Instal the new for android Top Gun: Maverick11/13/2023 ![]() ![]() The follow-up is certainly its own entity and in many ways a more emotionally resonant experience than the first because it reckons so directly with the passage of time. Cruise’s own personal image, especially in recent years, has been built around these traits, too.Īll of that Cruiseyness runs deep in the veins of Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to 1986’s Top Gun. Many of the characters he would take on during the three decades that followed would share some of the same core qualities as his Top Gun persona: daring, defiant, athletic, incredibly hardworking, and willing to put their lives on the line to achieve a seemingly insurmountable goal. More than any other role he would play - and yes, I am counting Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movies - Maverick defined Tom Cruise within the public imagination. ![]() He could fly an F14 Tomcat upside down and flip a Russian pilot the bird then enrage his superiors while still convincing them he had done the right thing. It certainly helped that Maverick personified two fundamental American values that are completely at odds with each other: a belief in the exceptionalism of the military and an admiration of individualistic, authority-defying rebels. Maverick was all of that in one package, the best fighter pilot in the Navy and a guy whose ego very famously wrote checks his body couldn’t cash. There was something about Cruise as Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell - his motorcycle-revving exuberance and a charm just potent enough to undercut his arrogance - that was irresistible. But three years later, in 1986, when Cruise’s naval-officer grin in Top Gun spread across cineplex screens from sea to shining sea? That’s when Americans fell in love. It happened when he slid sock-footed and pants-free to the sound of Bob Seger in Risky Business. ![]() If you were alive and cognizant in the early 1980s, you remember when America first developed a crush on Tom Cruise. ![]()
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