(To hear an audio recording of this article, click the link of the corresponding NFT at the bottom of the page.)

I didn’t get to theaters to see Top Gun: Maverick until week six of its opening run. By that point, the film had already eclipsed one billion dollars at the box office, including the first ever $100 million dollar opening weekend for star and super-producer Tom Cruise - a fact that gets more astonishing the longer you think about it.

I had heard all the project buzz, well-seeded by the press team into the general mediascape: the revolutionary filming techniques; the bootcamp Cruise put his junior castmates through to meet his stunt standards; and the defiance of contemporary Hollywood business practice by both eschewing direct-to-streaming and by refusing to cater to Chinese censorship norms. The word of mouth in my world had been good but not earth shattering. While it was my intent all along to see the film in theaters, it was ultimately the combination of a hot day and aimless time spent with my friend Malthe that compelled us to attend a matinee viewing in the icy confines of the Windsor Terrace Nite Hawk.

To call the movie good and leave it there would be to sell the experience short in no less than half a dozen ways. Simple superlatives do not explain a film experience as this, rendered with such singular confidence. It has all the potential to be a sea change in how we understand American filmmaking, the still-principal cultural medium in a country whose primary export is culture.

It exists in a rare pantheon of films: sequels that are strict upgrades to their predecessors, and even within that club may have no peer due to the unique opportunities the time between productions afforded it. And above all else, it is the masterstroke of a man whose dedicated his life to movie magic, such that he himself is both an unplumbable illusion and a vessel of self-assurance, capable of leveraging his oeuvre, clout, and historical circumstance to lead a film team in the production of a movie where he alternates not roles, but avatars: Maverick, Boomer, White Man, and, at times, America itself.

****

The movie begins universally across screenings with the nearly unthinkable: a fourth-wall break from a weathered yet glowing Cruise. With this brief, thirty second look behind the curtain, the stakes of the film are raised exponentially. It postures Cruise in a moment of vulnerability - a feint, of course, as he is functionally incapable of the control concessions necessary for vulnerability, but the effect is nonetheless achieved.

Here we have him exhibiting more age than we’ll see in the subsequent feature, talking directly with the audience about once again celebrating the cinematic experience - his entire reason for being - in the wake of a centennial pandemic. This is a movie star pushing his entire reputation into the center of the table for ideas bigger than himself, some apparent in the moment and others evident as the film plays out. It’s a level of assuredness that underwrites the entire experience to follow, itself a story about the supreme confidence of men and women so trained in technical excellence and national values that they can feel their way to achievements beyond rational limits.

It’s the movie craft equivalent of a cantrip, yet over and over in message boards and comment sections, this simple intro is called out as relatable and meaningful to the audience’s viewing experience. The message is clear: Tom Cruise would like us to help him save Cinema.

****

Top Gun: Maverick is unambiguously an American propaganda film. This is a genre deeply entrenched in the nation’s cinematic DNA, dating all the way back to the first Oscar winner for best picture, 1927’s Wings, itself a collaboration with the United States Army Air Corps.

This is not to say Top Gun: Maverick deals in heavy handed symbolism or grandstanding. Another way to describe it would be a celebration of national values, yet this is too permissive in the other direction. What audiences are presented in the 2:11 runtime is a new way to look at America’s standing in the world in relation to the elephant pointedly not in the room, China.

Gone are the tropes we’re used to in most American military propaganda films. There’s no liberation or freedom motive. Terrorism prevention is the mission conceit, but the threat is consistently matter of fact, emotionless, and hidden behind visors when finally encountered. Most interestingly, technological superiority is not ensured, as the mission parameters call for outmoded F-18’s to outduel “fifth generation” enemy fighter planes.

What takes the place of these standards? A collection of American ideals well-suited to foil contemporary totalitarianism. Embodying America’s conscience, Cruise imprints upon superior officer John Hamm the equal importance of government motive and pilot lives. Time and again, the individual is identified as the difference maker, not the machine. And perhaps most surprisingly, diversity of sex and race among our heroes is both prominent and deftly handled, causing a different type of American pride to well up after decades of hard fought, fractious, yet crucial culture wars. When dealing with rivals at a global stage that are actively homogenizing their populace through reeducation and genocide, this matters.

