(Don't read this if you want to go in completely blind)
I just watched Top Gun Maverick and it was really good. The action scenes were great, but what really made me like the movie was how the plot and characters were handled, specially the male ones. The cast is diverse but there isn't a single scene or even throwaway line about girlboss or black power or anything of that sort, it's all dealt with extreme respect and I did not expect that at all given the current state of things. The story isn't revolutionary or even too complicated, but the writers were fantastic in how they handled human relationships and values and it felt like a throwback to an America that is now dead and buried. Had it not been for the cellphones I honestly would have assumed the movie was supposed to be set in the 80s, despite being a sequel to the original.
In fact, while all of the "diverse" characters are shown to be entirely competent, they are not even close to a match to Maverick. Which would make any sort of woke type go into an apoplectic rage.
I was also kind of fascinated that they managed to keep a lot of the downtime talking scenes from the first movie while also having a much more engaging action scene with the airstrike at the end.
And of course, I do like the casual dunking on the SU-57 that the movie does. "Super advanced fighter, better than our F-18's, can do all kinds of crazy bullshit moves....still loses to a 50-year old rust bucket."
Yea in modern movies they go way out of their way to downplay the older hero so they can elevate the female or minority
He did say that these new kids think they are hot shit because they can just fly at high altitude and drop bombs on target with no dogfight exp, so it makes sense for mav to roflstomp them.
Imagine some online warriors started to playing SF3: Third Strike Remaster, think they are hot shit just to show up to an event to get perfected by Daigo Umehara.
tbf though, Maverick is presented as one of the best pilots in the world, and trains the best of the best to make them even better.
Russian (or iranian? Not real sure who was supposed to be actually flying the planes at the end) pilots are nowhere near the level of ours.
He also got the one by surprise, the second one after a dogfight where he almost got shot down a few times, and the last one got killed by someone they weren't expecting.