The Maverick nomination for Best Picture is absurd and perfect.

You know that feeling you get when you come home from what seemed like an impossible mission and everyone runs out to welcome you, yelling and cheering and swapping babies? And you’re cuddling up with your best friend, smiling playfully, because really no one thought you could make it work, but you did, and we’re all better for it? And then you see your hot girlfriend waiting for you in front of her Porsche 911?

That’s how the producers are Top Gun: Maverick They must be feeling it this morning, riding high on adrenaline in their incredible feat. They may not have destroyed the file rogue states Enrichment Factory, but they received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture – for the sequel to the 1980s action movie. Gay volleyball scene.

And who is cheering them on? Hollywood takes the place of the pilots and flight crew surrounding Tom Cruise on the deck of his aircraft carrier, an industry eager to celebrate huge success in this era of declining box office revenues. But I’m there too, yelling and Woo-ing in BestAchievement. Because while I salute the Academy as their awards Adventure filmmaking is increasingly recognizedAnd Storytelling for diverse communitiesAnd The best cinema in the worldI also want the Academy Awards, once in a while, to celebrate a movie that is, quite simply, a total blast.

Because that’s what Maverick he! You may not agree with some critics That Joseph Kosinski movie Cinema. You might be surprised by Jingwa Rah, and pay attention to the film’s half-hearted attempts at feminism, and correctly note that Maverick, like its predecessor, is a multimillion-dollar advertisement for America’s All-consuming War Machine. But I dare you not to agree to that Maverick It is an enjoyable journey from start to finish. I have yet to discover the human he encountered MaverickThe overwrought drama, filled with beautiful characters and exhilarating fights, never finds its pulse racing and its jaw dropping. To reward it with a Best Picture nomination is simply realizing that this genre is one of the things that movies, at their best, just don’t do like any other art form.

since then The Dark Knight The 2009 fiasco caused the Academy to open its Best Picture list with twice as many films as before, and the Academy Awards have had some success in nominating many different genres of films for the award show. Each slate of nominees usually contains a mix of blockbuster, biopic, quiet indie, uplifting comedies, and melodramas. For a while, they even nominated animated movies; Nowadays, they usually indulge in one foreign language movie. But it’s still very rare for the Oscars to recognize pure adventure, blockbuster, action-packed and utterly fun films. from Hacksaw Ridge to 1917 to Dunkirk, the expanded Best Picture field seems to prefer its action to be depicted with wistfulness than the horror of war. for a year Mad Max: Fury RoadMovie fans have been begging the Academy Awards to nominate another movie just because it has bones. That’s why I’m so glad it’s among the better, smarter, and more creative movies nominated for Best Picture this year (and also Elvis), the academy found a place for Maverickthe movie I enjoyed more than any other in 2022.

Come! She has it all. leather jackets. That shot where Tom Cruise is riding a motorcycle in one direction and we’re flying over him in the other so it looks like he’s going twice as fast. Admirals are learning in front of the rank and file. synthesizer. Tom Cruise calls airplanes “sweetie.” Budget to record a four-minute training sequence to “Will not be fooled againWithout batting an eye. Tom Cruise teased by Jennifer Connelly. Farewell Among Men of Honor. Adonisis shirtless Play football at magic hour.

And jokes – very good jokes. Purists may scoff at the film’s Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, but as a groundbreaking plotline, it’s unrivaled – building on its protagonists’ motivations as it takes us through the task over and over until we also understand everything that can go wrong during the film’s climax. The dialogue deftly mixes gentle manly banter with musings on the intransigence of time: “Your species is on the brink of extinction”, “Time is your greatest foe”, “There is still time”. Maverick Obsessed with the progress of time, the passing of the torch — an obsession shared, as it happens, by the upper echelons of Hollywood, as the industry searches for an answer to its great existential question: Can we get people to go to the movies any more?

to reward Maverick With a Best Picture nomination it’s just the realization that this genre is one of the unparalleled things about movies at their best. appearance.

After Maverick and Rooster (Miles Teller) are shot down behind enemy lines, after their healing reunion in the snow, Maverick plans to steal an F-14 from the hangar that was somehow not blown up by American missiles. Rooster disdains the capabilities of the old plane, referring to it as a “museum piece”. However, the pair get the plane off the ground and, encountering two enemy fifth-generation fighters, Maverick and Rooster, are victorious. Best, too, is a museum piece, a two-hour poem about the way movies were once made, and the societal power they once had. It may be a “last ride,” like Maverick’s last Mach 10 ride in Dark Star, but it’s nonetheless a powerful reminder that if you surround a movie star with hundred million dollar action sequences shot by someone with real visual flair, you can Get all of America to come to the movies – in fact, you can get them to stand up and cheer.

can Maverick actually win? You had to go back to 1977, when rocky I outdone him taxi driver And All the chief’s mento find the last feel-good popcorn movie, one that takes you off the stage in an emotional thriller And An adrenaline rush, it won Best Picture. And as the Academy’s membership progresses more and more from its old Hollywood roots—becoming younger, more diverse, and more cosmopolitan—it seems more and more that the Best Picture winners will continue to reflect this evolution in membership, rewarding smaller, more serious films, films with a contrasting spirit of bobbing on encouragement, on Small scale on stunning, forward looking on nostalgic. From this perspective, Maverick— the last stand for the biggest stars of the previous generation, a movie so steeped in Hollywood past that it begins with a Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer tagline — it feels a little retro.

But I wouldn’t count Maverick Outside. In 1929, Paramount’s other great action rode its groundbreaking aerial combat scenes to its first-ever Best Picture Oscar. to watch wings Now is to marvel at how some aviation cinematic displays that were invented over 90 years ago have never been improved upon. (A pilot’s view of tracers swarming into an enemy plane? Yes, please!) But it’s also essential to remember that while movies have always excelled at making us cry, making us think, and making us reconsider our beliefs, they’ve always excelled at Exciting we. Don’t underestimate the power of spectacle, or the industry’s will to valorize—in this year, especially, when the future of Hollywood seems to hang in the balance—the sheer glory of sitting in the dark and spilling popcorn on yourself. Best He is the greatest crowd pleaser of the year, and whether he deserved to win or not, his nomination had me waiting on board, my pilot gleaming in the fading light, and my hands raised to give everyone a high shot. five.