Yesterday, we got another quick look at what we can expect from Top Gun: Maverick. And it’s a significantly different take.
The first trailer, with it’s fast cuts to key scenes that mirrored the original film – those signature Aviators, Tom Cruise on his motorcycle, a bunch of pilots singing in a bar, another shirtless, sweaty, and deliciously homo-erotic beach volleyball scene – was used to invoke a sense of familiarity and nostalgia. It’s function was to remind us of Top Gun’s iconic status.
This second trailer is pure aviation porn. Sure we get our first look at Miles Teller looking remarkably Goose-like as Lt. Bradley Bradshaw, but the trailer is mostly glamour shots of Super Hornets – all of them being either stroked lovingly by Tom Cruise, or flown to within an inch of their lives, also by Tom Cruise.
It’s glorious. It really is. And given Tom Cruise’s pathological need to push himself with every movie he does, you can rest assured that he’s doing a lot of the flying in this movie. CGI be damned. (You know there’s a making-of video of Tom Cruise in flight school just waiting to be released.)
Despite being a sequel to a movie that is 34-years-old, I don’t believe that Top Gun: Maverick has to try as hard to sell itself to today’s cinemagoers. This movie, unlike say Ghostbusters: Afterlife, or Charlie’s Angels, or Men In Black: International, or any other classic property trying to reintroduce itself to a modern audience, has a not-so-secret weapon in Cruise.
In a cinema space where the movie stars are Batman and not Robert Pattinson, Freddie Mercury and not Rami Malek, Thor and not Chris Hemsworth, Iron Man and not Robert Downey Jr. (audiences will go to see him in a Marvel movie, but not in The Judge. I guess we’ll see how well he carries Doolittle), Tom Cruise is one of just two carry-overs from the old Hollywood model of using big name stars to sell your movie. (The other being The Rock.)
With the exception of Universal’s massive misstep with The Mummy – they assumed wrongly that people will flock to see even an average movie if it promised to be part of a bigger universe – Tom Cruise is probably the last real “movie star” who can put bums on seats.
Top Gun: Maverick also stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Val Kilmer, and Ed Harris, and is directed by Joseph Kosinski. The movie will be in cinemas next June.
You can check out the first trailer below:
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