Total credit to the Top Gun team - with special callouts for Cinematographer Claudio Miranda and Director Joseph Kosinski - for managing to strike a synthesis of modern values and national propaganda. If ever there were a time to aim for a common ground boost to a nation’s morale, this is it, coming off a generational catastrophe that typically would create a “rally around the flag” effect, but instead pressed the political climate further toward acrimony and totalitarian flirtings. It’s these types of gestures that will need to happen across various spheres of life, not just the political arena, for America to start thinking again as one nation and not a collection of battleground states. It is not surprising that the first meaningful step towards this goal comes from the popcorn movie industry, whose weekly box office numbers are reported in the same news segment as the Dow Jones and sports scores.

All this said, there remains the ever present danger inherent to all works of propaganda: unquestioned certitude. There exists not a stitch of moral ambiguity or indecisiveness in this film, from its screenplay up to its star. This is masterfully masked by the elite Hollywood craftsmanship, burnished to the point where the audience will agree with any logic and view any caricature in the most charitable light.

Starting at the most liminal level, war is treated as a granted necessity. And of course it is, as we wouldn’t have a film without it. But the concept of the United States unilaterally, preemptively, and clandestinely bombing a rogue state 3 weeks before it violates a multilateral NATO treaty is as farfetched as it is disturbing for any viewer stopping to grok the logic. Any attempt to suss out the reasoning outside the film’s working parameters instantly imperils the thinker ethically: “America does this all the time,” ”War is the price of safety,” ”They were asking for it.”

As far as Top Gun: Maverick is concerned, failure to address these questions is a feature, not a flaw. Tackling America’s deep-seeded love for military might captured on film is for another day and project. In order to hit the thematic heights it’s aiming for, an unblemished runway is required for any chance of success. And what better chance to achieve liftoff velocity than John Hamm and Tom Cruise trading military bluster over the slickest mission briefing UI the navy has ever seen.

Chipping in at times during the briefing is Charles Parnell, admirably performing the role of Solomon ‘Warlock’ Bates. He serves as the administrative release valve for Cruise’s Maverick, validating his unorthodox practices and allowing the audience to see levity in Maverick’s otherwise insubordinate acts. Here again the film pressed forward with mach-speed confidence, caught between America’s contemporary diversity ideals - i.e., establishing a Black man in a position of authority - and Cruise’s superstar gravity, which renders every character he comes into contact with as supplicant to his will. The same effect can be felt with Bashir Salahuddin’s character “Hondo,” who violates orders on Maverick’s behalf and follows him to his new post to serve as his airplane caddy. While these interactions are again navigated well given the non-stop certitude the film requires to stay airborne, it inexorably positions Cruise as a white man that can do no wrong.

At the start of the final act, just as Cruise has assumed control as mission leader in defiance of age and military orthodoxy, Warlock stops him for a moment alone. He earnestly confides, “Captain Mitchell, you’re where you belong. Make us proud.” The subtext of this is just narrowly subdued by the feeling of comradery between the two characters.

****

Were it restricted to the ranks of officer relations, this portrait of Cruise as an avatar of whiteness might not seem as salient. When moving towards the romantic component of the film, however, the comparison becomes unavoidable. Credit first to the film team for yet again incorporating contemporary ideals of courtship into the film’s unflinching perspective. The romance logic of the first film can charitably be described as a relic of a bygone era and fairly described as a contributing factor to decades worth of sexual consent issues America still grapples with today.

In comparison, Top Gun: Maverick unfurls an old flame relationship between Cruise and kindred 80’s icon Jennifer Connelly that feels balanced in power and grounded in life experience. Kudos too for what was not pursued, namely any hints of a relationship between Lt. Natasha “Phoenix” Trace - played flawlessly by Monica Barbaro - and any of her squad mates.

The screen time shared between “Pete” (Cruise) and “Penny” (Connelly) represents Maverick’s downtime, playfulness, and relatability. Any intrusion to the atmosphere of pure leisure is related to Cruise’s work struggles and the mysterious theme of “letting go”. It’s telling, therefore, that each locale and set-up feels archetypically white. There’s the Jimmy Buffet beach bar owned by Penny, whose soundtrack alternates between Classic Rock jukebox tracks and spontaneous singalongs to Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire”. A second date yacht excursion finds Penny teaching Pete to sail while dressed in immaculate J. Crew attire. And in the off hours, we retreat to Penny’s idyllic bungalow on a hill, just as easily at home in Cape Cod were it not for the palm trees.

