It probably won’t happen. Probably should not to occure. But many people, myself included, really hope it will happen. Because the only way for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to save this year’s Oscars is to make sure the Best Picture award goes to “Top Gun: Maverick.”
No, it wasn’t the best movie released in 2022, or even the best action movie. (That award, IMHO, should go to the sadly underrated “Bullet Train.”) But “Top Gun” did something this year that definitely deserves some kind of award: It defibrillated a nearly dead theater industry.
When it opened last May, many Americans were still wearing masks and movie theaters were still almost completely empty. It seemed at the time as if COVID had dealt such a lethal blow to the movie business that the audience, which had been safely at home with Netflix for two years, would never return.
But then Tom Cruise zoomed across the screens in an F-14 Tomcat, and suddenly Hollywood was saved. The picture grossed $719 million in the US and another $770 million overseas. It was proof that big, silly, super-fun action movies could still fill theaters.
And now, for its next miracle, “Top Gun” needs to save the Oscars. Because, boy, do they need to be saved. Last year’s show drew just 16 million viewers. That’s better than the lowest-rated 2021 broadcast ever, with just 10 million viewers, but still only about a third of the audience the ceremony used to draw not too long ago (like, say, 1998). , when 58 million people tuned in).
This year’s show so far is shaping up to be another potential flop, at least judging by the lackluster list of potential contenders. “The Fabelmans” has a great director and a great story—Steven Spielberg, looking back on his teenage years as a moviegoer—but no stars. “Tár” has a big star, Cate Blanchett, but no story and a director, Todd Field, so indifferent to pleasing the audience that he opens his movie with the end credits. “The Banshees of Inisherin”, “Talking Women”, “Everything at Once, Everywhere”, whatever they are, don’t draw crowds.
Let’s just say no one is going to be madly adjusting their TV antennas, or logging on to ABC.com, to see Judd Hirsch on the red carpet.
Clearly, what the Oscars desperately need right now is a giant, larger-than-life, giant-sized movie star. The kind of old-fashioned marquee idol that can still, even today, in a world of fractured audiences and millions of streamers, draw crowds to the same screen at the same time. And there’s only one of those left on planet Earth these days. His name rhymes with Shmom Schmooze.
Of course, the probability of “Top Gun” winning Best Picture (Cruise would accept as the film’s producer, as well as its star) is about the same as that of a fighter pilot hurtling through impossibly narrow canyons while Dodge gun turrets and go down successfully. a missile on a target no bigger than a mini fridge (without hitting a mountain). Academy voters are generally not enthusiastic about action movies; Aside from technical and sometimes musical awards, movies of that sort are almost always turned down at the Oscars.
After all, this is the same group of smug moviegoers who gave the 2021 Best Picture award to “Nomadland,” the movie in which Francis McDormand pooped in a bucket.
Still, in Hollywood no mission is impossible. And indeed, there are signs of a momentum in the making for “Top Gun.” The film managed to elbow its way into the American Film Institute’s Unranked Alphabetical Picks for the Top 10 Movies of 2022 (squeezed between “Tár” and “The Woman King”). The National Board of Review went even further, naming “Top Gun” its #1 pick for movie of the year. Even the New York Film Critics Circle showed it some love, giving cinematographer Claudio Miranda’s “Top Gun” its award for best cinematography.
Hopeful omens, to be sure, even if the odds of an Oscar for “Top Gun” remain decidedly high.
Honestly though, if the Academy has any chance of getting out of its current ratings plummet and getting its audience back, it needs to do something it’s never done before. Something he’s had multiple opportunities to do over the years, but for some reason just hasn’t been able to. Something that could now save his skin.
You need to give Tom Cruise a trophy.
