Top Gun: Maverick
, propelled last May at the Cannes Film Festival, panicked the counters of the box office.
In France alone, Tom Cruise's new adventures in the air flirted with 7 million admissions.
The bet was not yet won in advance.
Professional conscience obliges, we had reviewed the first
Top Gun
, by Tony Scott, in the company of a teenage offspring.
Just to show that
Doctor Strange
and other superhero nonsense are no match for 1980s fighter pilot Tom Cruise.
The low regard that Generation Z has for us has taken another hit in the wing.
The steamy romance with Kelly McGillis?
An erotic-kitsch nunucherie.
The rivalry between Tom “Maverick” Cruise and Val “Ice Man” Kilmer?
A crypto-gay love affair - the producers wanted to have a scene in the locker room:
"We pay 1 million dollars for Cruise, we must see him naked."
The spectacular action scenes?
Three little plane rides, two Russian planes knocked out, and then he leaves.
However, in the middle of the Cold War, that was enough to make this propaganda clip in the service of the American army a cult film.
And of Tom Cruise, neoliberal America's triumphant body of Ronald Reagan, a mega star.
Aerial choreographies
We don't know how
Top Gun: Maverick
will be perceived in 2057. In 2022, it's mind-blowing.
This time, Tom Cruise and his elite pilots have a mission to accomplish, if not impossible, at least perilous: to destroy a clandestine uranium enrichment plant in an enemy country.
The training sequences and the mission itself are dizzying.
Loopings, “breaks” and other nose-up attacks hold no secrets for Joseph Kosinski, a director very comfortable in the air (see his
Oblivion
, already with Tom Cruise).
Sky is the limit
.
These aerial choreographies, as demented as they are, would only be an entertaining roller coaster without skillful dramaturgy.
Cruise, now an instructor, must train "Rooster" (Miles Teller, the masochistic drummer of
Whiplash
) who is none other than the son of "Goose", his teammate who died accidentally in the first
Top Gun
.
The young man plays
Great Balls of Fire
by Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano, like his late father.
Trauma and remorse don't stop Cruise's iconic shots on a motorbike, hair blowing, racing an airplane.
"Time is your worst enemy
," Maverick told his troops.
Cruise continues to defy the clocks.
A game of American football allows him to show off his pecs.
"It's not the plane that counts, it's the pilot"
, is his other mantra.
Aboard an F-14, another relic of the 1980s, Cruise fears no one.
The fear of aging
Top Gun: Maverick
wards off the fear of growing old, a Hollywood star's anguish shared by much of humanity.
The reunion between Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise would almost make you shed a tear.
We are witnessing a beautiful hug between an immaculate body and an actor diminished by illness.
In Cannes, last year, the documentary
Val
paid homage to this other star of the end of the 20th century (
Willow
,
The Doors
,
Heat
), survivor of throat cancer, voiceless and suffering.
Cruise, he still has the answer.
To Ed Harris, an angry admiral who reminds him of his planned obsolescence (
“The end is inevitable, you are doomed to disappear”
), his reply fuses:
"Maybe but not today."
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