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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   4843 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

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Anybody see Top Gun Maverick? Biggest movie of the year (so far, it could get dethroned by Avatar or Black Panther). Made over $700m in the US and Canada, and like $1.4b worldwide. I think this is the first weekend it has fallen out of the top 5.

Anyways, I was excited to see it and finally went a couple weeks ago. But it seems like absolute shit to me. Beautifully shot, the flying scenes are great. And yet the story seems bland. The graphics used when they are discussing missions and stuff seemed like some shit out of a Command & Conquer cutscene. A lot of transitions between scenes felt a bit sudden, like something was cut. I've seen celebrities gushing over this film, Quentin Tarantino was fanboying over it. But I honestly think it's one of the worst Tom Cruise movies I've ever seen.

And despite being the biggest movie of the year, I've barely seen a peep about it online (other than it's box office success). Despite seeing it a coupe weeks ago, I never ran into a single spoiler for it. Never saw a single meme. So obviously not a movie that appealed to those who very online. On YouTube I'd been putting every Top Gun video I saw in my Watch Later playlist, to binge after I saw it. And even those videos, going over how great the film was, really had no substance. All the interviews I found with the cast were just the same stories about flying in a jet or meeting Tom Cruise.

The bits James Corden did with Tom Cruise were more satisfying than the actual film.

I'm definitely not a film buff, so maybe I'm missing something. I have seen the original, quite a few times. But something just felt 'off' throughout this film.

I liked it fine. It was pretty clear to me that this is a standard action movie - expect cool jets flying around, a few fights, some explosions, and maybe a half-assed romantic interest. Don't expect detailed character development or a realistic or intricate plot.

I agree 100%

The graphics used when discussing the mission were meant to be perceived as quickly put together graphics for the characters in the movie, not to be directly consumed by you. Essentially you're consuming the graphics via the characters in the movie.

I don't think "shit" describes it, but the plot is paper thin and the "villains" completely uncharacterized seemingly to avoid any controversy. You know, a lot like the first one. It's an '80s action movie, not some creepily lit french drama.

The fact that it was a competently executed action movie that didn't have to drum up "controversy" to sell tickets is what set it apart, and probably why people fawned all over it. That shouldn't be impressive, but apparently it is these days.

Tom Cruise being one of the most bankable stars in existence, and his insistence on sitting on the film until it could be released in theaters, and being a completely standalone experience that didn't require you watch the previous film nor attempt to set up a larger cinematic universe all played in its favor.

It is fair to note that the movie had way less serious competition in theaters than it might have in the counterfactual situation.

This was an optimal time for a feel-good, escapist actioner that doesn't demand much of its audience other than strapping in and enjoying the ride.

I don't think it actually matters if it's a good movie or not. What matters is how effective the marketing team is and whether the material is acceptable in multiple major consumer markets.

It's clear that this movie has the favor of every major media outlet and social media site, so it will get "the shine" for a few months at least.

It was a very well-executed movie, probably the best action movie (in a platonic sense) since Fury Road, notably another 80s revival. The plot is straightforward and functional, yes, but complex, political plots with twists and turns and grey villains and sociopolitical commentary have been in vogue over the last 20 years. A reaction against that towards simple plots that uses a strong emotional core and characters to hang the action is unsurprising, as is that being tied up in our current nostalgia moment. This is a subset of, but not strictly equivalent to the IP mining that is also going -- Star Wars reboots are part of this nostalgia moment, the Marvel empire is not, while Stranger Things is an (early) part of the former but not the latter. Within these 80s nostalgia plays, much of it has been pretty terrible (Ghostbusters, Star Wars, etc) but a few have been quite good (Maverick, Mad Max, Karate Kid). The lack of a political context or complex villain (the enemy given as minimal detail as possible) is a deliberate choice to not detract from the emotional conflicts in the film and the characters' struggles.

With the success of Maverick, I'd expect to see more minimal, character-centric action movies, and dogfighting films in particular (shown to be very underserved). More scenes where the hero returns victorious to cheering crowds, more nondescript villains.

