americans would die at its conclusion.
Still, the movie’s better virtues are presented by two particular segments of the trailer.
First off, the 60-second to 82-second mark as time-linked below.
Here we see the iconic theme song join images of powerful machinery and human courage. This is about guys, and now, rightly, also girls (the Navy now has female aviators), as masters of raw, dangerous power: some military power (the F-18 fighter jets), some fun (the motorcycle). But the musical choreography here presents the power as moral.
That’s as it should be: U.S. naval aviators rely on teams of exceptional mechanics, engineers, designers, ground crews, and logisticians to do their exceptional work. We are right, as Americans, to find patriotic value and satisfaction in that work.
Next up, there’s the 99-second mark until the trailer’s conclusion.
Here we see Maverick leading a flight of aviators into battle. Coming shortly after a military funeral snapshot, we can assume that, as with the 1986 movie, this final element concludes a story about the costs of military service in peace as well as war.
The scene transitions to beautiful shots of the flight moving through snowy canyons and valleys. The more brooding music suggests battle is coming. It’s good stuff.
A great element of the original Top Gun was its focus on the hard-flying training that allows U.S. naval aviators to remain the world’s best. This trailer element pays homage to that training, but also to the broader point of U.S. naval aviation. Its crews do not ultimately fly hard to have fun (even though they love their jobs). They fly to find and kill the enemy in the nation’s service.
For America, such service is moral. Maverick reminds his admiral that the age of human pilots might soon be over. But not yet.
That’s why I’m excited about this movie.
Who is the enemy? Who knows. Considering the snow scenes, however, maybe it’s Russia or North Korea. Then again, considering Maverick is flying from a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, perhaps it’s the Tic Tacs!
