Sometimes I’ll consume a piece of media that everyone loves and I won’t like it. My first instinct is to go “What does everyone else see in this thing that I don’t?” But sometimes, after trying to figure that out, I go “Nah, I’m right on this one. It’s the children who are wrong.”

Top Gun: Maverick was a film that was well liked by critics and audiences. It was hailed as saving the movie industry, as bringing back practical stunts, and as demonstrating the “right” way to do a legacy sequel.

It centers on Maverick, an ace pilot who was in the top gun program 36 years before, making him 57 during this movie. Our re-introduction to Maverick involves him piloting an experimental aircraft with the intent to reach Mach 10 — which he does over the objections of his commanding officer who wanted the flight grounded.

He then tries to push the experimental aircraft faster and it disintegrates in mid air. Aside from the fact that he would 100% be dead, this is a nice little moment reminding us that Maverick had (and apparently still has) a constant thirst to push the limits of whatever he’s doing, and a bit of a competitive streak.

This is reminiscent of one of the greatest test pilots in the US, Chuck Yeager. Yeager was the first person to break the sound barrier (Mach 1) in 1947. He continued pushing boundaries, but was beat to Mach 2 by Scott Crossfield in 1953. He found out that Crossfield was to be honored as “the fastest man alive” at a 50th anniversary of flight celebration, so he set up a series of test flights (called “Operation NACA Weep”) and did, in fact, beat Crossfield, reaching Mach 2.44 in December of 1953. Much like Maverick’s flight, this one wasn’t particularly smooth as Yeager lost 50,000 ft of altitude when he lost control of the plane for less than a minute. Luckily he regained control and landed safely.

Yeager was 30 at the time of these groundbreaking test flights. Starting in 1954 he took command of several squadrons and wings. He did occasionally still do test flights, though his last was in 1964 when he ejected from an experimental aircraft and badly burned his face. After that he retired from test flights at the ripe old age of 41.

Not to make this blog post about Chuck Jaeger (who has an interesting but checkered record), but he eventually retired from the Air Force with the rank of Brigadier General in 1975. At the age of 52.

Now let’s get back to Maverick, our 57 year old test pilot who has just survived his plane becoming a giant fireball and landed safely in the middle of nowhere. His boss is unhappy with him, but a word from his old nemesis “Ice Man” makes him an instructor at Top Gun (he’s not super pleased about this development).

At Top Gun he has to gain the respect of the students who, we are told, are “the best there is.” So we have a montage of Maverick dogfighting his students and destroying them easily. I mean, I guess they’re not that good if not one of them even put up a challenge.

Then Maverick has to teach the students how to do this mission which is to blow up a uranium enrichment plant by hitting an exhaust port at the end of a long canyon with defenses all around it or, as the Pitch Meeting guy puts it, do a Star Wars.

And the students are terrible at it! None of them can do the moves right, none of them can hit the very tight time window, they even have a hard time just … hitting the exhaust port with their missiles. It’s bad.

So Maverick’s boss says “You’re a bad teacher and a bad mission planner. I’m going to make this mission easier but maybe they’ll all die on the way out but you know … them’s the breaks” and he fires him.

But Maverick is NOT a bad mission planner, nor a bad teacher. These kids are all just lazy and/or bad students. He steals a plane and does the pretend mission according to his parameters and nails it (again, against the wishes of his commanding officer) proving that it can be done, just not by those poor schlubs.

Because of this, his boss makes Maverick the team lead and tells him to just do the mission himself. Which he does, flying the lead plane in the formation, doing the whole mission great even though the other pilots are awful, and then sacrificing his airplane when one of his students is about to be shot down, saving his student but landing him behind enemy lines.

The student (Rooster) also parachutes down (I’m trying to shorten this up so I skip a few things) and the two of them steal an old F-14 — the planes from the original Top Gun — and fly it out to the aircraft carrier. In a neat little microcosm of the entire movie this airplane, which originally flew in 1970 and was retired in 2006, shoots down two Russian Su-57s which had its first flight in 2010 and only entered service in 2020.

On the way back to the carrier, now out of weapons and countermeasures, one last Su-57 appears, but they are saved by one of the other students (Hangman). They land on the carrier (with no nose gear and an engine out), get out of the planes, everyone is happy and Rooster compliments Hangman on shooting down two enemies. In just another hilarious twist of the knife at how bad and dumb the kids are, another student pops up out of nowhere, as they’re congratulating each other, to say “MAV HAS FIVE THAT MAKES HIM AN ACE.” And then we cut to Maverick looking pleased with himself.