Recent decades of the ongoing dialogue around race in America have focused the conversation around whiteness as access for societal navigation. At the same time, there’s an understandable urge to compare whiteness to Blackness, which in contrast is a true culture born of hardship and galvanized by perseverance. Finding consumer access naturally a cultural non-starter, the search for comparable white identity has pushed some searchers down dark paths, leading to Confederate flags in Northern strongholds and Nazi rallies on capital lawns.

And yet here in Top Gun: Maverick we see a third option, one rendered routinely in times past but impossible to show generously in today’s age without that killer instinct confidence. It is that of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant, the American royalty, unattainable yet aspirational in the land of hard work of dreams.

Rightfully rejected in the real world for its detachment from reality, it’s a taste of sun-dipped heaven and infinite leisure that marks America’s cultural understanding of what successfully planned golden years might look like. Only a megawatt star in an expertly rendered propaganda film with an audience begging for normalcy could possibly pull it off. But Cruise is exactly that star, and a big subset of that audience - Baby Boomers - is betting their whole mortality on it.

****

Cruise himself is just inside the generational cusp, having turned sixty the July 3rd after release. This is even better for those pinning their escapism to him, as he’s the youngest, spryest version of the class.

In the film, Maverick is set up to be the mentor figure, the teacher to the next generation of Top Gun pilots. At every turn he resists while the powers in charge hammer home that he has to “let go”, that his age is over and a new age is arriving.

And yet, he doesn’t have to let go. At all. At least when it comes to the idea that the flight game is passing him by. In one of the most satisfying segments, Cruise introduces himself to his new class by squaring off against them in a series of dogfighting exercises, with losers sentenced to 200 tarmac pushups. Time and again, Cruise displays his veteran wiles and supernaturally undiminished reflexes, all punctuated by the choicest cuts of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” As each young gun falls and the push-up totals mount, the aura of invincibility and moral certainty around Cruise is secured for the remainder of the film.

The message to the Boomer-era audience is clear: we ain’t dead yet. And the rest of the audience gleefully falls in line, as Cruise and his electric persona can flatten all nuance and for them be the connection to an America that perpetually exists in the past, free of ambiguity and brimming with values we all can agree on.

The only question in the film left is whether or not this national and generational relic can survive one “final'' mission. The movie posits this question masterfully, as Maverick states in his mission assessment that “someone isn’t coming back from this one.” It’s that simple logic conflict of Cruise’s utter certitude and undefeated skill that keeps the fate of these porcelain precious concepts teetering over uncertainty for longer than most stories of its ilk.

When - spoiler alert - the final verdict does come in, the production once again delivers with masterful execution. Maverick sacrifices himself for his wingman Rooster (Bradley Bradshaw), surrogate son and actual son of his deceased wingman from the previous film, Goose. Chaos and confusion set in, and the remaining squad members are called back to the carriers for safety. There’s a fade to black that could plausibly return us to the mainland and an honorable funeral, until with great relief the camera returns to Maverick, untangling himself from parachute gear and wondering what to do next.

At this point, the greatest trick in the film’s arsenal is revealed to the audience. Rooster naturally saves Maverick’s life and the pair are stuck behind enemy lines with no plan in mind. It is here that a great dawning collectively appears to every single theater goer.

“Holy shit, we’re in a spy film now.”

The combination of Maverick’s unquestioned skillset and Cruise’s unbeatable movie resume allow him to summon Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt in an instant. The two infiltrate the enemy airbase, steal a jet and take off from a missile-pocked runway against impossible odds. The fact that they’re now tasked with fighting their way home against superior aircraft in an enemy F-14 - The plane used in the original Top Gun - takes those national and generational narratives and triples down.

But by now victory is a foregone conclusion. The audience can enjoy every thrill on the way back to the carrier safely knowing each intervention will favor our heroes. When hotshot pilot Hangman - spiritual torch bearer to the masculine urgency of the first film, played pitch perfect by Glen Powell - delivers the pair from certain death at the last instant, all accounts are settled and we’re ready for the celebratory, carrier deck mosh pit.

