43: Top Gun: Maverick

This week, we feel the need for speed all over again with Joseph Kosinski’s much-delayed, hugely successful Top Gun: Maverick! Is Pete Mitchell the same guy, so many years later? How does the film respond to the legacy of the original? Is Kosinski maybe too good at his job?

Unanswered Questions:

  • Is Top Gun about patriotism? Militarism? Commercialism? All or none of the above?
  • How does the marketing and production material mythologize the making of the film?
  • Is there anything thematic happing in Maverick’s technological regression from the fictional DarkStar to the Boeing F/A-18E to the Grumman F-14?

Further reading:

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Join us next week as we close out Tom Cruise’s filmography — for now — with Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning!


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