I went to see Tom Cruise save the cinema last weekend. It was an overly generous gesture from a man fast approaching 60 and surely so comfortably furnished in life he could better occupy his time than running around topless with a group of men less than half his age. But that’s Tom Cruise: a tiny splinter of granite, chiselled straight from the rock of L Ron Hubbard, he’s never stinted in his commitment to serve the multiplex.
Perhaps, even more remarkably, saving the cinema is exactly what he’s done. Top Gun: Maverick has smashed it at the box office. Its domestic take on opening weekend was $160mn: in its second weekend, it collected a further $86mn — the smallest second-weekend decline for a movie opening at $100mn or more. Globally, the film has made some $600mn, and audiences are remaining steady thanks to positive word of mouth.
Top Gun, Tony Scott’s original 1986 film about the Navy’s elite school for fighter pilots, was a homoerotic orgy of greasy machismo, gunned with adrenalin-filled action sequences, motorbikes and occasional heterosexual sex. I watched it on repeat at my best friend’s house, mostly because I had a huge crush on her brother, and it was the only film he let us watch. (Go figure.) The critical consensus was that this dogged eulogy to male leadership, muscle power and US military might was pretty rubbish: I loved it for the long tracking shots in which implausibly buff actors such as Val Kilmer wandered around in towels.
Top Gun: Maverick might be described as a “legacy sequel” in that it follows the current trend for taking former hits — such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Terminator — and refashioning them for a younger generation. Except that while a legacy sequel usually repopulates its movies with new actors, Top Gun: Maverick is unique in that its lead action hero remains Tom Cruise. Cruise has refused to acquiesce to the wisdom that the elder actor should hand over his star power. Like cinema’s own Rafael Nadal, he has defied every expectation to remain one of the most bankable actors in modern history, and done so at a pensionable age.
Cruise remains a mysterious character in Hollywood, but arguably his otherworldly stamina and commitment are intrinsic to his appeal. If he wants to credit his mad intensity to the teachings of Scientology then fair enough: I’ve long accepted his odd religious leanings as part exchange in the Tom Cruise package deal. Such is his dedication to authenticity that, according to a GQ interview with the film’s stunt co-ordinator Kevin LaRosa II, Cruise required the Maverick cast to undertake a gruelling training programme in F-18s — loaned by the US Department of Defense for $11,000 an hour. “Our cast had to be in the aircraft for every shot. So when they’re delivering those epic performances, they are really in there pulling those Gs.”
In a world of green-screen Marvel and dino-driven entertainments, there’s something hugely gratifying about watching Miles Teller’s face melting in G-force. The fact that Cruise has held a pilot’s licence since 1994 and flies a P-51 Mustang only helps maintain the delicious illusion that everything in Maverick is real.
But Cruise and cinematic verisimilitude are only two factors in Maverick’s mighty ascension. The film also envelops us in a jet stream of nostalgia as seductive as any F-18 vapour trial. From the all-too-familiar gongs that chime in the film’s opening, to the Top Gun anthem, the film has allowed us a small but poignant opportunity to look back on lost youth. In that, Maverick is far from unique. This week has found us trapped in some sort of alternate reality as a rush of Eighties legends have taken the stage again. Thanks to the current series of Stranger Things on Netflix, Kate Bush is currently celebrating her first ever US top 10 hit with “Running Up That Hill”, first released in 1985, and the single is one of the most played songs globally on Spotify.
Unlike Cruise, Bush, who last performed in public at a series of residences in 2014, has not been required to recreate her stage persona. (Feminists might argue the 63-year-old delivered her pound of flesh a long time ago.) But even the reclusive singer was persuaded to come out of semi-retirement this week to release a rare statement on her website about her newfound fame.
An even stranger thing, fans of the Australian soap opera Neighbours, which first aired in 1985, will have been tickled to see a reunion of its original cast members assemble in Melbourne to take part in a final show. Kylie Minogue and Guy Pearce are both expected to reprise their breakthrough roles for the big finish, but I was more thrilled to discover that Ian Smith, who played the iconic windbag Harold Bishop, hasn’t aged a day.
The Eighties onslaught is upon us and there’s nothing you can do. It’s probably an indicator of our cultural bankruptcy that so few new ideas are taking hold. Or some mark of our collective lack of imagination. But I don’t care. This week, I was running up hills and pulling Gs with an old friend. I took a giant step backwards. And it felt just as fantastic as it ever did.
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