Why 'Top Gun: Maverick' Is Secretly A 'Star Wars' Movie
This article contains spoilers for Top Gun: Maverick … also Star Wars.
Top Gun: Maverick is a lot of things; an advertisement for the U.S. Navy, an allegorical treatise on Tom Cruise’s place in the Hollywood blockbuster ecosystem, a showcase for the film’s breakout star: Miles Teller’s ‘80s stache. Also, it’s … a Star Wars movie? In many ways, Maverick’s Star Wars-iness lives up to the promise of the original Top Gun. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer first envisioned the project as “Star Wars on Earth.” But somehow along the way, they lost that sense of old-school adventure in favor of schoolboy competitiveness, sexy unprofessionalism, and hot beach volleyball.
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We’ve mentioned before that the recent Scream reboot took its cues from the iconic sci-fi franchise, and Top Gun: Maverick does something similar. For starters, the film builds to an ending in which our heroes pilot small fighters in order to blow up a potentially deadly facility. No, the plans for the enemy base weren’t hidden inside any wacky robots (unfortunately) but the mission does involve navigating a literal trench run and shooting a minuscule target. Sound familiar?
Even more specifically, Goose’s son Rooster makes the shot because he takes Maverick’s advice and starts feeling instead of thinking, using only his intuition when the laser guiding system malfunctions. Which is not unlike Luke turning off his targeting system to blow up the Death Star.
And in both Star Wars and Top Gun: Maverick, the hero seems momentarily doomed – until the selfish bad boy character (Han Solo and Hangman, respectively) unexpectedly swoops in out of nowhere and blows up the enemy ship, saving the day.
Not to mention that Maverick is essentially an Obi-Wan-like figure to Rooster; an older mentor who knew his dead father – or supposedly dead, in the case of Star Wars. For this comparison to completely fit perfectly, we’d have to find out that Admiral Jon Hamm was secretly Goose the whole time in the next movie.
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Top Image: Paramount/Lucasfilm