In the film’s final moments, as Rooster and Maverick work lovingly on a plane together, Penny drives up to the hanger in a 1973 Porshe 911 S to seal the romantic loose ends. It might as well be B-roll from the greatest Viagra commercial ever made, but as they literally fly off into the sunset in Cruise’s own P-51 Mustang, all is right and golden.

***

All of this is far from the most impactful moment of the film. That would occur roughly somewhere in the middle, as Maverick pays a visit to his old friend from the original film Iceman (Val Kilmer). In the intervening decades, Iceman has climbed the naval ranks while Maverick has stayed as a Captain. Maverick’s high placed friend has saved him from career ruin on many occasions, ultimately bringing him back to Top Gun for the “final” mission.

The scene is most obviously affecting due to Kilmer’s real life struggle with throat cancer and its residual effects. Robbed of speech, Iceman communicates via prompts typed on a computer. The moment is fashioned as a therapy session, and it's here that Maverick, Boomer, White Man and American Tom Cruise gets the closest he may ever get to revealing his essence.

“It’s time to let go,” writes Kilmer, fully wielding the authority of mortality.

“I don’t know how,” replies Cruise tearfully. And in that one moment, all truths align for both the film and the entire Tom Cruise spectacle. He clarifies further still, stating that being Maverick is not “who I am, it’s what I am.”

Here we are at the knife’s edge of Tom Cruise’s entire identity - sparkling diamond vessel suited only for pure archetype. Witnessing this moment as an audience member, I dared dream we might actually see it: a world where Tom Cruise relents, placing his helmet aside and joining the realm of the mortals, where identities are fixed but at least they’re your own.

Of course this could never happen, not now for Cruise and certainly not for the film’s logic. Like a captive whale pressed tight against the glass, slowly he recedes to the aquarium’s shadows, relating “letting go” to the structurally sound yet emotionally innocuous paternal angle: moving out of Rooster’s way and letting him become a true pilot like his real father.

And even in that, the film lets Cruise and all his adherents have their cake and eat it too. He leads the mission out of all the young guns after stealing an aircraft and running the test course in record time. He protects his surrogate son from danger when he would have been shot down, then flies him to safety at the films end.

Nothing of consequence is conceded. In true propaganda fashion, the audience is posed a tough question and blessed with an affirmation. And we all have Cruise to thank for it.

****

To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about Tom Cruise these past twenty years, and hadn’t thought much of him before that. But he’s always existed in cinema’s consciousness, plying a craft exclusively his own. Having stumbled into Top Gun: Maverick with the most modest of expectations, then having expectations blown out of the water forced me to consider who, or rather what, this character is.

The final verdict is Tom Cruise is a willing slave to his artform, and captive to the forces that fueled his ascension. It is not possible to know how his story will end. It is in three parts equally likely that his legacy will remain untarnished till death, that he will go down with the ship of Scientology at some point, or that his own skills of image maintenance and illusion will fail to keep pace with natural human frailty, leading to some jarring and uncanny public display or event, reminiscent to the infamous Oprah appearance but made uglier by age.

Regardless of final outcome, Top Gun: Maverick is the very height of Tom Cruise’s film career. He took the two oldest traditions in American Cinema - war propaganda and popcorn escapism - and combined them with his unique resume to create a film that spoke directly to the existential crises facing both the medium and the nation. In an industry that fashions itself on pure mimicry of success, he has bent the timeline.

As it is the peak of his film career, so too by extension is it the peak of his life. It is the consequence of wielding such monolithic certainty across all spheres of experience that a man in his Brooklyn bedroom could call another man’s high point in life without a shred of second guessing.

Of course my opinion could never pierce, dent, streak or perhaps even touch Cruise’s outer wall, so immaculately charged as it is by fully-actualized thetan energy. The question is, can Cruise recognize the summit himself? And how will that reckoning unfold? Will he continue that thought process from Iceman’s office, and at last confront a self that cannot let go? Or will he go the way of another co-star, Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessup, screaming “You can’t handle the truth” as the MP’s of modernity drag him away.

Read back those last questions and apply them to his avatars: to whiteness, to Boomers, to America. All at a summit, a natural inflection. Which truths will be chosen and which will be shunned, in rejection of natural diminishment.

