Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022)

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captveg
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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#26 Post by captveg » Thu Jul 18, 2019 7:07 pm

I'm there simply because I want to continue to see Tom Cruise learn how to do crazy things like fly jet fighters for his movies.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#27 Post by bdsweeney » Thu Jul 18, 2019 7:53 pm

At least they look like real planes in the real sky.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#28 Post by bearcuborg » Thu Jul 18, 2019 9:37 pm

Fingers crossed they bring back Charlie Sheen’s Topper Harley for the spoof...

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#29 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:34 am

cdnchris wrote:
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Chris, please change DarkImbecile's custom rank to "Don't talk about my visible cat breasts"
OK, I won't
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You know what, I'm not going back in the closet: change it to "Ask me about my visible cat breasts"
OK, I will
Be aware that you are still allowed to be on Tumblr due to their allowance for 'non-human genitals'. Which is presumably part of why we are now in a world where the Cats film is a real thing.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#30 Post by captveg » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:44 pm

bearcuborg wrote:
Thu Jul 18, 2019 9:37 pm
Fingers crossed they bring back Charlie Sheen’s Topper Harley for the spoof...
I would totally be in for a new Hot Shots!, but then I suspect I'd be immediately disappointed when watching the film. (I'm holding out hope that Bill & Ted Face the Music doesn't do this to me).

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#31 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Tue Jul 23, 2019 3:26 pm

Aren't the Zucker's right-wingers themselves? And I doubt Charlie Sheen could hold up as a leading man in anything anymore. Plus the 2nd one was perfect.

War, it's fantastic!

(I will probably be first in line to see Top Gun: Maverick though)

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#32 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jul 23, 2019 3:27 pm

I think one of them is, not sure if both are

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#33 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jul 24, 2019 10:42 am

At the very least, this being a Joseph Kosinski film, we know that it will likely have a couple of good flying sequences and a great score!

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#34 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Wed Jul 24, 2019 12:42 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Wed Jul 24, 2019 10:42 am
At the very least, this being a Joseph Kosinski film, we know that it will likely have a couple of good flying sequences and a great score!
I would expect Justice to do the score for this film!

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#35 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Dec 16, 2019 10:28 am


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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#36 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Mar 15, 2022 12:15 am


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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#37 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue May 31, 2022 12:25 pm

This is one of those cases where both sides of the general critical response are simultaneously true — much like the original film, Top Gun: Maverick is both top-notch blockbuster filmmaking driven by increasingly rare true star power AND thinly veiled can-do American jingoist propaganda — and where you land on Kosinski's sequel ultimately comes down to a very subjective question of which overpowers the other for you.

When it comes to the original (which I discovered upon rewatching last week I had actually never seen all in one sitting, despite it being so culturally ubiquitous during my childhood that I knew all the major plot beats and lines by heart), there's something about the Reagan era context that makes its unsavory traits stand out more prominently than the sweaty sexiness and aerial suspense. For every moment that delivers an adrenaline (or other hormone) boost, there are two others that make you wince.

Maverick, meanwhile, appears in a cinematic context in which its utility as a military recruitment tool seems less important than Kosinski and Cruise's ability to play the audience like a synthesizer, relying on big emotional beats, spectacular aerial cinematography (or at least green screen fakery so well-done as to be indistinguishable from strapping a camera to the outside of a jet), and just the right amount of nostalgia to give the whole thing a pleasantly bittersweet flavor for people who grew up with both the Cold War and Tom Cruise as an unadulterated movie star. I can't exactly put my finger on how it does it, but the ridiculousness of the Pentagon-approved script somehow manages to ride the perilous line between the kind of absurdity that invites eye-rolling disdain and the bland four-quadrant agreeability that makes most other big budget summer blockbusters so forgettable immediately upon leaving the theater.

Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, and the rest of the cast do excellent work at being beautiful and/or hypermasculine, and Kosinski handles the camaraderie and testosterone-fueled rivalry elements just as well as the action sequences, the sound and rollercoaster intensity of which make the IMAX surcharge more than worth it if you have the opportunity. There are just enough moments of levity and emoting to balance out the action, and the script is appropriately rooted in the original without being too obnoxiously reverential or a pure rerun. Like the Mission: Impossible movies (not entirely surprising as Christopher McQuarrie serves as one of the screenwriters and producers here as well), Maverick pulls off the magic trick of making Tom Cruise out to be both something of a benevolent demigod and a charming underdog hero, slightly subverting his on-screen image for laughs and dramatic tension while by the end of the film fully reinforcing it.

