Tom Cruise was never an actor you could warm up to the way you could Brad Pitt or even Johnny Depp. He always came across as cold and aloof. But, here he is the rage of Cannes and for that matter the world over, as Top Gun: Maverick soars to the top of the box office, displacing Dr. Strange and his Multiverse of Madness. I wasn't left with any great impression of the first Top Gun so won't bother with the new one. Personally, I think Hollywood has a golden opportunity with The Ghost of Kyiv, a far more compelling story than this rubbish.
Yet, the critics have fawned over Top Gun too. Even the Village Voice was surprisingly enthusiastic, calling it a "blockbuster joyride." I suppose it does provide its vicarious thrills for those who dream of racing across the skies in an F/A-18, but I think comparing Cruise to Nureyev is a bit much, especially since the latter didn't need a hypersonic jet to defy gravity.
There were some beefs, like why didn't the producers invite back Kelly McGillis? She was Maverick's love interest in the first movie? Apparently, she hadn't aged well and so they decided to bring in the equally ageless Jennifer Connelly as the "old flame" who now runs a bar near the Air Force base where she is reunited with Maverick. However, this is another "bromance," which a young Quentin Tarrantino hilariously summed up in regard to the original movie. Don't ask, don't tell.
Hollywood seems to be back in full form, churning out the blockbusters once again with more epic summer films, or should I say epochal films, on the event horizon. No longer are the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park confined to their island. We will see them running loose through the streets of New York.
This nostalgia for the 80s is everywhere with a lot of people forgetting how horrible it was at the movies at the time. Hollywood seemed in the doldrums, giving rise to independent filmmakers like Jonathon Demme and Jim Jarmusch. With Ray Liotta's recent death, I recalled his first major role in Demme's Something Wild. Probably the best movie I remember at the old cineramas with their wrap-around screens was Blade Runner. Otherwise, it was midnight movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and watching old movies like Gilda at the university film school. All that changed with the fall of the Soviet Union, opening up new markets in Russia and Eastern Europe. Hollywood was reborn thanks to an influx of new talent.
I remember going to the little videoteka in Vilnius that had pirate copies of all the latest Hollywood films on VCR. Most were rather poor quality, dubbed over in Lithuanian with a single monotone voice, as the market was still considered too small to support a multiplex theater. It was the same all over Eastern Europe. For the most part it was Russian and Eastern European films at the movie theaters, as that was all the owners could afford. Eventually, Coca-Cola saved the day, underwriting the city's first multiplex and we could see Hollywood films in stunning technicolor with original voices intact. One local film critic lamented that this would be the death of Eastern European cinema.
Fortunately, Eastern European film survived, albeit through transformation. It could no longer hope to hold audiences with the same narratives of the Soviet era, so offered engaging new stories often centered on the corruption and crime that emerged from the ashes of the old order in such films like Brother that was a big hit at the time. In the sequel, the Brother went to Chicago. Even Lithuania's heralded auteur, Šarūnas Bartas, couldn't resist making a gangster movie in Eastern Drift. I had really enjoyed his film, House, which captured the end of the Soviet era in all its irony. Nothing could compete with Titanic however, which washed over the screens in 1997.
Today, there are a multiverse of multiplexes in Lithuania, some with as many as ten screens. Maybe more now, as I haven't been to the movies in a long time, content to stream them at home. I was tempted to go see Dune when it came out but otherwise meh.
I much prefer quirky productions like when The Kronos Quartet came to Vilnius and provided the accompanying score to Dracula, which Phillip Glass had written. That was truly an event! Michael Nyman did the same with Man With a Movie Camera, which he staged at the Philharmonic. It reminded me of the times I would go the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington and watch string quartets and small orchestras provide the music for classic silent films. Not so long ago, Bill Frisell came and provided amusing accompaniment to Buster Keaton short films. This to me is a far more engaging experience.
I was reading how Giorgio Moroder went through several bands before settling on Berlin to sing Take My Breath Away, his theme song for Top Gun. He had scored a number of big films in the 1980s including American Gigolo with Blondie singing his theme song Call Me. He had given Debbie Harry a little more leeway in writing the lyrics than he had Terri Nunn. He also took a stab at scoring Metropolis anew with all the top bands of the era. This time around, Harold Faltermeyer got to do the honors, bringing in Lady Gaga to sing the title track for Maverick.
I've got to say the P-51 Mustang is a nice touch. It was my favorite plane as a kid. I would draw them to no end in the margins of my spelling tests as I waited for the teacher to give the next word. The military base nearby would put on aviation shows and I remember seeing one for the first time and it literally took my breath away. I was maybe 10 at the time.
But then Tom Cruise miraculously doesn't seem to show his age. As my wife noted, if you look at him from the side he doesn't look like he has aged at all. A virtual Dorian Gray. Unfortunately, you can't say the same for Val Kilmer. He's had a rough time of it since the first Top Gun, but apparently Tom was adamant his buddy Iceman returneth for the long overdue sequel. Given its monumental success at the box office, I'm sure there will be another one in the works soon. Who knows, maybe Tom will fly into Ukraine and save the day, shooting down all those Russian MiGs like The Ghost of Kyiv, and restoring the country to its original borders. We can only wait and see.
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