It’s rare that anything coming out of Hollywood doesn’t take its swipe and sneer at America nowadays, but this movie was unapologetically patriotic and full of duty and honor. It’s also exceptional because it’s a sequel that’s better than the original. Both movies have their share of silliness, but the delicate handling of the deeper themes of Maverick are surprisingly refreshing and redeem its silly bits. Beautifully shot, decent pacing, and solid character arcs.
Let me also add that this movie did wonderfully what the Star Wars sequels did not; fidelity to the original and treating its fans with kind respect. Both Maverick and The Force Awakens attempted Nietzsche’s ‘eternal return’ of making the old new again by repeating the same themes, scenarios, circumstances, and plot points but with enough difference to delight and rivet simultaneously. This film treasured its inheritance and so it pays off bigtime. The Star Wars sequels started from a place of resentment toward its tremendous heritage and tried to discard and even desecrate its inheritance in an effort to escape it and so it fell flat on its face and infuriated its fans.
Maverick is not the perfect movie, so it doesn’t get a 10 rating from me, but it’s been a long time since I happily have given any film a 9.
This movie might have saved Hollywood from falling into the abyss, so I have mixed feelings about its success, but perhaps this is just the first phoenix rising from the ashes of an industry that has burned itself almost to the ground. If this is the first of many of its kind, it might mark the start of a renaissance, a recovery, and a rejuvenation of an art form formerly dedicated to the permanent things, teasing out the truths of the human predicament, and centering on man’s rise from the swamp to the stars and from savage to saint. That is a climb that—like this film—is worth saluting.