If you can't set aside your reservations about the flag-waving militaristic excess and wallow in the not-too-dumb fun and audio-visual overstimulation, I wouldn't hold it against you, but if you have the moral/intellectual flexibility, this will probably be the best bombastic studio spectacle you see all year. It may be a guilty pleasure, but at a time when overly aggressive American militarism is shockingly low on our list of global and domestic problems, maybe this is the rare window where one can safely emphasize the pleasure more than the guilt.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#38 Post by Walter Kurtz » Tue May 31, 2022 1:38 pm

This is the best thing I've ever read on this site.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#39 Post by colinr0380 » Tue May 31, 2022 2:26 pm

I am most curious about comparing this film (when I get to see it) against not just the first Top Gun but to Kosinki's earlier film Only The Brave, which also starred Miles Teller and Jennifer Connelly (and has one of the same screenwriters) and was similarly a big recruitment tool valorising hyper-masculine heroics, though in that case firefighters and based on a true (and downbeat) story.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#40 Post by beamish14 » Tue May 31, 2022 3:03 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 12:25 pm
This is one of those cases where both sides of the general critical response are simultaneously true — much like the original film, Top Gun: Maverick is both top-notch blockbuster filmmaking driven by increasingly rare true star power AND thinly veiled can-do American jingoist propaganda — and where you land on Kosinski's sequel ultimately comes down to a very subjective question of which overpowers the other for you.

When it comes to the original (which I discovered upon rewatching last week I had actually never seen all in one sitting, despite it being so culturally ubiquitous during my childhood that I knew all the major plot beats and lines by heart), there's something about the Reagan era context that makes its unsavory traits stand out more prominently than the sweaty sexiness and aerial suspense. For every moment that delivers an adrenaline (or other hormone) boost, there are two others that make you wince.

Maverick, meanwhile, appears in a cinematic context in which its utility as a military recruitment tool seems less important than Kosinski and Cruise's ability to play the audience like a synthesizer, relying on big emotional beats, spectacular aerial cinematography (or at least green screen fakery so well-done as to be indistinguishable from strapping a camera to the outside of a jet), and just the right amount of nostalgia to give the whole thing a pleasantly bittersweet flavor for people who grew up with both the Cold War and Tom Cruise as an unadulterated movie star. I can't exactly put my finger on how it does it, but the ridiculousness of the Pentagon-approved script somehow manages to ride the perilous line between the kind of absurdity that invites eye-rolling disdain and the bland four-quadrant agreeability that makes most other big budget summer blockbusters so forgettable immediately upon leaving the theater.

Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, and the rest of the cast do excellent work at being beautiful and/or hypermasculine, and Kosinski handles the camaraderie and testosterone-fueled rivalry elements just as well as the action sequences, the sound and rollercoaster intensity of which make the IMAX surcharge more than worth it if you have the opportunity. There are just enough moments of levity and emoting to balance out the action, and the script is appropriately rooted in the original without being too obnoxiously reverential or a pure rerun. Like the Mission: Impossible movies (not entirely surprising as Christopher McQuarrie serves as one of the screenwriters and producers here as well), Maverick pulls off the magic trick of making Tom Cruise out to be both something of a benevolent demigod and a charming underdog hero, slightly subverting his on-screen image for laughs and dramatic tension while by the end of the film fully reinforcing it.

If you can't set aside your reservations about the flag-waving militaristic excess and wallow in the not-too-dumb fun and audio-visual overstimulation, I wouldn't hold it against you, but if you have the moral/intellectual flexibility, this will probably be the best bombastic studio spectacle you see all year. It may be a guilty pleasure, but at a time when overly aggressive American militarism is shockingly low on our list of global and domestic problems, maybe this is the rare window where one can safely emphasize the pleasure more than the guilt.

