Cyclone actor Jon Hamm explains what made Top Gun: Maverick such an unprecedented success. Many doubted that a sequel to 1986’s Tom Cruise vehicle Top Gun would attract audiences in 2022. But the doubters have all been silenced as the long-awaited follow-up has now soared past the $1.4 billion mark at the worldwide box office.
Breaking down the box office numbers for Top Gun: Maverick reveals what a truly massive success the film has been. Domestically, the movie is now number 5 all-time with over $700 million in grosses. Unlike most modern-day blockbusters, Top Gun: Maverick did not pile up the vast majority of its grosses in the first few weekends only to vanish completely, but has demonstrated astonishing legs throughout the summer. Indeed, the film actually returned to the #1 box office spot over Labor Day weekend, taking advantage of a soft release schedule to pull off the feat.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
Box office watchers will be debating for years just why Top Gun: Maverick exploded so massively. But they don’t need to bother according to one of the movie’s stars, who has a simple explanation for why audiences have responded so strongly to the Top Gun sequel. Speaking to ET, Cyclone actor Hamm broke down why he believes the movie became so big:
"It’s the only film to be number one on Memorial Day and number one on Labor Day. That’s unprecedented in many ways. It’s one of the only top five [films] that doesn’t have somebody in a cape or on a spaceship. It’s a story about real people, it’s got a lot of emotional resonance, people are really responding to it."
Hamm here points out that the other top-five biggest movies of all-time are superhero films like The Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home or science-fiction like Avatar and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. His argument being that those movies don’t contain the same emotional resonance as Top Gun: Maverick, which in his estimation is about real people and therefore more appealing to audiences. It’s of course up for debate whether any movie starring Cruise, who is basically a real-life superhero, truly qualifies as being about real people. It is true however that the makers of Maverick went to great lengths to avoid using CGI and other fakery, putting actors in real jet fighters to produce a more believable and thrilling experience. And audiences certainly have responded to it as a viscerally exciting movie.
Hamm’s remarks in this instance could easily be taken as yet another example of superhero movies being dismissed as not “real cinema.” But Hamm certainly deserves somewhat of a pass, as he’s arguing in favor of a movie that he’s actually in, that he is clearly and rightly proud of. And of course it’s not like the dominance of superhero movies is in any danger of being threatened any time soon. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that a Spider-Man movie became an even bigger smash than Top Gun: Maverick, so clearly people still enjoy those films even if its characters aren’t as “real” as Cruise’s Maverick and the rest of the high-flying gang. The encouraging thing for Hollywood overall is that there’s still a market for something outside of superhero movies, but now it’s up to Hollywood to figure out how to reach that market without depending on Cruise to swoop in and save the day.