These are the burning questions in the dawning days of Apex Hollywood.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xc6b17e05d78228bc38ee100a99e7f2ca348ad2f8/1

(To hear an audio recording of this article, click the link of the corresponding NFT at the bottom of the page.)

I didn’t get to theaters to see Top Gun: Maverick until week six of its opening run. By that point, the film had already eclipsed one billion dollars at the box office, including the first ever $100 million dollar opening weekend for star and super-producer Tom Cruise - a fact that gets more astonishing the longer you think about it.

I had heard all the project buzz, well-seeded by the press team into the general mediascape: the revolutionary filming techniques; the bootcamp Cruise put his junior castmates through to meet his stunt standards; and the defiance of contemporary Hollywood business practice by both eschewing direct-to-streaming and by refusing to cater to Chinese censorship norms. The word of mouth in my world had been good but not earth shattering. While it was my intent all along to see the film in theaters, it was ultimately the combination of a hot day and aimless time spent with my friend Malthe that compelled us to attend a matinee viewing in the icy confines of the Windsor Terrace Nite Hawk.

To call the movie good and leave it there would be to sell the experience short in no less than half a dozen ways. Simple superlatives do not explain a film experience as this, rendered with such singular confidence. It has all the potential to be a sea change in how we understand American filmmaking, the still-principal cultural medium in a country whose primary export is culture.

It exists in a rare pantheon of films: sequels that are strict upgrades to their predecessors, and even within that club may have no peer due to the unique opportunities the time between productions afforded it. And above all else, it is the masterstroke of a man whose dedicated his life to movie magic, such that he himself is both an unplumbable illusion and a vessel of self-assurance, capable of leveraging his oeuvre, clout, and historical circumstance to lead a film team in the production of a movie where he alternates not roles, but avatars: Maverick, Boomer, White Man, and, at times, America itself.

****

The movie begins universally across screenings with the nearly unthinkable: a fourth-wall break from a weathered yet glowing Cruise. With this brief, thirty second look behind the curtain, the stakes of the film are raised exponentially. It postures Cruise in a moment of vulnerability - a feint, of course, as he is functionally incapable of the control concessions necessary for vulnerability, but the effect is nonetheless achieved.

Here we have him exhibiting more age than we’ll see in the subsequent feature, talking directly with the audience about once again celebrating the cinematic experience - his entire reason for being - in the wake of a centennial pandemic. This is a movie star pushing his entire reputation into the center of the table for ideas bigger than himself, some apparent in the moment and others evident as the film plays out. It’s a level of assuredness that underwrites the entire experience to follow, itself a story about the supreme confidence of men and women so trained in technical excellence and national values that they can feel their way to achievements beyond rational limits.

It’s the movie craft equivalent of a cantrip, yet over and over in message boards and comment sections, this simple intro is called out as relatable and meaningful to the audience’s viewing experience. The message is clear: Tom Cruise would like us to help him save Cinema.

****

Top Gun: Maverick is unambiguously an American propaganda film. This is a genre deeply entrenched in the nation’s cinematic DNA, dating all the way back to the first Oscar winner for best picture, 1927’s Wings, itself a collaboration with the United States Army Air Corps.

This is not to say Top Gun: Maverick deals in heavy handed symbolism or grandstanding. Another way to describe it would be a celebration of national values, yet this is too permissive in the other direction. What audiences are presented in the 2:11 runtime is a new way to look at America’s standing in the world in relation to the elephant pointedly not in the room, China.

Gone are the tropes we’re used to in most American military propaganda films. There’s no liberation or freedom motive. Terrorism prevention is the mission conceit, but the threat is consistently matter of fact, emotionless, and hidden behind visors when finally encountered. Most interestingly, technological superiority is not ensured, as the mission parameters call for outmoded F-18’s to outduel “fifth generation” enemy fighter planes.

What takes the place of these standards? A collection of American ideals well-suited to foil contemporary totalitarianism. Embodying America’s conscience, Cruise imprints upon superior officer John Hamm the equal importance of government motive and pilot lives. Time and again, the individual is identified as the difference maker, not the machine. And perhaps most surprisingly, diversity of sex and race among our heroes is both prominent and deftly handled, causing a different type of American pride to well up after decades of hard fought, fractious, yet crucial culture wars. When dealing with rivals at a global stage that are actively homogenizing their populace through reeducation and genocide, this matters.

