In this first trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise hits all the same beats anyone remembers from the 1986 original. Putting on Ray-Bans; pulling a crazy move in a jet; blasting a motorcycle down the tarmac; weird piano singalong with the boys; playing some blatantly homoerotic sports—all the hits. But is it meant to be cool that Maverick is still doing this, or kind of sad? And is it accidental or willful that this so clearly parallels Cruise himself?
Beyond the woeful recreations, the meat of this preview sees Ed Harris’s higher-up asking Maverick why he’s chosen to stay in the pilot’s seat instead of becoming an admiral. He may as well be asking the 57-year-old Cruise why he won’t just do a drama (remember how good he was in Magnolia?), or play the dad in a comedy (or how funny he was in Tropic Thunder?), instead of punishing himself with scampering through endless action set pieces. But given that Cruise isn’t exactly one for such critical self-examination—that’s what the Oxford Capacity Analysis is for!—it seems unlikely it’s meant to be such an introspective moment.
Rather, it seems that Cruise truly can’t drop this schtick any easier than Maverick can wash the body oil off himself. Just as Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol was once meant to be a passing of the torch to Jeremy Renner, the new Top Gun was originally set up to give Miles Teller the series. That the sequel is explicitly subtitled “Maverick” and has no trace of Teller in its first trailer would seem to suggest otherwise. As seen above, action-boy Cruise couldn’t help but give yet another painfully obvious, inevitable “not today.”
Either that, or Top Gun is Groundhog Day with Jets where Cruise keeps aging, which actually sounds alright.