My partner saw Jerry Bruckheimer/Ridley Scott’s 2003 propaganda piece Black Hawk Down during its opening weekend and she said that the audience’s cheering and clapping at Americans butchering Somalis is one of the most unsettling experiences she’s ever had with a crowd.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#41 Post by colinr0380 » Tue May 31, 2022 3:07 pm

Amusingly Black Hawk Down was written by the other co-writer of Only The Brave! (The one who did not go on to Top Gun: Maverick)

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#42 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue May 31, 2022 3:31 pm

beamish14 wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 3:03 pm
My partner saw Jerry Bruckheimer/Ridley Scott’s 2003 propaganda piece Black Hawk Down during its opening weekend and she said that the audience’s cheering and clapping at Americans butchering Somalis is one of the most unsettling experiences she’s ever had with a crowd.
Yeah, there’s nothing as invested in bloody vengeance as the Scott movie (which actually came out in 2001 only a few months after 9/11, and I remember being uncomfortable with it in that context as well). This has both upsides and downsides, as the bloodless violence inflicted on a faceless, unnamed enemy state doesn’t evoke anything like the specific discomfort of watching a first world military slaughter Africans in one of the most underdeveloped nations in the world, but one of the absurd conceits of Maverick is the idea that a nameless ‘rogue state’ also has an advanced nuclear program and fighter jets so advanced that they ‘level the playing field’ with the U.S. military. Basically the script contorts itself to the edges of credulity to make the Americans the underdogs against as generic an enemy as possible: like I said, your tolerance of this kind of jingoist fantasy may vary, so consume with caution.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#43 Post by Persona » Tue May 31, 2022 6:23 pm

It's an effective flick. Kermode called it "mechanical" but a machine that works, and I think that's about as apt a description as any.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#44 Post by Never Cursed » Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:52 am

These are an interesting pair of blockbusters for my tastes because I dislike them for reasons totally beyond that “bland four-quadrant agreeability” that DarkImbecile mentions: they have a genuine point of interest in the practical accomplishment of their action sequences (in much the same vein as the Mission: Impossibles, and here as there, Cruise must be seen as the central creative figure of this new one) as well as a two-step tonal disaster built into their emotional requirements that neither film can properly address. The shortest way of saying it I think is that both movies are too silly until a switch is flipped and they become too serious.

The overwhelming majority of Top Gun, and a smaller but still majoritarian part of the sequel, is pure carefree imperialistic strutting, a devolution of the process of the preparation for war into games and sports and the goofy pursuit of somewhat masculine-coded girls. It’s all very high school football drama/shounen anime in the pettily competitive social dynamics, which is to a point fine, but this same mood is totally incongruous with the heroic pathos parts, the dewy-eyed “my dad served with your dad” bits and moments of portentous self-doubt that cannot possibly effectively play for drama when the film’s characters (and approving treatment thereof) are so consciously juvenile. The films may very well depict characters who are the best at what they do (an approach well-served by Tom Cruise’s real-world mastery of both fighter planes and movie star image self-replication), but their attempts to make pseudo-Hawksian lead figures, people who emotionally convince us that they are the best and that they have to be the best, falls flat with such an approach.

Even though I like Cruise’s presence, my favorite of the flying characters in these two movies was Lewis Pullman’s reserved, nerdy, unpretentious Bob. The only intended function of his personality and attitude is to serve as a comic foil to the more aggressively egotistical pilots, but his persistent humility and his refusal to showboat or deviate from his assigned task in the face of incredibly long odds made me respect him in a way that I never could respect the swaggering dicks of “Maverick” or “Iceman” or “Hangman” or “Rooster,” the last of which is literally a synonym for “cock!” The Brian Johnson or Randall Schwab Jr. of this film comes off as better-suited for this mission of manliness than the macho “men” with whom he contrasts because he’s effectively the only adult in a world of kids.

