Amazingly yet predictably,“Top Gun: Maverick”has already provoked the inevitable criticism on social media that it’s a recruitment poster for the U.S. Navy. The idea is that the movie is entertaining, but that it propagates fossilized values of militarism, etc.
To this I say two things: (1) Showing people working effectively within a profession does not automatically constitute an effort at recruitment; and (2) If people see “Top Gun: Maverick,” and it inspires them to serve their country in the armed services, how is that a bad thing?
Actually, that’s a good thing. And it was a good thing the last time, too. In the aftermath of the original “Top Gun” in 1986, the Navy reported a 500% increase in recruitment.
To understand how that happened back then, you have to understand the psychology of the time — not just the mind-set of that specific period but that of the very different period that preceded it.
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Today, the 1970s are remembered as a big disco party. But if you were there and paying attention, it felt more like dancing while the country burned. There was Vietnam, then Watergate. Then the impotent spectacle of the fall of Saigon. Then the taking of American hostages in Iran, followed by what at the time seemed the most frightening event of all: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the final days of 1979.
年轻是令人不安的,至少可以说。It was as if, at any minute, some international disaster could come and wreck your life. You can’t understand punk and New Wave without understanding its late-Cold War context.
But the 1980s were different. By around 1983-84, there was a sense of optimism running through the country, and that optimism gradually made its way into movies. Anyone who saw “Top Gun” when it came out in 1986 couldn’t help but see it as an expression of renewed American confidence with regard to the Soviet Union. Once again, we were winning the Cold War.
There were other elements in “Top Gun,” other reasons it appealed to people, but the geopolitical aspect was nonetheless there and unmistakable to contemporary audiences. And audiences got the message.
Fast-forward 35 years, and we find the strange case of “Top Gun: Maverick,” a movie debuting into a world different from the one in which it was made.
The sequel was filmed in 2018 and originally intended for 2019 release, then delayed and delayed because of the pandemic. By the time it made it into theaters, the Russians had invaded Ukraine, which makes “Top Gun: Maverick” a somewhat different experience than originally intended.
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The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. That means you have to be kind of old to even remember what it was like to be thinking about the possibility of a nuclear warevery single day. We grew up with shelter drills when we were children. That vague terror formed the backdrop of everything we did and probably had a lot to do with the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll that we associate with the ’60s and ’70s.
But for the past 30 years, the international situation has seemed settled, with us on top. I stopped worrying about the powers of other countries, and started worrying a lot more about how we were using our power — and there were things to be worried about to be sure. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown us that what we thought was over wasn’t really over, and that we aren’t — and haven’t been — as safe as we thought we were.
With actual evil in the ascendant, people who respond to the call of military service aren’t dupes in need of protection by condescending film critics and anonymous Twitter users. They don’t need to be told, “Don’t be fooled.” They’re not fooled. What they need is support, and what they deserve is praise and gratitude.
It is curious that we live in an era in which you can pass yourself off as a thinking person by asserting that you can have a country without a military (or for that matter, a city without a police force). Actually … you can’t. And if it takes the unlikely vehicle of “Top Gun: Maverick” to bring us back to planet Earth, then Tom Cruise just earned his paycheck.
“Top Gun: Maverick”(PG-13) is in theaters now.