Yet, paradoxically, and disturbingly, “Maverick” is also a more satisfying drama, a more accomplished action film-I enjoyed it more, yet its dosed-out, juiced-up pleasures reveal something terrifying about the implications and the effects of its narrative efficiency.
That’s why, in comparison with the sequel, the original comes off as a work of warmhearted humanism. No less than the original “Top Gun,” its new sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” directed by Joseph Kosinski, is an emblem of its benighted political times. Little did we know that there was another, less accomplished yet more bilious entertainer waiting in the wings to wreak even more grievous damage, more than three decades later, on the polity and the national psyche. As a film of cheaply rousing drama and jingoistic nonsense, “Top Gun” played like feedback-a shrill distillation of the very world view that it reproduced. Thus “Top Gun,” which I saw when it came out, in 1986, felt like the cultural nadir of a time that was itself something of a nadir. Both were entertainers, but the burger clown knew it, whereas Reagan believed the nostalgic and noxious verities of the movies that he had appeared in-and as a politician he attempted to force modern American life to conform to them.
When Ronald Reagan was elected President, in 1980, it seemed only slightly more absurd than if Ronald McDonald had won.
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