Maverick Soars Where Indy Falters

Filmed in 2019 but not released until 2022 due to the COVID pandemic, Top Gun: Maverick is one of the best films of its year and smashing box office records. This year, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premiered and despite being quite enjoyable doesn’t reach the same heights. Why is that? The answer is in their shared ambition: to be satisfying and exciting legacy sequels to beloved films of the 80s.

Good Legacy Sequels. The idea of the “legacy sequel” predates our IP-laden era and Tom Cruise even starred in an excellent one all the way back in 1986: Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money. Legacy sequels aren’t just another entry into a franchise, or even a continuation of their predecessor’s events, but address the time difference between the original and the sequel in a meaningful way and wend in extra meaning that addresses how the real world, and maybe the actor(s), have changed. Money would make an interesting double feature with Maverick, as Paul Newman’s Fast Eddie is to Cruise’s Vincent what Cruise is to a class of young pilots in Maverick: a mentor who’s nominally out of the game, but who either rediscovers their passion and skill or never lost it to begin with. Of course, Eddie’s journey of rediscovery might be a ready metaphor for how Newman feels about his own career and the tension between practicing his art and making box office hits.

Skyfall, despite being the 23rd entry in the James Bond franchise, counts as a legacy sequel because it is a critique of the franchise’s continuation as well as Britain’s declining empire. Think of Bond’s reaction to meeting Q for the first time, or how much of the dialogue is spent trying to convince Bond that he’s a “dinosaur”. Bond ultimately outfights his technologically superior enemy by jumping in the original Aston Martin and going “back in time”. Following this reading, the film is arguing for the old-school blockbuster, especially if it stars Bond himself. In terms of the filmmaking, Skyfall was executed with all the prestige and modern tools that director Sam Mendes could muster but relies on choreography, stunts, and character to achieve its power and thrills in place of over-indulging in visual effects or CGI. Maverick engages in similar metatext of Cruise and the vanishing idea of stardom that he represents. Most of this is laid out during the conversation between Ed Harris’ Cain and Maverick after a near-disaster test flight, which works as a neat metaphor for Cruise’s insistence on doing his own stunts, when Cain says, “The end is inevitable, Maverick. Your kind is headed to extinction”. The film’s attitude, of course, is evident in Maverick’s response: “Maybe so, sir, but not today”. That Cain is the head of the Navy’s unmanned drone program grows richer every time an actor is enhanced, de-aged, or literally resurrected/created out of CGI (more on this later). Further, Maverick blends the “old with the new” in creating its action like Skyfall does – plenty of scenes are augmented by special effects, but much of the airborne footage including the actors reacting to g-force in the cockpit is authentically captured using the latest technology.

One third example I’ll cite of this being done well is Creed, which has been top of mind since the very good Creed III was released this year. Creed is a more direct sequel to Rocky IV, but also acknowledges the “canonical events” of the films all the way up to its immediate predecessor including Adrian’s death and works as a reboot – Adonis Creed is the star now, and Rocky isn’t even in the latest installment! This movie shifts focus and turns Rocky into a supporting character (and a mentor, if this trope of the legacy sequel wasn’t clear enough). In doing so, it puts the audience in a unique place of empathy with Adonis Creed, who grew up exposed to the legendary but true events of the 80’s films, and his reverence for Rocky mirrors our own. Placing Adonis at the center of this story also allows audiences that are unfamiliar with Rocky’s previous exploits to still have a meaningful experience as Adonis navigates how they should or shouldn’t define him. Maverick functions the same way, and there’s less “lore” for the fans to worry about, only a few of the key events of the first, beloved, film. The filmmakers picked a few things to emotionally build on, in ways new viewers could certainly access: Goose’s death, Maverick’s rivalry-turned-friendship with Iceman, and a throwaway line about an Admiral’s daughter. Building on three clearly identified plot elements while maintaining the tone from the original goes a long way towards both paying tribute to it but paving ground for Maverick to have a unique story and identity.

The Harrison Ford Karaoke Tour. In the last 10 years, Harrison Ford has revisited 2 of his big franchise roles, as well as his character Rick Deckard from 1982’s Blade Runner, to varying levels of success and done little outside of that; it really puts the state of the industry into perspective that this is the fate of perhaps its greatest star. In 2015, Ford reprised his role as Han Solo (for the first time) in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is a very solid movie that is a direct sequel to the Original Trilogy of the 70s and 80s. However, through Ford’s character, the film is attempting to act as a bit of a legacy sequel and reboot by having Ford’s Solo play more of a supporting and mentor role, though the film fails to meaningfully reflect how its galaxy and ours changed in the 30 years. In 2017, Ford appeared in Blade Runner: 2049 which takes an interesting approach to its legacy sequel aspirations. It takes Ryan Gosling’s Officer K a long time to unwind the mystery that the audience is also eager to solve: how do the events of the original film play into what we’re watching now? This story doubles down on the original’s worldbuilding, existential themes, and atmosphere in lieu of a faster pace. Eventually, K arrives at Rick Deckard secluded doorstep, and K’s quest for connection and longing to be human initially clashes with Ford’s desire to do the opposite, but it’s Ford who gets the touching scene at the end where he wordlessly reunites with his long-lost daughter, though separated by a thin piece of glass. It’s a very poignant ending to a film that patiently creates its connection to the original material but also stands alone.

Dial of Destiny, Ford’s latest attempt at a legacy sequel, falls short of both The Force Awakens and Blade Runner: 2049 because it has its focus in all the wrong places, or rather far too many places. The standalone nature of each Indiana Jones adventure obviates any need for sequels, but also freed the original films from having to adhere to any established lore. So, when it came time for Indy’s latest adventure in Dial, the choice to have the latest treasure be an item from his past that forces him out of retirement led to a CGI-laden opening 20 minutes that featured a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford played and voiced by an 80-year-old Harrison Ford in a sequence that is emblematic of modern franchise moviemaking’s laziest habits. When the film shifts to 1969, it becomes one of ideas that are never capitalized on: the idea of an aged Indiana Jones who no longer fits in the world around him, the idea that there is far less mystery in that world, the idea that the same U.S. Government that Indiana worked for helped Nazi scientists into the USA, and the idea that a neo-Nazi is now one of the figures matching wits with our beloved hero. Alas, director James Mangold – who had made 2017’s Logan, a terrific legacy sequel that is as character-driven a superhero film you’ll ever see – is simply a steward for the studio’s compromised vision of an adventure story with no sense of stakes or danger (the things an 80-year-old man physically endures in this movie should be gravely intense), but enough fun to be passable.

Dial of Destiny doesn’t just fall short of Maverick in its achievement as a well-crafted modern blockbuster, it falls short of Maverick’s success as a satisfying legacy sequel. It’s not an exploration of Harrison Ford’s persona or status as an aging icon and his return lacks any tension like we see in Color of Money; it fails to address any changes in the world or in movies the way that Skyfall reflects on Bond and Britain’s place in the 21st century; in its filmmaking and plotting it doesn’t feel like culmination of what came before, and fails to meaningfully tread new ground, the way that Creed does and yet is more reliant than that film on characters previously introduced to grasp its emotion and character motivations. One of the worst things about it is that it clearly has some of these aspirations, as these features that make each of my examples so compelling are at least nominally present.

Because Dial of Destiny opted to play it safe, it’s certainly not a blight on the franchise, and nothing will change the fact that Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade are two of my favorite movies or that Harrison Ford is one of the greatest movie stars to ever do it. But in this legacy sequel dogfight, he’s just not Maverick.