The world premiere of “Love in the Sky: Maverick”, the sequel to “Love in the Sky” from 36 years ago, took place last week at the Cannes Film Festival. The question arises: what is the connection between the Cannes Film Festival, which is associated with gourmet, high-quality and alternative cinema, and a film like “Love in the Sky: Maverick,” which is the most mainstream Hollywood product.
After watching the movie the answer is clear: it is a movie that is all about longing. This is not a nostalgia for the original “Love in the Sky” – I doubt anyone really misses that old-fashioned movie. It’s a longing for the kind of grandiose cinema that Hollywood specialized in, in the days before superheroes conquered the box office. A longing for cinema that does not look like a digital toy, but a film that is essentially a physical experience, bypassing the mind. It’s an all-speed movie, made up of 100% adrenaline and testosterone.
The Cannes Film Festival’s tribute to the film suggests that even there there is appreciation for those who still hold the torch of classic Hollywood making, and also recognition that Tom Cruise, of all the people in the world, has become the last samurai of Hollywood.
It is a film for those who insist that a film should produce a sense that it simulates a real, analog reality, one in which the sense of danger is tangible, as well as gravity and the laws of physics acting on the actors – causing the audience to move left and right in identification and out of trance,
1 View the gallery
Tom Cruise in “Love in the Sky: Maverick.” Endangers his life to persuade the audience in the world to come see him on the big screen
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)
In “Love in the Sky: Maverick” this work is supreme with real F-18s and players learning to operate IMAX cameras on their own because in the cockpit of fighter jets there is no one to photograph them but themselves.
The original 1986 film was co-produced by producers Jerry Brockheimer and Don Simpson, and British director Tony Scott. It was a macho, fetishist, war-whispering film, with the lighting and vibe of a softcore porn movie, but with planes instead of phalluses. Tom Cruise was a star in the making in the film, let’s face it, negligible. The sequel is a challenge to time and the laws of cinema.
What was routine in the first film became rare when the idea for a sequel came up. Unlike “Fast and Furious” movies that occasionally give up more real cars and chase scenes shot in real locations in favor of a digital storm of effects and green screens, Cruz continues to be committed to cinema that puts him, like juggling a circus without a safety net underneath, in real life danger. It’s crazy, but there is no denying that it is, indeed, entertainment. And when it comes to “Love in the Sky,” Cruz is also the man left standing last: Don Simpson died of a heart attack, Tony Scott committed suicide, and El Kilmer contracted cancer, and Meg Ryan and Kelly McGillis were erased from the plot, probably because of ageism.
Only Cruz, who will be 60 this month, still looks aging backwards. “Love in the Sky” was a film about youth, about ego, about masculinity rituals that look like cockfights. “Love in the Sky: Maverick” could have been a film about aging, betrayal, slowing down and handing over the shift to the next generation. But Cruz is not yet ready to make the move.
Oddly and surprisingly, “Love in the Sky: Maverick” repeats some of the whips, moments and beats from the original film, but there is no need for them. If in the previous film Cruz played a young and arrogant pilot flower nicknamed “Maverick” at the Top Gun Flight School in California, he now plays an experimental pilot, whose behavior caused him to be like the Azoulay policeman, never before, and his commanders, younger than him and of a higher rank, hope That he will finally retire or die, whichever comes first. He gets one last chance when he is offered the job of teaching Top-Gun’s outstanding past trainees, and training them for the mission of a nuclear reactor in an unidentified enemy state (Iran? Russia? Pakistan? Afghanistan?) – a task very reminiscent of Operation Opera. , In which the Israeli Air Force bombed the Iraqi reactor in 1981.
The role allows him to reconnect with Goss’ son, his navigator from the previous film, who Maverick still feels guilty about dying 35 years ago. And this is what Love in the Sky: Maverick has to offer to world cinema viewers, including the McCann snobs: a pathos-filled cinema, with catharsis and redemption, and even, even when we think everything is predictable, some plot twists are surprising in their effectiveness. And most of all, it’s cinematic-free cinema. A cinema designed for applause and restrained breathing.
The previous film took place during the Cold War, and Top-Gun pilots fought Soviet pilots. In the current film America has no active war against any country, so there is no concrete enemy, and equally the pilots could have fought the aliens. But this time there is another war: to save cinema in the face of the enemy of streaming. Cruz is risking his life to convince the world audience to come see him on the big screen, and honestly, he’s right. Together with director Joseph Kosinski, he leads a production that makes the audience get sucked into a film that is full of frenetic movement, one that, like a performance by an illusionist, makes viewers ask aloud: How did they do it?