"A Very Bad Movie": Why Does This Acclaimed Director Hate Top Gun: Maverick So Much?

The least we can say is that this renowned director does not hold Top Gun: Maverick in high regard, and he is not a fan of nostalgia!

In 2022, Top Gun: Maverick defied all predictions by becoming the second biggest box office success of the year worldwide, behind Avatar 2, with $1.5 billion in revenue. In France, the sequel to the classic from '86 featuring Tom Cruise attracted 6.6 million curious viewers, a triumph.

Adored by the public and acclaimed by critics, the second installment of Top Gun has garnered nearly universal agreement... except for Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name starring Timothée Chalamet.

Flop Gun: Maverick?

During an event at the Il Foglio Innovation Festival earlier this week, the Italian filmmaker labeled Top Gun: Maverick as a "very bad movie", before criticizing the trend of nostalgia. According to him, Joseph Kosinski's feature film failed to meet audience expectations for a modern cinematic experience.

He then slammed Disclosure Day, the new film by Steven Spielberg, which has been in theaters since June 10: "Disclosure Day is part of the nostalgia economy, which is one of the fundamental themes of the last 20 years, isn’t it?" he pointed out.

"The entire imagination is built, including politics, on nostalgia, and thus on the way to revive within us what we think we have lost in order to find it again," analyzed the director of Challengers and After The Hunt.

I remember that during the filming of Challengers, I went to see Top Gun: Maverick in a packed theater. It was a very bad movie.

Nostalgia, a Plague?

"I remember that during the filming of Challengers, I went to see Top Gun: Maverick in a packed theater. It was a very bad movie, but at the same time, it revived, with today’s ideology, the forms of cinema from the past, those of the legendary film by Tony Scott with Tom Cruise. The audience was shouting, throwing popcorn, applauding; they were thrilled," he confessed.

Ultimately, according to Luca Guadagnino, "it was a sign of our times: the audience was thrilled because nostalgia seems to have become the only resource that all markets, whatever they may be, manage to capture and monetize," he lamented.

After After The Hunt, the director will soon return with Artificial. This film will star Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, recounting his controversial ousting and subsequent reinstatement at the helm of OpenAI in 2023. Ironically, he will share the screen with Monica Barbaro, who was part of the cast of Top Gun: Maverick.