2 hours and 11 minutes… sitting on the edge of our seats… fully engaged in the plot and developing storyline… clearly sensing the tension, emotion, relational challenges and joys… not to mention the bonus drama, humor, and real-life Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets! The critics are right, friends. Top Gun: Maverick is fantastic!
But lest one begins to believe this semi-humble current events blogger has any aspirations to evolve into an incredibly witty movie critic, allow us to talk about why the summer’s so-far biggest hit is just so fantastic… besides the Super Hornets… besides the drama… besides Tom Cruise once again solidifying his reputation as a bonafide movie star…
While the movie is fantastic, how it makes us feel is even better.
Let’s begin by setting the scene…
We each have passions, preferences, and convictions that are near and dear to us. How sweet that in this land of the free and home of the brave we can believe in something, invest and advocate — and we can believe in different things.
But somewhere increasingly along the line in recent years, we’ve added a step to the belief, investment and advocacy. Now we also feel need to fight.
To “fight” assumes opposition. To be even more blunt, to “fight” assumes an enemy. Friends, with all due respect, we’ve lost sight of who the enemy actually is.
Pick your passion. Pick your preference and conviction, too.
Think of the trending question of increased gun control, for example… Those people are in my way. We need to fight them. We need to elect no more of them. We need to make them pay! They don’t care about children!
I said this before and I’ll say it again. It’s pure rhetoric when any attempt to convince us that one party cares more about children than the other. All we have to do is compare the inconsistent arguments on the issues of gun control and abortion legislation at the same time. Hear me, friends. I’m not advocating for any specific perspective today. I’m simply highlighting the inconsistency of partisan argument.
The more then that we adopt the plurality of partisan argument, the more we lose sight of who the enemy actually is.
That’s a problem, because if we’ve fallen prey to the mistaken presumption that he who not believes, prefers or advocates as I is actually my enemy, what am I to do? What are we inherently set to do with our enemies? What have we been taught?
Not only does the mindset exist that we have to fight our enemies, but we also have to defeat them — annihilate and eliminate. And in military, movie and most popular video game scenarios, we are even taught to shoot and kill. I’ll add a tangent pondering… with the mere existence of that last option… one must wonder if any amount of legislation has the potential to cease such a violent, oft promoted mindset.
Just like that, no less, our once understandable, individual passions, preferences and convictions have arguably unknowingly begun to contribute more to the deterioration of current culture than to its benefit.
The reason, therefore, that Top Gun: Maverick is fantastic is because it gives us a reprieve from what our current culture has become. In the movie, they know who the enemy actually is. They work together to eradicate the evil.
Let me not spoil any of this legacy sequel, but note then what’s embedded in its feel-good storyline…
There is ample perspective; it is varied perspective.
There is disagreement; it is passionate disagreement.
There is competition; it is fierce competition.
Yet nowhere in the perspective, disagreement or competition of the movie do they confuse one another for the enemy. They differ, debate and compete. But they never get lost. They experience authentic emotion, but their emotion never becomes everyone’s reality. Again, they know who the enemy is even with all of the above.
Thanks, Maverick. I may have to see it again.
Respectfully…
AR
It was every single one of those things!
Well said, as always