Critique: The Review: Top Gun

Source: atlantic
Authors: David Sims, Shirley Li, Megan Garber
URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2022/05/top-gun/629897/

What the article reports

This is an edited transcript of The Atlantic's culture podcast "The Review," in which staff writers David Sims, Shirley Li, and Megan Garber discuss the original Top Gun (1986) ahead of Top Gun: Maverick's Memorial Day 2022 release. The conversation covers the film's advertising/propaganda logic, its oblique treatment of the enemy, its genre antecedents (Western, monomyth, high-school drama), and the participants' personal reactions to its characters. It functions as cultural criticism and opinion, not reported news.

Factual accuracy — Adequate

The release-date timeline Sims recites is specific and appears accurate: original 2019 date, a pre-pandemic production delay to June 2020, then successive COVID kicks to July 2021, November 2021, and finally May 27, 2022. These are verifiable and match public record.

Sims describes Tony Scott as the "slightly flashier, less critically respected brother of Ridley Scott" and says both came "out of commercials" — accurate. He references Ridley Scott's "famous ad for Hovis Bread" and an "Apple ad" — the Hovis "Bike Round" ad (1973) and the Apple "1984" Super Bowl ad are real and well-documented. However, Sims also says this commercial-to-features pipeline "was just not happening in Hollywood" before these directors, a sweeping historical claim made in passing without qualification. That's a minor overreach.

The characterization of Kelly McGillis's character as "the only female character of any consequence" in the original film is a defensible critical judgment, not a strict factual claim, but it's presented as fact without attribution. No outright errors are apparent; the piece is conversational and avoids hard data it could get wrong.

Framing — Mostly transparent

This is clearly labeled opinion/podcast criticism, so interpretive claims in authorial voice are expected. Still, a few framing choices are worth noting:

1. "infomercial for America" — Garber's extended analogy is presented as critical insight without engaging any counterargument (e.g., that the film's commercial origins don't necessarily negate its emotional or artistic authenticity). The analogy drives the entire discussion unchallenged.

2. "a movie that does so much to elide those tragic realities and essentially treat war as a game" — Garber invokes Ukraine as a contemporary frame, which is a pointed editorial choice. No speaker asks whether the 1986 Cold War context makes this framing anachronistic or fair.

3. "That is very American of him" — Sims offers this as an unqualified cultural verdict. It functions as a rhetorical conclusion, not an argued position.

4. "sort of a weird apology" / "high-strung men, they can't really admit any weakness" — the locker-room scene reading is presented as shared obvious fact rather than one interpretive reading among several.

Because this is labeled podcast criticism, these choices are appropriate to the genre. The piece is transparent that these are the hosts' views, not reported findings.

Source balance

Ratio: 3 internal Atlantic voices; 0 external critics, film historians, military consultants, or defenders of the film's entertainment value on its own terms. All three participants share a broadly similar critical-left-media-studies orientation toward the film. No voice argues, for instance, that the film's pro-military framing is artistically or culturally legitimate on balance. This is entirely normal for a podcast roundtable format — but it is a limitation.

Omissions

1. Pentagon cooperation and the production deal — The U.S. Navy's documented role in shaping the original Top Gun script (a well-known case study in military-entertainment collaboration) is the elephant in the room when discussing the film as "propaganda." The piece gestures at this without ever stating it directly or citing any specifics.

2. Critical reception history — The original film's mixed critical reception versus its massive commercial success would strengthen the "infomercial" argument. The piece doesn't mention it.

3. Prior critical literature — Scholars like Tom Engelhardt (The End of Victory Culture) or journalism about the Pentagon's Hollywood office have written about exactly this phenomenon. Citing even one would ground the conversation's claims.

4. What Maverick actually does differently — The stated peg is the sequel's imminent release, but the discussion stays almost entirely on the 1986 film. Readers seeking to understand whether Maverick reproduces or subverts these patterns get little beyond "it feels like a movie made before the pandemic."

What it does well

• The infomercial analogy is genuinely illuminating. Garber's extended riff — "an ad will sort of strip away the context and the complications of the world until all that's left is naked need" — is a precise and original critical frame, not a cliché.
• The Iceman rehabilitation is the conversation's best moment. Garber's admission that "I felt myself identifying so much more with Iceman" opens a real critical insight about how the film codes Soviet-style rule-following as villainy, and the speakers develop it collaboratively.
• Conversational honesty. Phrases like "I don't know if that says bad things about me as a person" and "maybe shameful reactions" model intellectual self-awareness appropriate to criticism.
• Format transparency. The piece is clearly labeled as an edited podcast transcript with named participants and a linked audio version — readers know exactly what they're getting.
• The genre-stacking observation — "a Western with more rules" — is economical and apt, earning its place without being overworked.

Rating

Overall: 7/10 — An intellectually sharp roundtable that develops a coherent critical frame for Top Gun's propaganda mechanics, constrained by its podcast-transcript format's inherent source narrowness and a missed opportunity to ground the "infomercial" argument in documented production history.