There are, probably, no two movies in the world less alike than Top Gun: Maverick, a nostalgic, technically-audacious movie about talented fighter pilots in the U.S. Navy, and the 2003 comic masterpiece School of Rock, a movie about a man who impersonates a substitute teacher and tricks his fourth-grade students into competing against adults in a local Battle of the Bands tournament.
And yet, after I saw Top Gun: Maverick in theaters this past year, I was gripped, transfixed by the overlaps between the two films. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Top Gun: Maverick reminded me more of School of Rock than it reminded me of any other film, including the original Top Gun.
The first Top Gun is told from the perspective of a student. Top Gun: Maverick is told from the perspective of that same man, but once he becomes a teacher. Yes, whatever else it is, Top Gun: Maverick is a Teacher Movie. Traditionally, teacher movies center around the protagonist convincing a group of people to believe in themselves and inspiring them to achieve something great (i.e. To Sir with Love, Freedom Writers, October Sky, etc.). In many ways, this is accomplished by getting the students to function together as a unit—providing much needed structure and rules and helping them excel in this context. But in Top Gun: Maverick and School of Rock, the teacher helps the students break free from structure. They encourage individuality, not conformity or cohesion.
Top Gun: Maverick and School of Rock fit into the subgenre of “Cool Teacher Movies,” like Dead Poets Society and Mona Lisa Smile. In movies like this, iconoclastic teachers impart to their students how to be independent thinkers, how to resist and break out of the stringent models of all-day-every-day uniformity and “excellence” that have already molded them. These teachers turn their students into ragtag bands of outsiders that they are the leaders—captains—of.
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