Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick.” Paramount Pictures photo via IMDB

Wait a minute. Isn't the first rule of Oscar nominations that they have to go to movies nobody sees? 

So why is “Top Gun: Maverick” pacing predictions for a best picture nod, after recently nabbing top prizes from the Producers Guild of America and the prestigious American Film Institute? It added a best picture Golden Globe nomination earlier this week.

As opposed to so many prestige pictures presented “for your consideration” at this time of year, this one is at the other end of the spectrum. It was released last summer. It doesn't require a high IQ, or endless empathy and concern for the human condition to grasp its meaning.. It's accessible, without pandering to the lowest common denominator. You learn a lot about flying a jet fighter before it's over. It's not for a niche audience – it's for everyone. People who have told me (without my asking) that I needed to see it range from my bank teller and next-door neighbor, both older women, to my eight-year-old grandson.

Its greatness stems from honoring movies' first principle:

It's entertaining. Supremely entertaining.

Tom Cruise gambled that a new generation of hot shot pilots in the Navy's elite fighter weapons school – otherwise known as Top Gun – could once again fill movie seats, 35 years after the original blockbuster. He was also betting his cocky smile still worked in extreme close-up, even though he was pushing 60. And that he still had the right stuff – like actually being a pilot himself, and having the chutzpah to do his own stunts while micromanaging everything else – to pull it all off.

Bingo on all counts. “Top Gun: Maverick” is a work of audacity, as well as technical artistry. It's a feat of supersonic swagger. Cruise's gamble has already made a billion-and-a-half at the box office, and won him the David O. Selznick lifetime award from the PGA. Now with awards season buzz, the sky's the limit.

Cruise has graduated from acting to franchise building. His success stems from being very good at being Tom Cruise. But the film's success also stems from the quality of his co-stars – not just the rest of the cast, but the F-18s and other jets, along with the mammoth aircraft carrier and mission simulators that produce visceral emotions as rich as anything the actors are doing.

The movie deserves to be seen on the biggest screen you can find, to better appreciate the skills of director Joseph Kosinski, cinematographer Claudio Miranda, the second-unit and aerial camera crews, and especially editor Eddie Hamilton. You don't just watch, you experience this “Top Gun” in the pit of your stomach, not with the G-force the actors had to endure under Cruise's command, but enough to make you believe you're in the cockpit with them.

When we catch up with Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell at the beginning of the story, he's test piloting the Navy's newest, coolest, most amazing jet fighter. Considering that he has been part of every U.S, military operation since graduating from Top Gun himself, he should be an admiral by now. He would be, too, if he didn't have this habit of pushing things – like the Navy's newest, coolest, most amazing jet fighter – past their breaking points.

He would have been grounded, if not court martialed, a long time ago if he didn't have a friend in high places. His former nemesis, Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) did go on to earn that cluster of admiral's stars and bars. He keeps bailing Maverick out when his authority issues get him in hot water.

In this case, the hot water sends him back to Top Gun to train a new team of ace dogfighters for what truly is a mission impossible. They have to fly vintage, radar-resistant jets about one foot above the ground under bridges and through narrow valleys with straight-up walls topped by banks of missiles to a rogue state nuclear weapons site. They've got to precisely breach the target, destroy it, then get the hell out. It requires not one but two miracles to even have a chance.

The new generation of lieutenants he must shape into a team has been racially rebalanced and now includes a woman (Monica Barbaro's Natasha “Phoenix” Trace) among its most elite of elite pilots. But testosterone still provides the jet fuel for their quest to see who's the most alpha of all, whether in the cockpit or matching put-downs at the bar. Leading contenders to lead the mission are Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), son of Maverick's dear departed wingman “Goose,” vs. the insufferably confident Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell). 

With their jaunty nicknames, the characters fall on a scale between stereotypes and archetypes. They're majestically endowed creatures with lightning-fast reactions, taught to operate on instinct not intellect. Closer to earth, Jennifer Connelly plays Penny Benjamin, who owns and runs the bar by the airbase. Ed Harris and Jon Hamm answered the casting call for top brass.

Cruise is notorious for sweating the details, and it pays off, from the crack casting to the very efficient script that pays homage to the first film while bringing its themes up to date. Including Kilmer in the cast while acknowledging his real-life throat cancer is a nice touch. The writing is clean, illustrating what heroism looks like by acknowledging the doubts behind the forced bravado. It doesn't dumb down its audience but instead briefs us on the mission so we know exactly what's happening in real jet-speed time.

Everything's sleek in the world of Top Gun, from the guys playing football bare chested on the beach to the shameless product placement for Ray-Bans, Kawasaki motorcycles, vintage Porsches or, for all we know, Naval recruitment.

But what the movie's really selling – besides a great ride – is its mindset. Which is to say, if you've got it, flaunt it. 

Right, Tom?