When Tom Cruise spoke about saving the cinematic experience, we’ll bet he never expected to defeat MCU villain Thanos in the process, but here we are. Thanks to its incredible box-office performance, the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun: Maverick is now the sixth highest grossing movie of all time, surpassing the MCU movie Avengers Infinity War.
Top Gun: Maverick is an epic action movie which is perfect for the big screen experience, and the legacy sequel to the original ‘80s movie has taken theatres by storm since its release way back in May 2022. The film had been delayed due to the pandemic, but Cruise insisted on a theatrical release as opposed to dumping the thriller movie on streaming services, and his resistance certainly proved to be the right decision.
With global box-office earnings standing at $1.403 billion at the time of writing, Top Gun: Maverick is by far the biggest movie of 2022, and is gradually working its way up the all-time rankings. Most recently, it displaced the Marvel movie Infinity War, which is no mean feat.
It’s a truly startling level of success, even for a Hollywood superstar like Tom Cruise. Top Gun: Maverick was the first film of the actor’s long career to break $1 billion and it now sits comfortably as his best box-office effort to date.
The Mission Impossible star clearly has a lot of pulling power, with audiences of all ages still flocking to see the movie as it nears the end of its theatrical run. True story: I actually went to see Top Gun 2 again just yesterday, and the screening was still pretty full, with a great mix of people in there.
According to producer Jerry Bruckheimer in an interview with EW, the reason for the success is simple: “Audiences love the Marvel, they love the DC stuff. They’re beautifully made by really talented people. Sometimes you want to see something that’s real, and that’s what Top Gun gave us.”
He’s not wrong, either. The beauty of Top Gun: Maverick is that, for all its high-octane action and insane stunts, it’s simple, blockbuster fun and a great escape from the world of superhero movies.
We wonder how Thanos is taking the news. The MCU character is probably in some strand of the universe, looking for the time stone so that he can go back and stop Tom Cruise from ever setting foot in a fighter plane.