Top Gun: Maverick is set to hit theaters this summer, and its numerous delays mean it can’t afford to move again. Top Gun originally arrived in 1986 and was a massive cultural phenomenon. On top of launching Tom Cruise to worldwide stardom, Top Gun even led to a surge of Naval aviator enlists. While Top Gun: Maverick is ready to capitalize on the success of the original, the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated everything.
Maverick’s present release date of May 27, 2022, like that of any film due for a theatrical release, unfortunately comes with an asterisk due to the pandemic. What makes Maverick’s planned release this summer a question mark is the fact of what kind of sequel the movie actually is. This makes the notion of the film undergoing another date change an extremely undesirable one unless it’s absolutely necessary.
As a stark contrast, Tom Cruise’s other big franchise, the Mission: Impossible series, has a lot less to lose from the recent release date change of Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission Impossible 8. While Mission: Impossible has had its own share of COVID-derived problems, it’s also got more to cushion it against the effects that those issues have created for it. Here’s why Top Gun: Maverick, unlike the upcoming Mission: Impossible sequels, can’t afford to move back any further unless it absolutely, positively has to.
Top Gun: Maverick Has Been Delayed A LOT
Simply sticking to a release date has been a challenge for any movie since the pandemic began. In the case of Top Gun: Maverick, it’s delays actually stretch back to 2018, when it was postponed from its then-scheduled debut of July 12, 2019. This was reportedly done in order to refine the aerial action sequences of the film to the highest possible standard. Delays of such a nature are hardly uncommon in action movies, so Maverick’s first bump wasn’t a big deal. Another date bump even moved Maverick ahead to June 24, 2020 from the previous date of June 26. The arrival of the pandemic was what changed everything.
Since COVID became a factor in theatrical release dates, Maverick has been rescheduled four more times. To be sure, other movies have been pushed back much more than Maverick, such as Sony’s Morbius, arriving on April 1, 2022 after its seventh pandemic-related delay. While the two upcoming Mission: Impossible sequels have also been pushed back, they have more of a buffer against their delays.
Mission: Impossible’s Popularity Is More Contemporary
The first Mission: Impossible was released in 1996, with five sequels following in later years. Of course, there have occasionally some big gaps between the release of one Mission: Impossible to the next, with Mission: Impossible III arriving in 2006 a full six years after Mission: Impossible II. It would then be another five years before the franchise really became it current self with 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Despite this, the popularity of the series, especially following Ghost Protocol, is undeniable.
2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout really cemented the franchise as an action movie powerhouse. Proclaimed by many as the best of the series, Fallout has even made its way onto lists of the best action movies of all time. With such a long-running series and coming off of a Fallout-level hit, the next installments of Mission: Impossible have plenty of anticipation. As such, with their own COVID delays (to be fair, also four in Mission: Impossible 7’s case), they’re in a position to afford being delayed for the best date possible. Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t have the same luxury.
Maverick Can’t Roll The Dice On Any More Delays (Barring A Huge COVID Wave)
While Mission: Impossible is a successful franchise in the present-tense, Maverick is a nostalgic legacy sequel. There’s hardly anything wrong with the latter, which has certainly born out hits in modern times. The problem is that Maverick is both Top Gun 2 and that it’s arriving a whopping 36 years after its predecessor. Even had it been able to debut in 2019 as originally, that would still have been a 33 year gap from one movie to the next. The question is, even with Cruise’s well-known stuntman’s drive, does Top Gun have the kind of popularity in 2022 that it did when such a runaway hit in 1986?
That’s a question that remains unanswerable until the movie’s marketing goes into full swing, which its delays have prevented from happening. Additionally, the delays are having the arguable effect of causing Maverick to gradually recede from the public consciousness. While its not likely to be a New Mutants-type of failure, that film shows the danger that pushing a movie back too many times can incur. With some portion of moviegoers not even alive when Top Gun first released, Maverick has more work cut out for it in investing audiences en masse than Mission: Impossible. Five delays deep, Maverick’s need to maintain its current release date is greater than ever.
Unless there’s another massive COVID wave (which sadly isn’t impossible), Maverick can’t take a chance on further delays without the risk of damaging its commercial viability. With the pandemic nearing the two-year mark with no clear end in sight, theaters and the film industry at large have had to adapt significantly. 2021 proved to be a far better year for theaters overall, with Spider-Man: No Way Home finally becoming the first billion-dollar hit since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Still, the situation is far from ideal, with successes of that kind unlikely to be commonplace again anytime in the immediate future.
Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission: Impossible sequels all have the potential to be big box office hits of the sort that the summer of 2021 began to see the return of. Even with that potential on their side, snagging a release date and sticking to it has been a real challenge for Maverick as the ambitious franchise revival it is. With as many delays as it’s already had and the impact they’re in danger of having on the film, adding another one to that long list has to be a last resort for Top Gun: Maverick.