That’s one half of the tonal issue of these films, which is a problem in itself, but only compounds upon the larger two-part problem when considered alongside the manner in which
Spoilers for both Top Gun and Top Gun: MaverickShow
the two movies both end in what might as well be World War III. I know that the second one emphasizes the stakes of the mission throughout the movie, but everything that deals with what the pilots end up doing with their training is given a terrifying sense of urgency and brutal threat that is impossible to resolve with the casualness of all that came before. Maybe I would believe that this aspect of these films is deliberate, that it mimics the suddenness with which modern war shifts from relaxation to potentially world-ending bloodshed, if I was convinced that their characters had any understanding of the weight of their actions. How can Tom Cruise bear with such agony the accidental or natural death of one of his own while processing the sights of enemy pilots exploding or missiles hitting runways staffed by hundreds as so much TV static? I don’t mean this from the empathetic perspective; I understand that part of a soldier’s job is to suppress their ability to care about the people whose lives they end and I don’t uniquely blame these films for that. But the dissonance between the wiseacrey attitudes of these pilots and the way those attitudes are employed to soften the fact that the pilots are attacking nuclear-capable or almost nuclear-capable nations is not one these films show any ability or intention of repairing. These two movies have a real tonal whiplash to them; the implications of their events really sting upon close examination.
As a postscript, I just want to stress that I’m not trying to artistically shame these films for the political-legitimation work they’re doing; I don’t give a damn (at least not in this context) that they paint the U.S. military in an aspirationally rosy light. I care here about the political aspects of these films only in terms of what they do to them as works.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022)

#45 Post by zaladane » Wed Jun 01, 2022 10:06 am

What's the level of simmering homoeroticism in the sequel compared to the original? That will prob drive my decision to see it or not (I'm looking for an answer simliar to "A lot!")

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#46 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jun 01, 2022 11:13 am

Never Cursed wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:52 am
It’s all very high school football drama/shounen anime in the pettily competitive social dynamics, which is to a point fine, but this same mood is totally incongruous with the heroic pathos parts, the dewy-eyed “my dad served with your dad” bits and moments of portentous self-doubt that cannot possibly effectively play for drama when the film’s characters (and approving treatment thereof) are so consciously juvenile.
I haven't seen the new film (and I don't like the original and remember very little about it), but it's interesting you draw comparisons to anime, as - in my admittedly-thin experience with certain anime series - they often do draw a fair-handed congruous balance between initially competitive social dynamics and deep-rooted vulnerable emotional cores related to insecurities and family histories that are relatable amongst their previously-antagonist peers. I'm not saying that Top Gun earns the punch these series do, but it doesn't feel entirely problematic as a narrative trajectory linking up characterizations, where people who saw one another as enemies are able to shed their egos for the sake of sensitive camaraderie, subverting the faux-heroics into lucid juvenilia. Though I get the feeling that it's the particulars of Top Gun that inhibit the successful payoff of such a change- perhaps a lazier attempt to have one's cake and eat it too whereas those series take economical strides to deserve the evolution...

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020)

