Hearne: ‘Top Gun Maverick’ – Flashback to the Golden Daze

Buckle up, Boomers…

Your ticket to the good old days of 1986 is now playing at a movie theater near you. And while the first third of it I found kinda sleepy and predictable, its CGI effects finish more than makes up for it.

Trouble is, does anybody under the age of like 60 still care what a soon-to-turn 60 Tom Cruise does on screen?

We’re about to find out.

Unfortunately my 7 pm showing last week drew fewer than 30 oldsters. In fairness, Top Gun was being shown on at least five screens, however I seriously doubt they did that in anticipation of the auditoriums being 90 percent empty.

The problem is two fold, says local movie guy Jack Poessiger:

Younger people mostly could care less about watching a sequel to a movie that came out 20 years before they were born, with a cast offing Boomers struggling to be cutting edge still. That and many older folks are still wearing masks, hiding out from COVID and unwilling to risk death for similar creative reasons.

“I was pretty skeptical of Top Gun Maverick at first,” Poessiger says. “It satisfies the (older) fan base – it has all the elements – but it might as well be Cocktail II. They could have tightened it up some – no two ways about it – but I was never bored.

“Here’s the thing that makes its success so hard to predict. I tried to get my 21 year-old grandson to go see it and he had no interest. I also talked to a waiter in his mid 20s and he had no desire to see it. So I asked him what movies he’d gone to see at a theater lately and he said, Doctor Strange. All the people I talked to in the older group were interested, but not a single one was planning to go see it. So it’s like that older group has not returned to going to the movies in mass yet. I think they’re still scared.”

The bottom line on moviegoing: “It’s gotten a lot better the past few weeks, but it’s still not anywhere near where it was before COVID,” Poessiger says. “But we have a potential blockbuster movie coming out every week this summer because they’re so backed up.”

As for Top Gun, I’d give it C+ or B- ///  Jack gives it a B- but recommends seeing it in IMAX.

In an age with tons of streaming options, affordable, giant screens and sound, are movie theaters long for this world?

“Yeah, I think they’ll come back,” Poessiger says. “Because finally the industry has come to a semi-agreement to keep the time between theatrical releases and streaming to 30 to 45 days. The old six month delay is dead. If they can get three weekends, they’ll be happy. That’s when they get most of the business anyway. So there will be no more day-and-date releases at theaters and home viewing at the same time anymore.”

The $150 million question:

Did Top Gun Maverick set a new record of $150 million in ticket sales this past week?

Then again, it could be an effort to try and breath life into a still moribund movie industry.

“In the old days, those box office numbers were always inflated,” Poessiger says. “They’re still just predictions or estimates. But the way they do things today makes it harder to inflate those numbers.”

In days gone by, when a new Star Wars movie would set records, there was no-doubt with packed the parking lots at outside theaters and other new first run movies seldom had only 10 to 20 people in a theater.

“I know what you’re saying,” Poessiger says. “You’ll get no argument from me because we’re missing a big chunk of  moviegoers still – both older and younger.”

My hunch is, Hollywood’s trying to jump start theater attendance by sending a signal that movies are now back…in spite of significant evidence to the contrary.

“It’s to everybody’s advantage to see those numbers be huge,” Poessiger says. “To get a positive spin on things that everybody’s coming back to the movies,” he concludes.

Stay tuned…