Jon Hamm Calls Out ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Success Over Marvel Movies: ‘That’s Unprecedented’

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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Jon Hamm is taking the old Superman catchphrase “it’s a bird, it’s a plane” quite seriously.

The “Top Gun: Maverick” star celebrated the record-breaking success of the long-awaited sequel film, led by Tom Cruise.

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“It’s the only film to be number one on Memorial Day and number one on Labor Day,” Hamm told Entertainment Tonight. “That’s unprecedented in many ways.”

The “Mad Men” alum added, “It’s one of the only top five [films] that doesn’t have somebody in a cape or on a spaceship. It’s a story about real people, it’s got a lot of emotional resonance, people are really responding to it.”

Most recently, as National Cinema Day offered discounted $3 tickets for films, “Maverick” bested the re-release of Marvel’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which placed number three at the box office, behind both the “Top Gun” sequel and “Bullet Train” over Labor Day weekend.

“Top Gun: Maverick” also became the highest-grossing Paramount release in the studio’s history, replacing the 1997 release of “Titanic.”

Auteurs Quentin Tarantino and Luca Guadagnino additionally praised the sequel film, addressing its enduring heart and cinematic legacy, complete with Cruise’s death-defying stunts and staggering flying sequences.

“I fucking love ‘Top Gun: Maverick,'” Tarantino gushed. “I thought it was fantastic. I saw it at the theaters. That and Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story.’ Both provided a true cinematic spectacle, the kind that I’d almost thought that I wasn’t going to see anymore. It was fantastic.”

The Oscar winner spoke about “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski’s ode to the late original “Top Gun” director Tony Scott, who died by suicide in 2012. Scott famously directed one of Tarantino’s first screenplays, “True Romance.”

“There was just this lovely, lovely aspect because I love both Tony Scott’s cinema so much, and I love Tony so much that that’s as close as we’re ever going to get to seeing one more Tony Scott movie,” Tarantino said. “[Kosinski] did a great job. The respect and the love of Tony was in every frame. It was almost in every decision. It was consciously right there, but in this really cool way that was really respectful.”

“Bones and All” director Guadagnino later explained that the revisiting of the “Top Gun” universe came at the perfect time, 35 years later.

“The idea that a sequel comes after a quarter of a century is, in its way, a very smart, intelligent, and thoughtful way of doing business,” the “Call Me By Your Name” director said. “Because now, even if the movie holds very deep nostalgia in the audience — the nostalgic gaze of Tony Scott and the idea of the world in the way it was in 1986 — you are there for the ride of Tom Cruise’s Maverick being a man now, not a boy. So, I would say there are always ways to create something that is surprising and interesting.”

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