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Top Gun 3 became inevitable the moment Paramount saw their Top Gun sequel’s box office returns. There were some questions about when and how, but we all knew on some level that this announcement was coming. Tom Cruise remains attached to star with Miles Teller, continuing the plot from the sequel. The third entry will enter a very different airspace than its predecessor, and it must learn some new tricks to meet the challenge.
Top Gun Has a Formula
In many ways, Top Gun: Maverick is a meta-commentary on Top Gun. It borrows the structure but adds details to mix things up. In his review for The New Yorker, critic Richard Brody called Top Gun: Maverick “less a sequel to ‘Top Gun’ than a renovation of it.” It’s the new edition, everything we liked about Top Gun with modern trappings and style. That suggests a cynical way to make a movie, but it works for a legacy sequel to a blockbuster classic. We had all gone without Top Gun for a while, so attending a party in its honor sounded lovely at the time. Top Gun 3 can’t hope to rely on the same purity of purpose. Maybe if they wait for another 36 years, but no one wants to see Top Gun become a yearly sequel farm. Not in its current form, anyway.
Does Top Gun have the potential to spawn seven sequels? Tom Cruise’s other major franchise, Mission: Impossible, just passed its seventh entry with at least one more on the way. For all their weaknesses, the Mission: Impossible films are unique. Each entry sells itself on a new, over-the-top stunt, but new story twists, villains, and intrigue keep them distinct enough to engage. Top Gun: Maverick borrows almost everything from the original film. What it doesn’t take from its predecessor, it leaves blank. There are no named villains in Maverick. It’s all left as vague as possible to avoid politicizing a film about aerial warfare. Sure, Paramount could blow hundreds of millions every year to put Tom Cruise in a jet to blow up faceless enemies, but that will only draw audiences for so long before they want more. I believe we’ve seen both times that trick can work, but something must change to carry on.
Top Gun: Maverick Earned Praise for What It Wasn’t
I can’t look at any praise for Top Gun: Maverick without reading between the lines. For all its successes as an entertaining blockbuster, the absence of superheroes seems to be its greatest virtue. It’s exciting, loud, fast-paced, uncomplicated, and cathartic in the way a good genre film should be, without the baggage of a cinematic universe or Marvel branding. The Barbenheimer phenomenon enjoyed similar praise, forming a collective rebellion against the cultural hegemony Marvel’s success engendered. The next Top Gun sequel can’t trade off what it isn’t. The film still suffers many downsides of the superhero boom. As fun as every practical dogfight is, the effects don’t save its otherwise empty script. Marvel fans broadly lost their minds when Martin Scorsese compared their favorite franchise to theme park rides. Top Gun refuses to fight that accusation, instead proclaiming itself the park’s fastest roller coaster.
At the risk of stating the obvious, movies aren’t roller coasters. They’re fifty or sixty times longer than the average ride, for a start. Perhaps more importantly, roller coasters rarely produce sequels. We can all enjoy the same movie a dozen times, but we will eventually want something fresh. Top Gun 3 can, and almost certainly will, sell itself as another no-frills thrill ride. We aren’t expecting it to take a hard turn and spend 90 minutes unpacking the complex implications of shooting at other humans in fighter jets. It’s about aerial acrobatics, masculine companionship, and looking cool in sunglasses. The challenge around Top Gun 3‘s neck is finding a way to deliver its iconography and excitement without repeating the same plot for the third time. It’s more than a roller coaster, but not by much.
I bristle a bit when I see some critics call Top Gun: Maverick the potential savior of cinema. I’d lay that description at the feet of the Barbenheimer movement long before I’d see it land on Tom Cruise. Top Gun: Maverick is fun, but it’s still based on a marketable IP and just as entangled in advertising for the US Military as any given Marvel project. I remain curious about how many sequels it would take for Top Gun to start fielding similar criticism. I argue that Top Gun 3 could be the film to find out the unpleasant answer. The next Top Gun can’t rest on its laurels, lest it wind up in the Danger Zone.
