Review of Top Gun: Maverick (2022) by Ajwrites — 31 May 2022

My fandom of #Topgun began when as a besotted young Desi, I watched those VHS tapes (if you don’t know what VHS tapes are, you are too young to read this piece!) brought back by my Aunt from the Yankee land! Boy, was I smitten?

What not to like?

Cocky young men with big egos playing with bigger toys while doing something sounding very important, smart femme Fatales, beach bods and volleyball, sunset boulevards and bike rides to drop-dead gorgeous timeless music. Cable TV brought home a repertoire of Cruise’s flicks and his abiding dedication to performing his own breathtaking stunts got us hooked, to say the least.

With #TopGunMaverick, Tom Cruise has brought in a worthy sequel. If the first edition had testosterone ruling the roost, the sequel has the much weathered, guilt-suffering, promotion resisting lone ranger, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, still, the hell-raising non-conformist, coming back to TopGun, his playpen in his halcyon days, to teach the young ‘Top of the Tops’ while trying to protect Rooster, the son of his erstwhile dead wingman. This flick drops resonating ‘emo’ bombs with elan while doing daredevilry, like a walk in the park. Maverick has mellowed and he accepts that gracefully. With age comes sagacity tempered with life’s tests. Friendship, love and loyalty become necessary.

But he knows and shows the young pups that he is still the big daddy of them all, still owns the sky as he carpet-bombs the enemy with absolute elan (Russia going by the topography or even China) He steals the thunder alright.

At the core of this flick are a few sweet takeaways.

1)True technology changes everything rapidly and eventually makes men rather the older beings, redundant, but ultimately, native skills and core commonsense come to aid, and are the key differentiators to superlative success! So keep at it.

2)You are as old as you allow yourself to be. Tom Cruise gives the next-gen some amazing fitness goals. He turns sixty this July and decades later, is still a Top lister flaunting an age-defying personality. Chuck his belief system, his personal mess. Separate the artist from his art. His adherence to his craft is emulate-worthy.