James Weir: Top Gun Maverick is just Bring It On for adult men

Top Gun: Maverick is turning serious adult men into fangirls – not bad for a film that echoes a movie beloved by women.

Something big is happening. You can feel it in the atmosphere. We’re on the highway to the danger zone.

Maybe you’ve even heard it – probably in chitchat with colleagues around the office Zip Tap.

Everyone’s talking about the new Top Gun movie.

Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster is reducing respectable grown-ups to teenage fan-girls.

The flick has raked in over $1 billion globally – and over $64 million locally. Pretty good for a movie that’s basically Bring It On for adult men.

OK, that’s not entirely accurate. It’s also Bring It On for adult women.

Even with the brawn, jets and action sequences, at its core it’s simply a retelling of the classic Y2K cheerleading film that shot Kirsten Dunst to fame.

In Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise is Bring It On’s Torrance. Plucky, confident. Thinks he knows everything.

The hot fighter pilots Tom is forced to wrangle are the rest of the cheer squad – offering sass and snark with reactionary asides.

Can’t keep up with this analogy? You should be ashamed. Bring It On is to cinema what The Great Gatsby is to literature. Learn your canon.

Gabrielle Union and Kirsten Dunst in Bring It On.

Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick.

Both films have the same basic set-up: a bunch of people who hate each other are gathered to achieve an ultimate mission. But in order to succeed at that mission, they must learn to put aside their differences and work together.

And how do they do this? By playing shirtless football on the beach, of course. Fine, that’s not accurate either. In Bring It On, the team bonded while putting on a sexy bikini car wash.

Either way, it’s relatable. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been dragged into HR for trying to sort out my differences with a brutish colleague by ripping off his shirt and forcing him to frolic with me as the sun sets.

After the set-up of both films is established, fun and games ensue. There’s a small romance that begins and ends within the space of about three scenes. It’s satisfying nonetheless. A mix of passion and slapstick. Lots of smirking and cheeky glances.

By the time the credits are ready to roll, enemies have become friends and the mission is a success.

Jennifer Connelly and Tom Cruise in their small Top Gun romance.

Clare Kramer, Kirsten Dunst and Nicole Bilderback in Bring It On.

Top Gun: Maverick – a sequel to the 1986 original that cemented Tom Cruise as a bona fide movie star – is a film that proudly relaxes back into the era from which it originated, a time when movies could just be fun.

This is a movie that relies on charisma and a killer soundtrack. It’s basically a two-hour long video clip. And that’s not an insult.

It’s a film that will be re-watched for not just years but decades. Already, even with the flick still in cinemas, superfans are lining up to see it again.

Readers, meet Case Study 1. Case Study 1 is an acquaintance who shall remain nameless to preserve their dignity.

Case Study 1 loves Top Gun. They’ve watched the original countless times. And when the sequel was released just weeks ago, they saw it immediately. Then they saw it again. The next morning, they shamelessly gushed about it non-stop around the office Zip Tap.

“I even listen to the soundtrack while I’m walking around,” they admitted, before miming a superhero stance. “I play the theme song while I walk into the gym.”

Case Study 1 is not alone.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Case Study 2.

“Tom Cruise’s boyish charm is alive and well,” Case Study 2 declared. “He flashes his pearly whites at the camera and your heart melts – and you think, ‘There he is – the guy he was before everything went crazy.’”

Tom Cruise displaying his boyish/rugged middle-aged-manish charm.

But some of us struggle to see Tom Cruise ever moving past those years where everything went crazy. There was only one thing to do: tag along with Case Study 1 as they attended their third screening of Top Gun: Maverick.

The line snaked down the cinema escalators and out to the footpath. Everyone was there for Top Gun. Multiple theatres had been assigned to screen it at the same time.

Before arriving, Case Study 1 sent an unprompted briefing over text message that detailed key points about the movie’s first 1986 instalment. The text read like a mission being assigned to Maverick himself.

During the film, Case Study 1 kept looking over to see if my facial reactions expressed an appropriate level of awe.

By the final scene, Case Study 1 was in tears – just like they were the first two times they watched the movie.

Me? Not so much.

But I did listen to the soundtrack on the way home.

Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir