Peter Bart: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Revived Box Office, But Faceless Villains & Formulaic Plot Pale Compared To Great War Films Like ‘The Best Years Of Our Lives’
02.06.2022 - 23:47
/ deadline.com
Having paid my $8.50 to see Top Gun: Maverick last weekend, my local cineplex inadvertently improved my appreciation of the film. For three minutes the sound clicked off and, minus dialogue, I was instantly caught up in the soaring jets, hyper-caffeinated cast and the durable charisma of its star. Then sound returned, the story unfolded and reality set in: This is not really a plot but a superbly crafted business plan, half video game and half military recruitment film. It’s the perfect structure for a Tom Cruise genre-bashing blockbuster.
Historians may ultimately cite the movie as a turning point — the film that reignited audiences, young and old, to pay homage to their movie palaces. FiIm critics may also single out the Top Gun sequel as a defiant reinvention of the classic war genre.
Does it measure up to the classics? Sure it does, but only Cruise would set out to design a combat epic that lacked a specific enemy and hence a focused rooting interest. Or that marginalized jeopardy, sex and even gore – all the stuff that’s characterized war films going back to Paths of Glory.
War movies are built around a mission, and Cruise’s is to train two teams of F-18 pilots to steer through mountainous terrain and take out a uranium enrichment facility (we don’t know whose). Will Cruise survive the attacks of those anonymous jet pilots swerving towards him? Will he and his students face challenges beyond the intense stripped-to-the-waist football games played on a serene beach?
Sure they will. But the release date of Top Gun: Maverick also coincided with publication of a new book reminding us once again of the “classic” approach to war movies — in this case, a film titled The Best Years of Our Lives. The driving force behind it was
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