Review of Top Gun: Maverick (2022) by Blacksteelapexx — 30 Jun 2022

Definitely not the Citizen Kane of our time, as one might errantly infer from the rave reviews both from critics and audiences. It’s always plainly obvious when a film studio sells out to the Department of Defense and allows them veto power over the script for the sake of getting military cooperation in terms of consultation and provisioning equipment for the film itself.

The plot seems to openly embrace U.S.’s love for military adventurism, with the focal point centering around the planning of an airstrike on a uranium enrichment center that “violates a NATO treaty”.

Who’s the “rogue state” operating the plant? What jurisdiction or right does the U.S. have to just bomb it? Because they feel like it? This is the early 2000’s Iraqi Freedom brand of warhawking that even the Republicans party has tried to distance itself from as of late.

But then again, the DoD controls the script… and so not only is this presented as completely okay, but never are these moral concerns even addressed. So perhaps it’s better to just turn one’s brain off and view the movie through an appropriate lens - 2 hours of DoD propaganda that’s good for some action shots of (undeniably) stunning and beautiful fighter aircraft.

However, the movie’s odd pacing and inter-splicing of a needless romance only serve to detract from what this movie could do well - being a 2-hour theme park ride showing the F-18 and its Russian opponents duking it out.

The actual airstrike and dogfights afterwards in fact are so hurried towards the tail end of the film and short-lived that it feels like a lot of waiting for high-stakes action beyond the pre-mission training exercises, that the wait hardly feels worth it.

It’s a good movie if you’ve got 2 hours to kill, but this movie is extremely overrated and held back by poor acting, strange pacing, unwelcome side plots, and a criminally short dogfight sequence that, if it were much longer, would have GREATLY improved my opinion of the movie overall.