If it works, it could be one of the bigger movies of the summer. It’s a delicate needle to thread, although the Cruise who made American Made (which dealt with the Iran-Contra scandal with a deeply cynical eye) and Lions for Lambs is presumably up to the challenge. and Star Wars were $500 million-plus grossers. Will Top Gun: Maverick be a pure nostalgia play, sacrificing having anything of value to say about the world of today and/or the legacy of the original 1986 Tony Scott-directed blockbuster? Or, will it offer meta-commentary and/or an update and risk upsetting the fanbase of the original $376 million-grossing movie? That gross, by the way, made Top Gun one of the biggest earners ever at a time when only E.T. We don’t know how well the 80’s throwbacks will perform, but (relatively speaking and with differing variables notwithstanding) Rambo: Last Blood is not an encouraging canary in the coalmine. Although you can make the case that Top Gun 2’s nostalgia for “Morning in America” ( Top Gun was a prime piece of Reagan-era propaganda and a hell of a military recruitment tool) is merely a different era of nostalgia contrasted with the Hope-and-Change era of In the Heights (a show that opened on Broadway in 2008). Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manual Miranda’s In the Heights is as much a “old-school hit versus new-wave event” showdown as you could imagine. We’ve got Wonder Woman 1984, Bill and Ted Face the Music and Ghostbusters: Afterlife alongside Top Gun: Maverick just this summer alone. And it’ll be just one movie banking on 1980s nostalgia next year. But, of course, that only works if folks actually show up to Top Gun Maverick when it opens on June 26.
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