Top Gun Maverick (2022) Couldn't help chuckling over the kerfluffle about Tom Cruise's absence from the Oscars.....
Why would he even bother showing up? Isn't it enough that he's the only actor left in the movie star firmament whom people would leave their homes to line up at the multplex to watch him?
Isn't it enough that he's the last practitioner of crowd-pleasing, "big tent' entertainments that don't give us migraines trying to understand their endless multiverses?
And yet.....for all of his box-office dominance, we've split Tom Cruise into two separate entities......one we can't get enough of and the other we don't even want to think about.
We've divided him by Cruise the beloved movie star and Cruise the prominent public face of Scientology, the world's most sinister, creepy, quasi-religious cult, a vast shadowy organization of brainwashed kool-aid drinkers.
As he hurls about the skies in fighter jets or dangles from planes and skyscrapers in his "Mission Impossible" series, we happily shake our heads in awe and disbelief......and forget that this is a guy whose last ex-wife practically had to engineer a prison break to escape him. and his cultists.
For movie audiences, he remains Tom Terrific, flashing a 1000 watt smile while still performing hair raising stunts even into middle age. Other movie stars, we can take 'em or leave 'em and easily wait for their movies to hit streaming.
But Movie-Tom, he's another deal altogether.......he's the guy who'll make us put down the remote, turn off the streaming apps and head for the theater.....
As if he well knows why people turn out for him, he never, ever disappoints the folks still willing to open their wallets to buy movie tickets. He never fails to serve us up a ten course meal of dazzling spectacle......a simple, easily digested spectacle, minus the convoluted gibberish and self satisfied snark of any typical Marvel movie.
"Top Gun: Maverick", arriving 36 years after the original 'Top Gun' is in every way, a perfect replica of director Tony Scott's massive blockbuster.......loud, slick, heartfelt but with even higher tech and more action on display. The only thing you'd find missing - Scott's signature visual style, all those sunset-sunrise sequences drenched in deep orange......
The same supporting roles of the first film are more or less cleverly reconfigured into new characters. James Tolkan, Cruises's fuming, apoplectic commanding officer is now played with a slow burn simmer by Jon Hamm. In a brilliant twist of plot, Cruise's kind and patient mentor, previously played by Tom Skerritt, is now none other than his one time rival flyer 'Iceman', who's worked his way up to Admiral and again played ,poignantly, by the now aging and unwell Val Kilmer.
And naturally, as we'd all expect, the new of batch young, arrogant, hotshot naval aviators are a diverse bunch in both race and gender. What hasn't changed.......the vague identity of whatever rogue nation dares to upset the world order, too stupid to realize they're literally Cruise-in for a bruisin' . (Given the unknown enemy here is on the verge of getting their own nukes, you can assume it's Iran, North Korea or maybe Ron DeSantis declaring Florida as sovereign state.
I don't think any further description is necessary. Like most Tom Cruise movies, it hums and roars along, a well oiled machine engineered to make you gasp, cheer and munch tubs o' butter popcorn until cholesterol floods out of your ears.
Maybe it's just as well we don't see Tom Cruise on talk shows or on orgies of ego like the Academy Awards. Seeing a real life Cruise would remind me of how he's so joined at the hip with a weird, repellent organization, famous for psychologically abusing its members.
But not our Movie Tom.....we want him up on that huge wide screen, larger than life. You know why? When he helps in the creation of a 4 star (****) Tom-o-palooza like "Top Gun: Marverick", we can temporarily view films just like audiences did in Hollywood's golden age......mesmerized and entranced by the flickering images of movie stars.....who are nothing at all like the flesh and blood actors in reality.
He's better off remaining the Tom Cruise who so ably entertains us....existing as a projected image on movie screen.....and tirelessly making 'Top Gun Maverick' a 4 star (****) experience.....
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