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Paul Wells has been a political analyst for nearly 30 years. He wrote especially for Maclean’sthe Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, and collaborates on numerous radio and television programs, in English and French. He publishes a newsletter devoted to Canadian politics, culture and journalism.
All films are fantasies. Once the lights are out, justice triumphs, problems are solved, lessons are condensed enough to be applied before the final scene. Even auteur cinema rearranges reality in an irresistible way. The main character always has a clever line in store, the clumsy nerd always experiences a clumsy nerd redemption.
At the other end of the cinematic spectrum, if superhero films have dominated the last decade, it’s because they offer the spectacle of magnified, concentrated and – even more seductively – simplified power. In real life, it is impossible to have certainties; the Avengers fix that. On one side, three guys brandishing a hammer, a shield and a credit card. On the other, a guy trying to snap his fingers. Finally, a conflict that we can understand. That the aftermath of their big fight was temporarily slowed by COVID-19—a global catastrophe that we’re still trying to explain, to no avail—only underscores how far apart the Marvel universe is from the one in which we are stuck.
I’m thinking about it all ’cause I finally saw Top Gun: Maverick last night. It’s a nice film. Go see it if you haven’t already. And be prepared to receive astonished looks from your children when you raise your fist during the fight scenes. “Dad, are you okay? »
The mystery is why Top Gun: Maverick will exceed Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness inasmuch as highest grossing movie of the year, why it’s the biggest movie of Tom Cruise’s dream career, and why it currently strikes such a chord, even though its premise, visual vocabulary, and soundtrack are 36 years old. Let’s think about it: in terms of chronological distance from the Top Gun original, it’s as if the highest-grossing film of 1986 was a sequel to the musical Annie Get Your Gun from 1950.
The most obvious hypothesis is that maverick is so eye-catching that it allows us to leave our brains at home and simply enjoy the show. But a lot of bad movies went just as hard at it, like The Matrix: Revolutions and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and they did not interest anyone. So there must be a more complex explanation.
Is maverick triumphs because it corresponds to the spirit woke of the time ? The answer is no. The film only vaguely refers to the 21st century.e century. None of the young recruits interrupts the action to acknowledge their privileges or specify the pronouns they want us to use about them. When the film makes rare concessions to the cultural evolution that has taken place since the days of MTV, it is not to address the fights of today, but rather to refuse to engage in them. These young pilots, of different genders and backgrounds, are incredibly interchangeable in every other way. One of them multiplies the smirks, another sports a mustache, the others have no distinctive sign. (When half of the recruits are dropped from the big mission after 90 minutes, there is no dramatic effect, as they are indistinguishable from each other. “Sorry, Character A, I decided to ‘go with Character B.’) In this film, no one under the age of 30 makes love for pleasure or for the purpose of procreation. Longing for intimate contact is obviously something only old people do, like writing in attached letters or owning books.
On the cultural level, maverick is so close to tabula rasa that there is no real reason to analyze it from this angle. But on another level, it brilliantly fulfills the primary function of popular art: oversimplification.
That’s what I understood when I realized that the character of Tom Cruise, despite his rebellious airs, is a civil servant.
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Top Gun: Maverick is a film about the operations of a large modern state. It’s a film about public policy. Its main message represents a tremendous denial of reality, a cathartic feat worthy of the Avengers. Just as superhero movies offer a universe in which we can finally distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, maverick proposes a world where modern governments are able to achieve something.
My vision of the film is perhaps influenced by the fact that I work in Ottawa. Since 2017, I write variations around a simple question: can Justin Trudeau carry out a project? I am far from the only one asking myself this question, which moreover does not only concern Trudeau, Ottawa or Canada. Much has been written about the chaos at Canadian airports, but last week the FinancialTimes published an in-depth report on the global airport chaos that did not even mention Canada. Joe Biden promised to build back better (“ Build Back Better “); it’s not going very well. In France, Emmanuel Macron is the first president to be re-elected in 20 years, a real achievement, but it’s not going so well no more. Brexit in the UK? Let’s not even talk about it.
A generic term for the ability of governments to get things done is “state capacity”, and scholarly literature vaguely hints that it is in decline. Well, the real world being what it is, every element of this assertion — that state capacity is in decline, that it can be measured, the very fact that it exists in measurable form — is questionable. . Still, it all seems true, doesn’t it?