I think a potentially unremarked-upon aspect of the film I appreciate is the tone it's saturated with -- it's more mature than the original without thinking that mature necessarily means dark, or tortured, or politically intricate. Where the former was testosterone and surface-level id played for face value, there's a world-weariness to the sequel. Maverick's tentatively rekindled relationship with Jennifer Connolly's character plays out the same kind of nostalgia -- real, bittersweet wistfulness nostalgia, not 'remember AT-STs' -- that suffuses the whole film. The characters feel deeply bound by their history in a way many other reboots completely fail to emulate. What cockiness was just a sharp expression of young competition is now just a wry, self-aware habit. Maverick can't be anything else, the only difference is now he knows it.

real, bittersweet wistfulness nostalgia, not 'remember AT-STs'

To be fair to the SW sequels, I feel like The Force Awakens did manage to get this right at one point, with the relationship between Han and Leia. They missed each other, they clearly still love each other ... and they've long since realized that they just can't live with each other, despite having tried their best. We get nostalgia for the cutesy cocky "love-hate relationship" development from the original trilogy, but this time in a new bittersweet realistic light.

Based on the rest of the script I have to wonder if this was an accident, if the writers were just trying to make it (unnecessarily even more) obvious that General Leia is a Strong Woman Who Don't Need No Man, but whether intentionally or not their execution there was excellent.

Maverick's tentatively rekindled relationship with Jennifer Connolly's character plays out the same kind of nostalgia -- real, bittersweet wistfulness nostalgia, not 'remember AT-STs' -- that suffuses the whole film.

In particular the use of Val Kilmer's character, and the refusal to de-age him, or to cover up Kilmer's medical condition, or to make him into a caricature of himself.

Basically respected both the original character and the actor that plays him and included him in the world but didn't pander unnecessarily to the audience.

In a lesser film, there'd have been a sequence where Iceman suits up to fly one last mission and try to prove he's the better pilot, despite that going against all logic and the film's emotional tone. Remember how The Rise of Skywalker pulled Billy Dee Williams out of mothballs to have him fly the Millenium Falcon one last time?

Although, I do genuinely like that there's been a recent trend of actors who played iconic characters getting the chance to reprise the role and often have a thoughtful retrospective and send their character out on a high note and/or pass the torch respectfully. But this does go very wrong in come cases (poor Sarah Connor).

I think the worst attempts to 'write to the fans' with these resurrections assume that the in-universe attitudes about the characters need to sync up with the idolatrous attitudes of the worst elements of the fan culture. Cobra Kai did a good job of running against this, where the plucky kid who overcame the odds to win the Karate competition grows up to be a card dealer that won some high-school karate competitions and still kind of runs off that high. Have the courage to let beloved characters be a bit pathetic.

I've barely seen a peep about it online

There were a few people in the non-GOP, non-Frog online Right talking about it a bit (Matthew Peterson, The American Mind), but it definitely doesn't look like it broke through into memery, so I don't think it will have a lot of enduring cultural impact. Definitely agree that it felt like a choose-your-own-enemy movie kit with some cool sequences and moments: lots of fun on the big screen but kinda hollow.

I did like Tom Cruise's "we made it for you" intro to the film, and it really did feel like it was them making something to entertain the viewers instead of sitting them down to Have A Conversation. I hope to see more of that sort of thing.

Cultural impact - i have noticed a big uptick in the number of guys with moustaches in the last 6 months, and I genuinely think it has to do with miles teller in Top Gun

They didn’t name “our enemy” once. North Korea? China? Russia? It was basically “us vs them” without a “them.”

Also, it was all about a single bombing run mission using fighters, a mission pretty much guaranteed to begin a hot war if one wasn’t already happening. It was an extended action sequence without a grand framing story. It would easily have been the pilot episode for a prestige streaming Top Gun series starring the new top guns. Instead, it’s the underwhelming coda to a generation’s coming-of-age story. It’s what Cobra Kai would have been without an overarching vision.

Other than that, it was a damn fine movie.

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