Marvel, DC and James Cameron can still release so many blockbusters: The biggest action event of 2022 is Top Gun: Maverick. The Tom Cruise sequel also ranks high in our list of the best movies of the year. Maybe you’re just discovering the aviation drama in your home cinema or watching it again. Either way, this Top Gun 2 theory that was doing the rounds at the film’s launch this summer will be yours change the view of the story.
Your core message: Maverick is dead (almost) all of the time in Top Gun 2. In this article we explain the theory and classify it.
Top Gun: Maverick – Trailer 3 (German) HD
The cornerstones of the Top Gun 2 theory at a glance
The Top Gun 2 theory in detail
The theory was put forward by Alison Willmore of Vulture. Let’s start at the beginning: We meet Maverick more than three decades after the events of Top Gun – they fear neither death nor devil again. He is a test pilot for hypersonic aircraft in the US Navy. The order: It should reach Mach 10. At the last minute he achieves the required speed, but increases it to Mach 10.4 and the plane tears up in the air. Maverick parachuted to safety and landed almost unscathed in the Mojave Desert.
This is where the theory comes in. Because this crash at speed is difficult, actually impossible, to survive even with a parachute. maverick got to to have died. The fact that he was not injured only reinforces the surreal impression. Much more likely: Maverick is actually dead and we only experience the last flashes of his dying brain in the film.
Why the theory is so compelling
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In the film, Maverick returns to the elite Top Gun flight school as an instructor after the crash. He is to prepare a new squad for an explosive mission. This is how Alison Willmore describes her view of the plot. What is easier to believe?
1: “That Maverick survived the accident unharmed, the consequences of another disobeying of orders, which destroyed what must have been a very expensive flying machine, circumnavigated and
to the place of his greatest triumph
ordered back to tie up loose ends, hook up with his teenage girlfriend and prove he’s still the best?”
2: “Or that these are all hallucinations, coming from the last firings of the synapses of an aging aviator being scattered over the horizon among the wreckage of his jet?”
Which speaks for the theory
Maverick meets many companions or their phantoms. There’s Miles Teller as Goose’s son, Rooster. Maverick’s best friend died on a flight together, he never got over the course of the accident and the loss, even delaying Rooster’s flying career. Maverick works through his trauma to save Rooster in Top Gun 2
Which speaks against the theory
But Top Gun 2 is without a doubt built like a dream. We are reliving the events of 30 years ago, only through the thick honey veil of sentimentality. That’s why director Joseph Kosinski has absolutely no objections to the interpretation:
I love the theory and of course there is a mythic element to the story that leads to this sort of interpretation. It’s based on who Maverick is, what he represents, and the fact that he’s going through that rite of passage at a different stage in his life.
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