Total credit to the Top Gun team - with special callouts for Cinematographer Claudio Miranda and Director Joseph Kosinski - for managing to strike a synthesis of modern values and national propaganda. If ever there were a time to aim for a common ground boost to a nation’s morale, this is it, coming off a generational catastrophe that typically would create a “rally around the flag” effect, but instead pressed the political climate further toward acrimony and totalitarian flirtings. It’s these types of gestures that will need to happen across various spheres of life, not just the political arena, for America to start thinking again as one nation and not a collection of battleground states. It is not surprising that the first meaningful step towards this goal comes from the popcorn movie industry, whose weekly box office numbers are reported in the same news segment as the Dow Jones and sports scores.

All this said, there remains the ever present danger inherent to all works of propaganda: unquestioned certitude. There exists not a stitch of moral ambiguity or indecisiveness in this film, from its screenplay up to its star. This is masterfully masked by the elite Hollywood craftsmanship, burnished to the point where the audience will agree with any logic and view any caricature in the most charitable light.

Starting at the most liminal level, war is treated as a granted necessity. And of course it is, as we wouldn’t have a film without it. But the concept of the United States unilaterally, preemptively, and clandestinely bombing a rogue state 3 weeks before it violates a multilateral NATO treaty is as farfetched as it is disturbing for any viewer stopping to grok the logic. Any attempt to suss out the reasoning outside the film’s working parameters instantly imperils the thinker ethically: “America does this all the time,” ”War is the price of safety,” ”They were asking for it.”

As far as Top Gun: Maverick is concerned, failure to address these questions is a feature, not a flaw. Tackling America’s deep-seeded love for military might captured on film is for another day and project. In order to hit the thematic heights it’s aiming for, an unblemished runway is required for any chance of success. And what better chance to achieve liftoff velocity than John Hamm and Tom Cruise trading military bluster over the slickest mission briefing UI the navy has ever seen.

Chipping in at times during the briefing is Charles Parnell, admirably performing the role of Solomon ‘Warlock’ Bates. He serves as the administrative release valve for Cruise’s Maverick, validating his unorthodox practices and allowing the audience to see levity in Maverick’s otherwise insubordinate acts. Here again the film pressed forward with mach-speed confidence, caught between America’s contemporary diversity ideals - i.e., establishing a Black man in a position of authority - and Cruise’s superstar gravity, which renders every character he comes into contact with as supplicant to his will. The same effect can be felt with Bashir Salahuddin’s character “Hondo,” who violates orders on Maverick’s behalf and follows him to his new post to serve as his airplane caddy. While these interactions are again navigated well given the non-stop certitude the film requires to stay airborne, it inexorably positions Cruise as a white man that can do no wrong.

At the start of the final act, just as Cruise has assumed control as mission leader in defiance of age and military orthodoxy, Warlock stops him for a moment alone. He earnestly confides, “Captain Mitchell, you’re where you belong. Make us proud.” The subtext of this is just narrowly subdued by the feeling of comradery between the two characters.

****

Were it restricted to the ranks of officer relations, this portrait of Cruise as an avatar of whiteness might not seem as salient. When moving towards the romantic component of the film, however, the comparison becomes unavoidable. Credit first to the film team for yet again incorporating contemporary ideals of courtship into the film’s unflinching perspective. The romance logic of the first film can charitably be described as a relic of a bygone era and fairly described as a contributing factor to decades worth of sexual consent issues America still grapples with today.

In comparison, Top Gun: Maverick unfurls an old flame relationship between Cruise and kindred 80’s icon Jennifer Connelly that feels balanced in power and grounded in life experience. Kudos too for what was not pursued, namely any hints of a relationship between Lt. Natasha “Phoenix” Trace - played flawlessly by Monica Barbaro - and any of her squad mates.

The screen time shared between “Pete” (Cruise) and “Penny” (Connelly) represents Maverick’s downtime, playfulness, and relatability. Any intrusion to the atmosphere of pure leisure is related to Cruise’s work struggles and the mysterious theme of “letting go”. It’s telling, therefore, that each locale and set-up feels archetypically white. There’s the Jimmy Buffet beach bar owned by Penny, whose soundtrack alternates between Classic Rock jukebox tracks and spontaneous singalongs to Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire”. A second date yacht excursion finds Penny teaching Pete to sail while dressed in immaculate J. Crew attire. And in the off hours, we retreat to Penny’s idyllic bungalow on a hill, just as easily at home in Cape Cod were it not for the palm trees.

