In this festive season blog edition, we take a different trail. Taking an off-beat foray into my love of cinema and the enjoyment of a good yarn.
Here I proffer and attempt to answer the weighty question: Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?
Uh oh, no no no, far too controversial.
No, the real question we'll delve into today: Is Top Gun: Maverick really a remake of the original 1977 Star Wars movie?
First, lets look at why ask this question. Top Gun: Maverick, released in 2022, was the much anticipated sequel to the 1986 blockbuster, Top Gun. All the ingredients are still there, the planes, the action, ripped athletic physiques, home side relationship tensions and big egos.
The stories and larger than life characters could have been taken from the boys comic books of my youth. In 1986 it was the planes that stole the show, hurtling across the cinema screen, afterburners roaring.
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| Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
From the beginning Top Gun: Maverick felt like a swansong and on first viewing it was from clear how this story would end. We were quickly re-introduced Pete Mitchell, a pilot with phenomenal instinctive ability. But when out of the aircraft, is burdened by his experiences. His early tussle with Rear Admiral Cain (Ed Harris) sets the tone:
"The end is inevitable. Your kind is headed for extinction".
This leads to the film's iconic response from Tom Cruise's character, Maverick:
"Maybe so, sir. But not today"
Tension between the top brass and lower ranks is an often used trope. Top Gun: Maverick unashamedly draws on many inspirations and is all the better for it. We neither want or expect the painful restraint of The Remains Of The Day. Instead, we're treated to a host of 'Easter egg' movie connections.
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| Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
Spoiler alert: Early in the film Maverick pilots the fictional hypersonic Darkstar aircraft, based on real-world concepts like the SR-72 "Son of Blackbird," developed by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. He pushes the speed to an improbable Mach 10, which causes the aircraft to break up. In reality, ejecting at that speed, the pilot would be killed instantly due to the relative weight and density of air.
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| The Right Stuff (1983) |
However, we'll not let the matter of physics spoil a good story. We next see Maverick, wearing his singed flight suit, entering a dusty desert diner. This sequence bears a strong resemblance to The Right Stuff (based on real life), where pilot Chuck Yeager has ejected from his rocket assisted Lockheed Starfighter after the controls became aerodynamically locked, the aircraft entered a flat spin and it plunged to earth. During ejection, a piece of propellant struck Yeager's helmet visor. Injured, with burnt rubber clinging to the side of his face, his parachute lands him near a desert road where he is greeted by a somewhat horrified boy.
You can read the full account of the Yeager's F104 crash here...
https://www.chuckyeager.org/nf-104-crash/
Stay on target, now where have we heard that before?
Gold Five: Stay on target!
Gold Leader: We're too close!
Gold Five: STAY ON TARGET!
It was Angus MacInnes as Gold Leader flying in the Death Star's fortified trench, during the finale battle.
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| Star Wars: A New Hope 1977) |
In Top Gun: Maverick, we hear Lieutenant Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (portrayed Monica Barbaro) say exactly the same words, in flight.
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| Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
Top Gun: Maverick has several parallels to Star Wars:
A highly defended canyon, low level, narrow approach, with a target requiring precision bombing. And protagonists requiring a spiritual command of self: Skywalker using the force, Goose summoning Maverick's don't think, just fly mantra, when the laser targeting system malfunctions.
But, if you think this all started with Star Wars, then you're in for a surprise.
Back in 1964, director Walter Grauman used eight retired RAF De Havilland Mosquitos to make 633 Squadron. A fictional story of a mission to destroy a Nazi V2 rocket fuel factory. Flying at low level through a Norwegian fjord bristling with ack-ack guns, then dropping a bomb just in the right place to collapse the cliff above the factory. The 633 Squadron attack sequence heavily influenced director Stephen Spielberg's trench run choreography in Star Wars.
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| 633 Squadron (1964) |
In movie terms, charges against impossible odds are a recurrent theme. The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1968, directed by Tony Richardson, starring some of the most acclaimed actors of the era) unusually depicted a military disaster for the British....into the valley of death rode the six hundred, cavalry impossibly outgunned against Russian cannon in the Crimean War.
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| Charge Of The Light Brigade (1968) |
If we're looking for an origin story of this film genre, the surely we need look no further than the 1955 depiction of the 1943 raid led by Guy Gibson, immortalized in The Dam Busters (director Michael Anderson). A low altitude bombing run, with a highly technical approach in a 17 ton, four engine behemoth, which required unwavering courage under withering fire.
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| The Dam Busters (1955) |
The tactical aspects of the climactic raid shown in the film, were another of Spielberg's inspirations for the Star Wars rebel attack on the Death Star, the Empire's planet-destroying battle station.
For all these references and if we suspend the production playing fast and loose with realism: Would an recently ejected pilot really be in any condition to embark on another extreme-G mission within a few days? Then Top Gun: Maverick is a very worthy sequel to the original, in which the planes are still the stars.
Certainly, the most emotionally charged scene is one where there wasn't much acting needed. Tom Cruise's on screen reuniting with an obviously unwell Val Kilmer is loaded with barely restrained real-life feelings. Indeed it was reported that Tom Cruise didn't want to do 'Top Gun 2' unless there was a part for Val. Sadly Val's reprise of Tom "Iceman" Kazansky was his last role and he died, age 65, three years after the film's release.
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| Val Kilmer (1959-2025) |
So, is Maverick really Luke Skywalker? The answer depends upon your viewpoint regarding movie DNA. In the iconic role of James Bond, Daniel Craig draws upon many of his previous roles, such a Layer Cake. Javier Bardem's scene stealing monologue, introducing villan Raoul Silva in Skyfall has it's origin in Collateral. Which also stars Tom Cruise in a less heroic role as the morally ambiguous anti-hero assassin, directed by Michael Mann. In these respects, performance is culmination of an actor's experiences, rather than something plucked out of the ether.
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| Collateral (2004) |
Of course, second spoiler alert, in Top Gun: Maverick the good guys win. With no direct reference to 'Vladdie the Baddie', the sinister new Russian made 5th generation MiGs are taken out, creatively! Character tensions are resolved with high fives, man hugs and lots of whooping. Tom Cruise, err I mean Maverick, flies off into the sunset with the lady (Jennifer Connelly) in his own vintage P-51 Mustang.
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| Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
But what did you expect, its Top Gun.
And all the better for it!
Stu Westfield
December 2025
