Warning: SPOILERS below for Top Gun: Maverick!
Tom Cruise, now doing his own stunts, reigns supreme again in the sequel as pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. This time around, he faces the demons of his past while training a new squad of TOPGUN graduates for a dangerous mission, one against an unclear enemy.
In all of its high-octane drama and moving nostalgia, Top Gun: Maverick truly fascinates when it boasts slambang aerial encounters. Director Joseph Kosinski's forte is on full display, but interestingly, none of these action scenes reveal the rival military's real identity. While their motive to create a supply of enriched uranium is made evident, they are only referred to as "the enemy." The first Top Gun does something similar, with the U.S. naval aviators going up against Soviet-built fighter jets from an unknown nation. However, several details in that movie's aircraft markings and geographical locations reveal that the original Top Gun villain is a vague combination of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea.
Top Gun: Maverick treads a similar path as the first movie. Its desolate aerial background locations and fifth-generation enemy fighter planes suggest that Maverick's enemy in the Top Gun sequel possibly hails from China, Russia, or Iran. While the snowclad mountains in the climactic moments of Top Gun: Maverick could allude to any of the three nations, the antagonist's plans to become a nuclear superpower point to Iran. However, the appearance of the Russian-built Su-57 next-generation fighter from the enemy's lines indicates that the rival force could be from Russia or China. Despite these subtle references to aircraft and locations, though, Top Gun: Maverick purposefully does not feature a well-defined adversary, and instead, creates a fictional one.
Why Top Gun: Maverick Doesn't Confirm Who Its Villain Is
Top Gun: Maverick conceals its villain's identity due to several political reasons. For starters, Hollywood movies, especially big-budget blockbusters like Top Gun, have to avoid generating any controversies that villainize foreign nations, which would consequently hurt their international box office. In addition, considering how the 2014 movie The Interview received immense backlash and warnings of retaliation from North Korea because its plot involves the assassination of their leader, it is always safer for films to keep sensitive international politics out of their fictional storylines. Therefore, Top Gun: Maverick takes a relatively prudent route toward international conflict and avoids harming the franchise's present and future.
Undoubtedly, the appeal of Top Gun is in its practical visual effects depicting adrenaline-pumping dogfights and dazzling aerial choreography. However, given that the movie series is still more about character-driven drama and less about war and conflict, it makes sense that the filmmakers kept the sequel's villain fictional and anonymous. By drawing its focus on its characters instead of the overarching conflict, Top Gun: Maverick adds more heft to Pete "Maverick" Mitchell's awe-inspiring rite of age and also proves to be an incredibly heartwarming swan song to Val Kilmer's Iceman as well.
