Top Gun: Maverick was a certified hit when it was released last year. Not only did the film succeed at the box office, but it also became something of a critical darling and fan favorite film. One scene that particularly captured the audience's attention was a sequence in which the characters play a game of beachside football, and Paramount appears to have taken notice of that.
Top Gun: Maverick is the sequel to 1986's Top Gun. Though it was released 26 years after the first film, Top Gun: Maverick broke many records and included numerous callbacks to the original film.
The Top Gun: Maverick football scene is one of those callbacks. It's a nod to the volleyball sequence from the first film, which has been called homoerotic and included plenty of male fan service that was unusual for that era of film. Paramount posted a new version of Top Gun: Maverick's beach scene on their Paramount Plus YouTube account. Though the sequence is only about a minute long, the edit loops the video so that it's 3 hours long. Fans can now enjoy the scene as a film of its own.
The memetic move is a testament to the film's success. The edit isn't the only thing Paramount did to promote the film, as Top Gun: Maverick was also re-released in theaters in December. To date, the film has made nearly $1.5 billion at the box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 2022.
The cheek behind the move is also obvious. Top Gun: Maverick, which took longer to come out than even Avatar 2, leaned into just enough nostalgia to capture the audience's attention but not so much that it forgot to tell a story on its own. The football sequence in this film calls the volleyball scene from the original film to mind, complete with plenty of lingering shots of shirtless men.
For a time, it seemed that Top Gun: Maverick was unstoppable. It took down the likes of Avengers: Infinity War, but it does appear that Avatar: The Way of Water is on track to take its crown. It looks like nostalgia is back in theaters.
Top Gun: Maverick is streaming on Paramount Plus.
Source: Paramount Plus/YouTube