On not passing torches

What really bothered me about Top Gun: Maverick was that the entire theme of the movie seemed to be “I was always amazing, and I still am.” Typically, when you have an older star, you’ll have a storyline where they have to confront their weaknesses. Where they recognize that they maybe lost a step. They’re good, but they’re at risk of overextending themselves.

This does not happen to Maverick. He starts the movie a living legend. And then he beats everyone at everything. And then the movie ends. Oh yeah, plus he gets the girl (although I have to give credit to Tom Cruise here, because his leading lady is only eight years younger than him, which is a reasonable amount compared to some other age gaps he’s dealt with).

What makes it worse is that there are so many places where he could have had some kind of revelation. Could have realized that maybe he can’t be the best fighter forever and he could possibly contribute in some other way. Here’s a brief list of some places in the film where he could’ve had some semblance of passing the torch in some small way:

• After almost dying in a test flight, he could’ve volunteered to teach at top gun, focused on improving the next generation because hopefully, as a 57 year old test pilot, he realizes that someone is going to need to fill his shoes eventually.
• He could’ve still beat the students in dogfights, but had a hard time of it and realized that maybe there was hope for the coming generation and he should focus on helping them improve instead of embarrassing them.
• He could’ve got beat BY the students and then had to prove to them that he was still a useful voice to listen to without, you know, being literally better than them at the thing they’re supposed to be the best in the world at.
• Instead of flying the pretend mission himself he could’ve talked one of the students through it, or stole a plane and flew it with them.
• He could’ve been told that he’ll need to train his students as requested instead of just having him do the mission.
• When they get out to do the mission he could instead trust his students and tell them he knows they can do it. Or maybe he has like … an accident on the way there and can’t do it, and is forced to watch from the sideline?? That would’ve been tense and interesting.
• In a moment of humility he could’ve asked to be wingman instead of lead plane in the formation to demonstrate his belief in his students.
• His students could’ve messed up in the mission, but he selflessly sacrifices himself (AND DIES) to save them and then they complete the mission successfully.
• At the end of the mission he could’ve avoided sending over the other student to say “MAVS AN ACE YOU SUCKERS.”

In the end of the film the message seems to be this: my generation is the best, and those after me will never measure up, so you better hope I’m always here to pull you out of the fire.

Or, more succinctly:

What would you do without me?

You don’t find successors, you make them

In fact, it’s often said at Toyota that the best measure of a leader’s success is what is accomplished by those they trained.

-Liker and Convis, the Toyota Way to Lean Leadership

Maybe the point the movie intended to make was “Some people fly planes and some people teach and Maverick is the former.” That’s a nice, simple premise…

… if it weren’t for the fact that the movie clearly implies a need for teachers. All these kids think they’re the best (they even ask “Who could they find to teach us?”) and then are thoroughly schooled by one guy. Who HAS been teaching them? None of them stood a chance against him!

So who is going to teach them? Who could possibly teach them to be as good as Maverick?

Not Maverick, apparently, who fails at teaching so completely that in the end they go “Aw screw it, you fly the mission Maverick!”

We know it’s not the student’s problem. They’re the best! And though they may be a little arrogant, they’re all there putting in the hours, doing everything they can to learn.

So Maverick tries to teach them, fails, then looks around and goes “I’ll just do it myself.” That attitude will work for like … ten more years, tops? I doubt they’re going to be strapping a seventy year old into the fighter jet.

And that’s not to say that old people can’t fly airplanes. Hopefully I’ve made it clear that my problem is not with Maverick’s age itself. It’s with the idea that no one in the past 30 years could be trained to do it as well as him.

And maybe no one could do it as well as him because he was just … still around! Flying the fancy experimental airplanes! Taking on the tough missions!

Part of maturing as a person and as a leader is to recognize that people with less experience than you need opportunities to do things to build their skills. What that means is that some things that you could do really well will be done, well, less well, by someone with less experience, because that’s the nature of experience. That’s how they learn to do them well.

And it’s a leader’s job to recognize that building the next generation is MORE important than doing it all yourself. And if you get to the point where you’re on top of your craft, you’re the head honcho, you’re “el presidente,” as they say, and you look around and go “I’m the best person for this job. No one could possibly do this as well as me. What would they do without me?” then you have utterly failed. Because you weren’t supposed to be waiting for your successor to show up. You were supposed to be training them up this whole time. And now you have no choice but to do what you should’ve been doing all along — giving other people opportunities and supporting them when they screw up.

So yeah, I’d give Top Gun: Maverick a solid 5/10. But they could redeem it by completing a trilogy where Maverick actually DOES pass the torch. That would be a satisfying conclusion.