Top Gun: Maverick is about a weird kind of military pride

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but sometimes the people are just begging you to comment on the latest movie (1). So here goes.

What is Top Gun: Maverick about (2)?

More specifically, what does the rousing “yeah America” chutzpah inducing ending of Top Gun: Maverick leave you pointing towards? I think sports.

In the Jacobin, Eileen Jones calls the movie “a very long, kinetic military recruiting ad”. I see what she means - with high-tech airplanes, cool action scenes, and American flags everywhere, it’s showing off all the slick trappings of military coolness (3).

But if you dig a little deeper, I don’t think TG:M comes across as very pro-military at all. The most striking thing about the movie is how it totally manages to avoid identifying the enemy forces. The whole plot is about a mission to destroy a Uranium enrichment plant, but we don’t know which enemy of the US this plant is located in. The only enemies we see are in head-to-toe protective gear so that we can’t tell what ethnicity they are.

So we have a surface-level pro-US-military movie that avoids identifying any enemies of freedom and democracy. I don’t think the words “defense”, “freedom”, or “democracy” were even mentioned in the movie. 

Also, I’m not in the military, but I get the sense that discipline and following orders is a big thing. This movie celebrates the fact that its protagonists disobey orders all the time - a classic American movie thing (4), but not an actual classic military thing in my impression (though I could be wrong - maybe selective disobedience  is an actual celebrated part of military culture).

No real threats, no military discipline. The main thing you’re left to be excited about is the bonding that comes with is doing difficult things to achieve a goal with a group of teammates. And maybe cool technology.

So if you’re inspired by Top Gun: Maverick, I think you’re better off just going out for a sports team. Or maybe working at NASA.

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1. Editor’s note: Absolutely nobody is begging Luke to comment on this or any movie

2. Besides the fact that it itself is a sequel to a 1986 movie called Top Gun, a fact which the movie goes really out of its way to make sure you know through many flashbacks, photos sitting on desks, and music cues. And which fact it equally expects you to be very impressed with because either a) you have seen the movie Top Gun long ago and are nostalgic for it, or b) you have not seen the movie Top Gun (me) but you are swept up by second-hand nostalgia anyways in the burnt-orange sunsets and aforementioned music cues

3. And probably will increase interest in naval aviation roles - apparently the first drove a 500% increase in applicants

4. And, I mean, fair. You don’t go pay $15 to go watch Tom Cruise do as he is told