#47 Post by Never Cursed » Wed Jun 01, 2022 12:32 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 11:13 am
Never Cursed wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:52 am
It’s all very high school football drama/shounen anime in the pettily competitive social dynamics, which is to a point fine, but this same mood is totally incongruous with the heroic pathos parts, the dewy-eyed “my dad served with your dad” bits and moments of portentous self-doubt that cannot possibly effectively play for drama when the film’s characters (and approving treatment thereof) are so consciously juvenile.
I haven't seen the new film (and I don't like the original and remember very little about it), but it's interesting you draw comparisons to anime, as - in my admittedly-thin experience with certain anime series - they often do draw a fair-handed congruous balance between initially competitive social dynamics and deep-rooted vulnerable emotional cores related to insecurities and family histories that are relatable amongst their previously-antagonist peers. I'm not saying that Top Gun earns the punch these series do, but it doesn't feel entirely problematic as a narrative trajectory linking up characterizations, where people who saw one another as enemies are able to shed their egos for the sake of sensitive camaraderie, subverting the faux-heroics into lucid juvenilia. Though I get the feeling that it's the particulars of Top Gun that inhibit the successful payoff of such a change- perhaps a lazier attempt to have one's cake and eat it too whereas those series take economical strides to deserve the evolution...
Oh I don't have any issue with that narrative structure in and of itself, it's more that the Top Guns are so unbelievably self-unaware - the surface-level of these films doesn't work if the audience is not sincerely convinced of the awesomeness of what are ultimately a bunch of very juvenile people posturing at adulthood. These movies are stylistically quite tame compared to the look of an average shounen anime, but I find that the best of those works are more willing to either use the brash youthfulness of its main characters in the service of more interesting developments or at least provide some moments of levity at the expense of the milieu. These are directions that the Top Guns, for a multitude of reasons, just can't take; to save the projects of the gigantic action blockbuster and the military recruitment vehicle, all perceived routes to subversivity must be closed off ("Don't think, if you think up there, you're dead," our hero intones). (I think this is why the most popular subversive reading of the first film, that relating to its perceived homoeroticism, depends so much on finding elements that are understood to have been placed in the film unintentionally - it is a reading that attempts to subvert the rather heterosexual stated aims of the movie itself, not just the world depicted within). To put this in other terms, imagine if Neon Genesis Evangelion did not have its halfway-mark turn into hell and instead grew to care on the most straightforward and boring level about the pilots, eschewing the examination of what it means for them to be soldiers in favor of bolstering the "coolness" of what they're doing. If the series ended with Shinji and Asuka getting back from the final mission, whereupon Asuka gives Shinji a hug and says "you can be my wingman anytime" as the sun sets and the water is all twinkly, that would not convince me of the awesomeness of the whole enterprise.
zaladane wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 10:06 am
What's the level of simmering homoeroticism in the sequel compared to the original? That will prob drive my decision to see it or not (I'm looking for an answer simliar to "A lot!")
It more or less does what the original film does in this respect. There's now a female pilot in a sports bra present during the sports montage, but all the other pilots are still shirtless testosterone-fueled beefcakes. Humorously enough, the actual (het) sex scene in this new one has no shots of the two having sex, basically turning into a conversation with a punchline centering around Cruise getting dressed. Does this answer the question/sell a ticket?

If you do see it, you probably should try and find the biggest screen you can - the flying sequences are very impressive in IMAX.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022)

#48 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Jun 02, 2022 5:24 pm

Bilge Ebiri interviews Kosinski for Vulture
What were the logistics of shooting the plane scenes? As I understand, they were operating the cameras themselves?

Well, they weren’t operating them. The cameras were fixed. It was six cameras in the cockpit, two facing forward over the Navy pilot, four facing backward at the actor. Different compositions, different lenses, all wired to one switch that turned them all on and off. Every morning, we’d start with a two-hour brief with all the actors, all the Navy pilots, myself, Tom, the DP Claudio Miranda, the editor Eddie Hamilton, and we’d go through every single storyboard, every single scene, every line of what we needed to achieve that day. Weather, safety, terrain, light placement. It was very tedious — it would bore you to tears. Then I would take the pilot and the actor who was flying down to a mock-up of the F-18 cockpit with a mock-up of the dashboard, the switch, the camera, and everything. They’d sit in their positions, and I’d walk them through the day. “This line, you’re going to look to the right, you’re going to say, ‘Break right.’” That kind of stuff. It’s just, again, very tedious. We’d rehearse for an hour until it was muscle memory. They would go up, fly for an hour, do the footage, come back. We’d load the cards into a monitor; we’d all watch it together. Very high pressure for the actor. And every time they did something wrong, give them a note. When they did something right, we’d cheer for them. When they threw up, we’d cheer. It was a great team-building environment. And we’d send them up again in the afternoon. It felt like we did that for months until we had all the shots we needed.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022)

#49 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Jun 08, 2022 12:19 am

I liked this. It’s simple enough storytelling carried out on a level of competency that sometimes is tricky to find in even dumber material then what is laid out here, and to the credit of every single actor on screen they make even laughable material serious enough as not to give you much to chew on except the idea for example that Cruise and Connelly have exceptional chemistry, and could see them do a film that relies more on that.

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Re: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022)

#50 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:15 pm

Better than the first, which is saying very little because one is awful for trying and failing to be something that excels what it is, and the other is self-actualized in its function as a jingoist programmer. If that’s the best we can do with age, so be it! The only aspect that occasionally disturbed my apathy to the numbed formula in action was the continual validation in Connelly’s screen presence. I’ve been vocal about my confusion regarding her neglect from Hollywood's spotlight in recent years- she’s still gorgeous and has star power, and big budget recognition feels like a hat tip

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