Recent decades of the ongoing dialogue around race in America have focused the conversation around whiteness as access for societal navigation. At the same time, there’s an understandable urge to compare whiteness to Blackness, which in contrast is a true culture born of hardship and galvanized by perseverance. Finding consumer access naturally a cultural non-starter, the search for comparable white identity has pushed some searchers down dark paths, leading to Confederate flags in Northern strongholds and Nazi rallies on capital lawns.

And yet here in Top Gun: Maverick we see a third option, one rendered routinely in times past but impossible to show generously in today’s age without that killer instinct confidence. It is that of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant, the American royalty, unattainable yet aspirational in the land of hard work of dreams.

Rightfully rejected in the real world for its detachment from reality, it’s a taste of sun-dipped heaven and infinite leisure that marks America’s cultural understanding of what successfully planned golden years might look like. Only a megawatt star in an expertly rendered propaganda film with an audience begging for normalcy could possibly pull it off. But Cruise is exactly that star, and a big subset of that audience - Baby Boomers - is betting their whole mortality on it.

****

Cruise himself is just inside the generational cusp, having turned sixty the July 3rd after release. This is even better for those pinning their escapism to him, as he’s the youngest, spryest version of the class.

In the film, Maverick is set up to be the mentor figure, the teacher to the next generation of Top Gun pilots. At every turn he resists while the powers in charge hammer home that he has to “let go”, that his age is over and a new age is arriving.

And yet, he doesn’t have to let go. At all. At least when it comes to the idea that the flight game is passing him by. In one of the most satisfying segments, Cruise introduces himself to his new class by squaring off against them in a series of dogfighting exercises, with losers sentenced to 200 tarmac pushups. Time and again, Cruise displays his veteran wiles and supernaturally undiminished reflexes, all punctuated by the choicest cuts of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” As each young gun falls and the push-up totals mount, the aura of invincibility and moral certainty around Cruise is secured for the remainder of the film.

The message to the Boomer-era audience is clear: we ain’t dead yet. And the rest of the audience gleefully falls in line, as Cruise and his electric persona can flatten all nuance and for them be the connection to an America that perpetually exists in the past, free of ambiguity and brimming with values we all can agree on.

The only question in the film left is whether or not this national and generational relic can survive one “final'' mission. The movie posits this question masterfully, as Maverick states in his mission assessment that “someone isn’t coming back from this one.” It’s that simple logic conflict of Cruise’s utter certitude and undefeated skill that keeps the fate of these porcelain precious concepts teetering over uncertainty for longer than most stories of its ilk.

When - spoiler alert - the final verdict does come in, the production once again delivers with masterful execution. Maverick sacrifices himself for his wingman Rooster (Bradley Bradshaw), surrogate son and actual son of his deceased wingman from the previous film, Goose. Chaos and confusion set in, and the remaining squad members are called back to the carriers for safety. There’s a fade to black that could plausibly return us to the mainland and an honorable funeral, until with great relief the camera returns to Maverick, untangling himself from parachute gear and wondering what to do next.

At this point, the greatest trick in the film’s arsenal is revealed to the audience. Rooster naturally saves Maverick’s life and the pair are stuck behind enemy lines with no plan in mind. It is here that a great dawning collectively appears to every single theater goer.

“Holy shit, we’re in a spy film now.”

The combination of Maverick’s unquestioned skillset and Cruise’s unbeatable movie resume allow him to summon Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt in an instant. The two infiltrate the enemy airbase, steal a jet and take off from a missile-pocked runway against impossible odds. The fact that they’re now tasked with fighting their way home against superior aircraft in an enemy F-14 - The plane used in the original Top Gun - takes those national and generational narratives and triples down.

But by now victory is a foregone conclusion. The audience can enjoy every thrill on the way back to the carrier safely knowing each intervention will favor our heroes. When hotshot pilot Hangman - spiritual torch bearer to the masculine urgency of the first film, played pitch perfect by Glen Powell - delivers the pair from certain death at the last instant, all accounts are settled and we’re ready for the celebratory, carrier deck mosh pit.

