There are films that are so culturally salient that the reality they aim to imitate ends up imitating them. The Godfather. Major League. The passing of Ray Liotta last week reminded me that the wanna be wise guys I grew up around south of Atlantic City lived in some form of imitation of Henry Hill from Goodfellas. Bootcamp drill instructors mostly do more PC imitations of R. Lee Ermey’s Gunny Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. Other films come to mind. Trying to build a list of them seems like a worthwhile exercise. But that’s not what this essay is about. Because this week I saw Maverick. And I wanted to put some words down before I lose them.
Top Gun came out when I was nine; right about the age when a kid starts to figure out what he wants to be about. I watched the sequel as a 45-year old man with a wife and three kids, some years removed from 20 years training to be or being a Naval Officer. At the risk of sounding over dramatic, I felt a bit like I’d arrived at the end of a 35 year arc. It’s likely impossible for me to really tell the cinematic value of the movie. As it’s likely impossible for me to understand how someone detached from the original or the Naval Officer culture might receive it. But I can say it gave us what we wanted; something that resembles closure.
For Naval Officers of a certain age, Top Gun was the first memory we have of what we thought we wanted to be. And the follow up Maverick shows us what we’d like to believe we became. The story was a fantasy of course. But it’s something more than fantasy. Because we carried some version of the fiction into the reality that we lived; less fantasy than scripture. Or perhaps Plato’s shadow on the cave wall. The break from the Allegory is that there is no dogmatic motivation. There’s no one carrying the shapes. The shape is us. Somewhere in the mythical Maverick character there’s Pete Mitchell. And in Pete Mitchell there’s something very real. The reality is the draw. And worth the reflection.
One important point up front. Like most films based on real types of humans, the characters are caricatures. But for Top Gun and Maverick, they’re less caricatures of pilots than you might think. As much as anything else, pilots can be pretty cerebral, bordering on nerdy (sometimes full nerd) introverts that are comfortable sitting alone with their thoughts in an aircraft for hours with very real but specific physical requirements that have little to do with looking like an Instagram fitness influencer. What’s true of some professions is true of others. And having quit more communities in the Navy than most ever serve in, including aviation, I’m comfortable with allowing you all to project the jet jockey shadow onto the wall of whatever cave you want. There’s an Ice Man and a Maverick coding Python or designing aerospace platforms somewhere, I promise.
So…on to the tale of grandeur and greatness that’s Pete Mitchell, unencumbered by the limitations of vocation.
There’s the tension of ego and restraint. We’re not supposed to be that absurdly cocky. There’s good reason for it. It makes people resent us. And it doesn’t yield bonds. But we’re not supposed to hide behind the rules to the point of paralysis either. In the end the ego is tempered and the rules get bent just the right amount and the victory is gained. Maverick and Ice Man exist in all of us. But it’s Mav that has to take the lead in the hard situations. Or so the fantasy tells us. For the chosen few the act isn’t the bravado. It’s the humility that’s the mask. And when alone with the others, it comes out. And that’s absolutely real.
There’s the reward of friendship. The scene that evoked the most emotion for me was when Maverick visited the dying Ice Man. I saw friendships formed in the same world. Some friendships can only be made early. Because they form us. We can’t be who we will be without them. As Future Spock says to present Kirk about their friendship in the 2009 Star Trek, “….you needed each other. I could not deprive you of the revelation of all that you could accomplish together, of a friendship that will define you both in ways you cannot yet realize.”
The arcs of our lives are bent toward friendship. The ones we have for life add a unique accountability. Those sorts of friends loved us in the age of our aspirations. And they are deeply loyal to the best versions of ourselves. They can tell us things no one else can.
There’s the burden of responsibility. “He was my RIO. My responsibility.” says Maverick after Goose Dies. And we’re reminded of the downside of fearlessness. It’s the drag of the people we’re responsible for. We may dare with our own lives but to dare with someone else’s without care is a sin of a certain type. And so the internal conflict within Pete Mitchell is never about whether to be cocky or to be humble. It’s when to realize when someone else has climbed onto the jet with you, and what that means. And what the penalty for forgetting it is.
There’s fatherhood and the need for the sins of the father to be forgiven by the son. That the chip one carries on their shoulder was placed there with care by someone who understood what it would one day mean. And what it would one day fuel. And that one day the son will learn to fight. Maverick was passed on to Viper. And Rooster was passed on to Maverick. If we aren’t allowed to see what our children become, we can trust that the community we passed them on to will care for them as we would. We only make some kinds of friends early…
There’s the people we leave behind. They can’t go where we dare. But they’ll be waiting for us when we return. Penny Benjamin gets a single line in the first movie. But she gets the last of Pete Mitchell. To be loved is to be waited for.
And lastly, there’s the reckoning of the end. The only iron truth about the end of things is that it’s the end. Each beginning and each middle are their own things. But the end is the same for all of us. We’re not what we once were. It’s time to let go. And one day the credits roll in a darkened movie theater 36 years after you had that first idea of what you would one day be. And realize that you were. And that you may not be any more. And that you shuffle off out of the cave and into the daylight. No more shadows. No more caricatures. No more Pete Mitchell. They don’t make movies about what comes after the age of heroes. And so we’ve got no scripture to carry with us into this part. And sometimes that makes us feel a little lost.
I’m going to miss Pete Mitchell. Like I said. We only make some kinds of friends early.