Tom Cruise is known for several big movies, but for many people, he is loved for his role as Maverick in the military action film Top Gun. While the original movie is widely considered a beloved classic, much of that is nostalgia, and it took 36 years to justify its reputation. While the original Top Gun has good qualities, it has always been highly overrated.
In Top Gun, Tom Cruise played a young Navy pilot in the TOPGUN flight program whose arrogance ultimately led to the death of his best friend and flight partner in an in-flight accident. It took 36 years for Top Gun’s sequel, which saw Maverick taking his life lessons and trying to help the next generation, including the son of his ᴅᴇᴀᴅ best friend.
Top Gun Isn’t Tom Cruise’s Best Movie (It Isn’t Even His Best Movie From 1986)
Top Gun hit theaters in 1986, one of two Tom Cruise movies that year. While Top Gun was a hit, most of it was the frenetic Tony Scott directing style, the high-octane action scenes, and the rocking music soundtrack. While that is all great, it is style over substance, and it wasn’t even the best Cruise movie in 1986.
The same year Tom Cruise starred in the first Top Gun, he also starred in the sequel to The Hustler. Much like how Top Gun took 36 years to get a sequel, The Color of Money was released 25 years after The Hustler, with Paul Newman returning to show where he ended up in life after that original masterpiece.
While The Hustler remains the superior of the two movies in that franchise, Martin Scorsese did a fantastic job in directing The Color of Money as one of the best long-awaited sequels in movie history. Top Gun: Maverick showed that Maverick was still struggling years later, and the same thing happened in The Color of Money with Newman’s Fast Eddie.
Paul Newman won his only Oscar for The Color of Money, after failing to win one for The Hustler. In the same way that Tom Cruise elevated a new generation of actors in Maverick, Newman helped elevate Cruise in The Color of Money, proving the youngster was more than just another piece in a giant action movie.
Why Top Gun Shouldn’t Be In The “Tom Cruise’s Best Movie” Conversation
Tom Cruise has been the star in several incredible movies over his career, and he has delivered some fantastic performances along the way. While fans love Top Gun, that movie doesn’t touch some of his bigger and better releases. For one thing, Cruise has three actor nominations, and the first Top Gun movie is not among them.
Cruise received Best Actor nominations for Born on the Fourth of July (1990), Jerry Maguire (1997), and one Best Supporting Actor nomination for Magnolia (2000). Of those three movies, Magnolia is a masterpiece and one of the best performances of Cruise’s career, and nothing he did in Top Gun comes close.
There are even high-octane Tom Cruise action movies that are better than anything in Top Gun, with Mission: Impossible — Fallout a good example. Even smaller films like A Few Good Men are better films than Top Gun. While fans hold this beloved fan favorite in high regard, it falls short compared to many other movies throughout his career.
Top Gun’s Cinematic Legacy Is Overinflated
If one thing stands out about Top Gun, it is its incredible flight scenes. Tony Scott worked very hard to make sure his movie was honest and accurate when it came to the jet-fighter action. Add in Scott’s trademark editing style and a rock soundtrack full of familiar songs, and the movie was guaranteed to become a cult classic.
However, there are many things wrong with Top Gun that stand out. The film has a great cast, with Val Kilmer rising above everyone else, including Tom Cruise. However, the film is as shallow as they come. The villain is a faceless enemy, and this is really just a movie about the jet-fighting scenes with no substance at all.
The music is excellent, but it often overwhelms the scenes, once again prioritizing style over substance. That is the biggest problem here. Top Gun is fun and exciting, but it isn’t anything better than any other successful action movie that has been released over the last 40 years.
Top Gun: Maverick Is Far Superior To The Original
It took 36 years for Top Gun to get a sequel, and what happened was shocking. When it was released in 1986, Top Gun was a popular blockbuster, but no one thought it was a masterpiece at the time. Its legacy grew over the years thanks to nostalgia alone. That was proven with the success of Top Gun: Maverick.
While Top Gun: Maverick does not deserve its 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, it is still a better film than the original. Just like Top Gun, this is all about high-octane action scenes, and there is almost no substance to the story. However, it does present a better TOPGUN class, and it delivers some great scenes purely for nostalgia purposes.
Top Gun: Maverick takes what the first movie did and improves on it enough that it tricks fans who saw it into believing it is something more special than it actually is. It even earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination, which the first movie didn’t. Neither movie is a masterpiece, but the sequel is better than the original Top Gun.