In the film’s final moments, as Rooster and Maverick work lovingly on a plane together, Penny drives up to the hanger in a 1973 Porshe 911 S to seal the romantic loose ends. It might as well be B-roll from the greatest Viagra commercial ever made, but as they literally fly off into the sunset in Cruise’s own P-51 Mustang, all is right and golden.

***

All of this is far from the most impactful moment of the film. That would occur roughly somewhere in the middle, as Maverick pays a visit to his old friend from the original film Iceman (Val Kilmer). In the intervening decades, Iceman has climbed the naval ranks while Maverick has stayed as a Captain. Maverick’s high placed friend has saved him from career ruin on many occasions, ultimately bringing him back to Top Gun for the “final” mission.

The scene is most obviously affecting due to Kilmer’s real life struggle with throat cancer and its residual effects. Robbed of speech, Iceman communicates via prompts typed on a computer. The moment is fashioned as a therapy session, and it's here that Maverick, Boomer, White Man and American Tom Cruise gets the closest he may ever get to revealing his essence.

“It’s time to let go,” writes Kilmer, fully wielding the authority of mortality.

“I don’t know how,” replies Cruise tearfully. And in that one moment, all truths align for both the film and the entire Tom Cruise spectacle. He clarifies further still, stating that being Maverick is not “who I am, it’s what I am.”

Here we are at the knife’s edge of Tom Cruise’s entire identity - sparkling diamond vessel suited only for pure archetype. Witnessing this moment as an audience member, I dared dream we might actually see it: a world where Tom Cruise relents, placing his helmet aside and joining the realm of the mortals, where identities are fixed but at least they’re your own.

Of course this could never happen, not now for Cruise and certainly not for the film’s logic. Like a captive whale pressed tight against the glass, slowly he recedes to the aquarium’s shadows, relating “letting go” to the structurally sound yet emotionally innocuous paternal angle: moving out of Rooster’s way and letting him become a true pilot like his real father.

And even in that, the film lets Cruise and all his adherents have their cake and eat it too. He leads the mission out of all the young guns after stealing an aircraft and running the test course in record time. He protects his surrogate son from danger when he would have been shot down, then flies him to safety at the films end.

Nothing of consequence is conceded. In true propaganda fashion, the audience is posed a tough question and blessed with an affirmation. And we all have Cruise to thank for it.

****

To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about Tom Cruise these past twenty years, and hadn’t thought much of him before that. But he’s always existed in cinema’s consciousness, plying a craft exclusively his own. Having stumbled into Top Gun: Maverick with the most modest of expectations, then having expectations blown out of the water forced me to consider who, or rather what, this character is.

The final verdict is Tom Cruise is a willing slave to his artform, and captive to the forces that fueled his ascension. It is not possible to know how his story will end. It is in three parts equally likely that his legacy will remain untarnished till death, that he will go down with the ship of Scientology at some point, or that his own skills of image maintenance and illusion will fail to keep pace with natural human frailty, leading to some jarring and uncanny public display or event, reminiscent to the infamous Oprah appearance but made uglier by age.

Regardless of final outcome, Top Gun: Maverick is the very height of Tom Cruise’s film career. He took the two oldest traditions in American Cinema - war propaganda and popcorn escapism - and combined them with his unique resume to create a film that spoke directly to the existential crises facing both the medium and the nation. In an industry that fashions itself on pure mimicry of success, he has bent the timeline.

As it is the peak of his film career, so too by extension is it the peak of his life. It is the consequence of wielding such monolithic certainty across all spheres of experience that a man in his Brooklyn bedroom could call another man’s high point in life without a shred of second guessing.

Of course my opinion could never pierce, dent, streak or perhaps even touch Cruise’s outer wall, so immaculately charged as it is by fully-actualized thetan energy. The question is, can Cruise recognize the summit himself? And how will that reckoning unfold? Will he continue that thought process from Iceman’s office, and at last confront a self that cannot let go? Or will he go the way of another co-star, Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessup, screaming “You can’t handle the truth” as the MP’s of modernity drag him away.

Read back those last questions and apply them to his avatars: to whiteness, to Boomers, to America. All at a summit, a natural inflection. Which truths will be chosen and which will be shunned, in rejection of natural diminishment.

These are the burning questions in the dawning days of Apex Hollywood.

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