The world has never been perfect, and in many ways it was worse in the past. But before, we had the feeling that it was possible to improve it, whereas now, we have the impression that everyone is shooting blindly, crossing their fingers.
The pandemic was a masterful demonstration of this. Our Prime Minister, who prides himself on his ability to breathe in the spirit of the times, has instructed three successive federal health ministers to tackle the issue of tobacco product packaging. Then, the greatest public health disaster in our history befell us; there was nothing about it in the mandate letters. And it’s hard to blame anyone. All the chaos that followed has its roots in the original chaos. Real life has no script. Like Homer Simpson said, life is just a lot of things that happen.
But in Top Gun: Maverick, it’s completely different! Here is the plot of the film in summary. The government detects a very big problem. His diagnosis is correct. He finds how to solve the problem. His plan is good. Twenty minutes into the film, Tom Cruise is briefed on the situation using simple primary color graphics. He and his recruits spend most of the film training to carry out the plan their bosses handed to them. Then they execute it. And the plan is working.
My God, but this is heaven compared to how things are in real life! No complications are tolerated in the story. How do we know the wicked are wicked? Because we are told they are. Who are they ? “It’s none of your business, soldier. » Is there anything unpredictable around the item to be destroyed, which the villains have kindly designed in the shape of a target? No. Should Americans Act? in the dark to avoid offending local sensitivities or provoking a grumpy autocrat? Let’s go! Maverick and his young proteges don’t even need modern jet fighters. They’re happy to fly rusty F-18s almost as old as the movie soundtrack. Their cause is so pure that they happily fly into danger using the kind of equipment that is usually reserved for Canadians.
At first I wondered if Top Gun: Maverick was an ode to the Reagan era, when America believed it was advancing a certain idea of good and freedom in the world. But this is a political argument, and the film doesn’t have the slightest ounce of politics in it. That’s why we never learn who the bad guys are, and why the fight ends after just one battle. The America portrayed here is not a country that wants to “help,” nor even a country that wonders what that help might look like. It’s just a country that kicks its ass and does what it has to do.
Watching this movie made me want to see Tom tackle other issues in future sequels. In Top Gun: Customs control, Tom and a team of elite architects are building an airport that doesn’t destroy your soul with queues. In Top Gun: Visionaries, Tom’s infrastructure budget builds things that really make people’s lives better. In Top Gun: Industrial spinoffs, Tom and his young colleagues manage to buy a frigate and two helicopters before their grandchildren retire. In Top Gun: Official ResidencePrime Minister Tom Cruise chooses where he will live.
Of course, some storylines would test the credulity of even the most enthusiastic audience. The only arena in which Cruise is allowed to win is the very restricted one of military prowess. No other could even be plausibly caricatured.
***
Another production released this year built its narrative on declining state capacity, rather than pretending as Top Gun that the phenomenon does not exist. This is the movie The Batman, by Matt Reeves. His caped young antihero calls himself “Vengeance” and wanders around Gotham City beating up people who have committed various misdeeds. Unfortunately, like those who wrote Trudeau’s mandate letters, he has no idea what will happen next. He cannot solve the riddles posed by the Sphinx, unless the latter provides him with the answers. And when the Sphinx hatches her evil plan, Batman is powerless to stop her.
The Batman is a film about bullshit. The only character who understands this is the Sphinx. He kills members of Gotham’s corrupt ruling class, calling them “sneaky, phony assholes”. The true face of Gotham, he tells Batman, is “corruption, perversion hiding under the guise of renewal.” The central event of the film is a municipal election in which no vote, even for the young and telegenic aspiring mayor, will change anything. It is a deeply cynical work, but its cynicism is not gratuitous, it stems from an entirely contemporary lassitude. The only concession of Batman to optimism is the final transformation of its main character, who stops trying to understand society and is content to heal the wounds of the city. Batman, unlike real-world leaders, finally admits his limitations. Luckily for him, he doesn’t have to run for re-election, and that may be what will save him.
I loved The Batman more than I expected, but it’s a depressing movie. Conversely, Top Gun: Maverick is the heartwarming movie of the summer. It’s a classic in the “we take action” genre. Hopefully our leaders will see it.
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