Why is Top Gun: Maverick the Most Popular Film of 2022?

Top Gun: Maverick is the highest grossing movie of 2022, with its theater box office topping $716 million in the U.S. and almost $1.5 billion worldwide (1). That’s an amazing 78 million theater tickets sold in the U.S. alone. (The next highest is almost 45 million tickets for Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.)

Critic Richard Davies writes: “Audiences young and old, urban and rural, liberal and conservative actually got up off their sofas and bought tickets to see [this] movie. Together…Such a shared experience is a rare thing in our modern stay-at-home, remote working, siloed Covid world.”

Why is Maverick so popular? Many reasons have been cited, such as: its feel-good fun, good reviews, the realism of the military action and its lack of reliance on CGI, the end of covid lockdowns and restrictions, Tom Cruise as the star. All true reasons. But surely there is more to the success of this action drama than these reasons that could arguably apply to other current films.

Richard Davies gets close, citing the popularity today of nostalgia. But nostalgia for what exactly?

I believe that the deepest reason for the huge popularity of Top Gun: Maverick is that its characters represent quintessential American values and traits.

Individualism is the distinctive meaning of America. The United States of America is the only nation explicitly founded on individual rights: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

The individualistic ideals and traits of Americans were especially evident in the cavalcade of American films and television shows produced many years ago about heroic soldiers, detectives, and especially cowboys. The Westerner is a distinctly American type, characterized by independence, can-do, love of justice, and self-confidence. Efficacious individuals!

Remember when American Western heroes and their distinctive traits ruled the big screen? Will Kane’s integrity in High Noon, Ethan Edwards’s courage and endurance in The Searchers, Shane’s efficacy and goodness. And on the female side, Eula Goodnight’s grit and independence in Rooster Cogburn, Jessica Drummond’s vision and strength in 40 Guns, and Mattie Ross’s ethics, justice and courage in True Grit.

The action premise of Maverick is: America’s best combat pilots must train for and carry out a dangerous mission against an Iranian nuclear facility whose location and defences make it seemingly impossible to strike and return from alive. The pilots are to be trained for the mission by Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, perhaps the best fighter pilot in the U.S. armed services.

The virtues of “Maverick” and his team of pilots that so expressly represent the American include:

Independent minded and unorthodox. The meaning of Maverick’s name and essential to his way of thinking and acting.

Ambition. The pilots hunger to succeed and to be the best.

Productiveness. [Spoiler alert] Maverick conceives the ingenious plan of how the pilots can destroy the nuclear facility, devises the training drills to achieve it, and then leads the mission to success.

Can do moxie. The pilots eagerly learning the death-risking manoeuvres needed to accomplish the mission.

These traits add up to the two key qualities that especially define the American spirit:

Confidence and Benevolence. The confidence, even cockiness, to overcome any challenge, such as vaulting steep mountain cliffs and zig-sagging through narrow mountain valleys. And the benevolent belief that one can achieve success and happiness in one’s professional and personal life.

In all of those ways, the pilots in Maverick are modern day incarnations of the once beloved Western hero.

While these American virtues (and others) are depicted in eye-popping action and visuals, the film also dramatizes an explicitly-stated theme: It is the individual (not the machine) that makes the difference. One character taunts Maverick, “Your kind is headed for extinction.” The film takes almost gleeful pleasure in showing that it is the individual maverick (like the lead character) who makes the difference in combat and in life. Is this very American idea the essence of the “nostalgia” that people are feeling today?

The Audience Reaction

The relationship between an audience and a work of art (especially a film) is essentially one of empathy. Every film presents (mostly implicitly) in its events, dialog, acting, and so forth, a set of values and beliefs. When it comes to see a film, an audience brings its own set of values and beliefs and recognises (most often implicitly) the values and beliefs dramatized in the film. The more important the ideals, values and virtues that a film and an audience share, the more strongly the audience will care for the film’s characters and their journeys. And if the climax of the film confirms the key values of the audience, their emotional reaction will be even stronger. Most popular films strike a deep chord of value recognition within their audience. “Yes!, that’s people and life.”

It is sad but important to note that most films and television shows today are a value void for the majority of Americans and people around the world. This “silent majority” of story lovers has little modern fare to cheer. As noted, they once had heroic cowboys, brave soldiers, and honest cops to salute. Today, as common fare audiences are served up countless serial killers and zombies, in body and spirit. And increasingly empty-suited “super” heroes. Why is it a surprise to people that vast numbers of Americans are supporting a movie that dramatizes the values they still love but which are so often derided in the media and too often ignored or spat upon in modern art? Top Gun: Maverick shows us that Hollywood needs to focus much more on important values. That is, on classic American values.

There was a time when the American in life and in art – because of his and her values, virtues, and successes – was the most admired person on earth. The audience members who cheered this film were saluting Americans and their meaning. And the best within themselves. That is why Top Gun: Maverick is the most popular film of the year. Values and benevolence are still inspiring to many of us. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.

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(1) The Numbers https://www.the-numbers.com/market/2022/top-grossing-movies & https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Top-Gun-Maverick-(2020)#tab=summary Note that this international box office total doesn’t include China, where the film was not released.

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