Spoilers ahead for Top Gun: Maverick


Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski explains why the decision was made to never reveal who the villains are in the film. The long-awaited sequel to 1986's Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick sees the return of Tom Cruise's hotshot pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. The film chronicles Maverick's return to the Navy's Top Gun fighter pilot school to train a new batch of recruits for a dangerous mission in enemy territory. The film has been a hit with both audiences and critics and marks the biggest box office opening of Cruise's career.

Although much of the film sees Maverick and the other pilots competing against each other in aerial combat exercises, the third act puts the Top Gun pilots firmly in enemy territory. It is never revealed what country the operation takes place in, nor does it specify who any of the bad guys are. This follows in the tradition of Tony Scott's original Top Gun, which also keeps the villains both nameless and faceless throughout the film. In addition to Cruise, Top Gun: Maverick stars Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Lewis Pullman, Monica Barbaro, Glen Powell, and Jon Hamm.

In a new interview on The Big Picture podcast, Kosinski explains why the decision was made to keep the villains nameless and faceless. Ultimately, he explains, the film isn't about geopolitics, it's about Maverick's journey as a character. Not only that, but by not revealing who the villain is, the movie becomes timeless, in many ways, with audiences able to revisit it for years to come without fear of the film's events coinciding with the goings-on in the real world. Check out Kosinki's comment below:

"The film is really a competition film. It's more of a sports movie in terms of its structure. It's about friendship, it's about sacrifice. It's not about geopolitics. It never was. Even though the first film was made in the heart of the '80s, the enemy in that film was also kind of faceless and nameless. We wanted the focus to be on a character-driven story about Maverick dealing with all these relationships.

We designed the mission to be with a nameless, faceless power and I'm glad we did because the world's changing every year. We shot this movie in 2018. You could never anticipate what the state of the world would be today. I want this to be a film that people watch ten or 20 years from now and can still enjoy and not feel like it was a product of the early 2020s. That was our goal."

While Top Gun: Maverick deals heavily with the U.S. Navy and other military elements, Kosinski makes clear that it's not a war movie. Cruise's Maverick takes center stage for almost the entirety of the film, showing him struggling to find a place in the world and trying to make peace with his past. Showing who the bad guys are doesn't necessarily add anything to Maverick's character arc, as Kosinski explains, and would only serve to distract from the issues at the heart of the story.

Despite being made back in the 1980s, the original Top Gun has aged very well in many respects. Although it's suggested that the enemies in the film are Russian (judging from the Mig fighter planes that are referenced), it's never confirmed one way or another. Similarly, by not revealing who the enemies are in Top Gun: Maverick, the film can live on in an evergreen state, entirely detached from real-world military conflicts. With Top Gun: Maverick soaring high at the box office and earning rave reviews from both audiences and critics, it seems that Kosinski's decision was the right one.