The Return of "The Good" in Top Gun: Maverick
In which I rant about the “goodness” of Maverick and lament our culture's love affair with the anti-hero.
I finally saw Top Gun: Maverick. Can someone please tell me why from the opening music on the ship until the very end I was choking tears back? At the end of the film my wife said why don't they make movies like this anymore.
What she meant was, “Why doesn't Hollywood make inspiring movies?”
There's no question that Maverick should win the Academy Award for best picture. But we as a culture don't champion inspirational media. There has to be a bent to it to be “good.” Whatever “good” means these days in popular culture.
Of course, I have some thoughts on this.
The Rise of the Anit-hero
For some time I've struggled with the emergence of the anti-hero or protagonists that are actually not “good” in the classical sense of the word (and I do mean classical).
The Good "... is that for the sake of which everything else is done. ... The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.”1
Let me take you all the way back a couple of decades ago to the movie Se7en starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Gwyneth Paltrow.2
After watching that movie I was so disturbed in my spirit that I talked to my best friend about it until 3:00 A.M. We discussed how the writers of the story put a gun in your hand at the end of the movie.
Prior to this movie, Brad Pitt's character would have done the right thing (good, virtue). But the writers helped you pull the trigger and become hate, as the serial killer says of Brad Pitt’s character, revelling in his sick madness. And audiences lauded Pitt’s character for it. We wanted justice so much so that we felt justified in evil replacing innocence.
I'm sure there were movies like that before Se7en, but Se7en, for me, marked a sick shift in storytelling. Now, it's commonplace—this blurring of virtue and evil. Now, the main character in a film or television series doesn't need to possess any virtue. The writers tell you who to cheer for.
Making Galadriel Evil
Recently, philosopher Nathan Jacobs reviewed the new Amazon series Rings of Power. Against my better judgment, I watched the opening episodes because of my connection to C.S. Lewis scholarship. I wanted to see how these writers would interpret Tolkien who was one of Lewis’ best friends, as we all know.
Jacobs observes how the writers make Galadriel evil as the main character She is driven by vengeance, according to Jacobs. Jacobs writes:
“But there is another problem with Galadriel. She is evil. First, Galadriel is motivated entirely by hate and vengeance. Such motives have traditionally been considered, by all classical philosophies and religions, to be vicious.”3
In one scene her brother tells her that sometimes you need to touch the darkness. This world picture, or view, sees darkness and light as two warring substances, which is known as Manichaean dualism.4
“According to Manichaean dualism, the universe is the product of an ongoing battle between two coequal and coeternal first principles: God and the Prince of Darkness. From these first principles follow good and evil substances which are in a constant battle for supremacy.”5
It is totally unlike the Judeo-Christian or Neoplatonist worldview that understands evil as privation; something chosen of free will.6
Jacobs goes on to explain how this kind of shallow understanding of good and evil is all over television and film media. Good guys are no longer good. The writers direct you, the viewer, who to root for. But it's not based on virtue. We even root for vicious characters.
Of course, the anti-hero isn't new.
We've been fed it for decades. Some are iconic, like Captain Jack Sparrow; lovable but immoral. The new DC film Black Adam is billed as an anti-hero movie.7 This hero kills people. Even Christopher Nolan's Batman doesn't kill people. Throughout the film series, Bruce Wayne struggles with how dark he must become to conquer evil. But does he ever cross over and become like The Joker?
Jacobs hopes the writers turn Galadriel toward the light, as it were, but for now, the audience is rooting for viciousness. I hope the writers turn her towards the light as well. But I won't be watching to find out. Outside of the shallow metaphysical philosophy behind it, that Jacobs points out so well, I don't think it's good entertainment. But of course, you're welcome to see what you think.
Back To Virtue
Back to me crying all the way through Maverick. My gut reaction is that there's a goodness to it. In the film, they fight for life. Maverick even insists on teaching the pilots “how to come home.”
Characters overcome their hurt and wounds to do the right thing. There's personal sacrifice. There's forgiveness. There's reconciliation. There is responsibility. There's nobility (what’s that?). There's a little rebellion, but the good kind. In short, there's virtue.
J.R.R. Tolkein wrote an essay titled, “On Faerie Stories.” In it, he explained what he called the joyous upturn and storytelling, or what Tolkien coined as euchatastrophe. Eucatastrophe is the opposite of catastrophe. It's when nearly all hope is gone, the story turns usually from something heroic and virtuous.8
Whereas the catastrophe might be employed in tragedy and is regarded as the downturn of a story, Tolkien’s euchatastrophe is the shift in the faerie story for the good. It’s “the sudden joyous turn.” The eucatastrophe says that just when all hope appears to be lost, just when circumstances cannot get much bleaker, hope emerges.
Tolkien said eucatastrophe does not deny a sudden failure by the protagonist (dyscatastrophe). Rather, “it denies universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”9 Tolkien uses the Latin evangelium, meaning “good news” or in Old English “godspel,” fully aware of the Christian undertone.
Tolkien knowingly used this euchatastrophic framework in his writing to juxtapose the Old Norse worldview that included the cyclical destruction of everything. He looked to give meaning to struggle, and virtue in the face of darkness. Storytelling doesn’t have to drift into macabre to be entertaining. People want to be inspired not browbeaten with darkness so they can join in revelling in brokenness.
What are We Teaching Ourselves?
I talk a lot about the importance of teaching what beauty and goodness and truth are so that when young people are faced with the opposite, they'll understand the difference. In today's world, storytelling often blurs the lines so much that we think it's fine to align with unvirtuous characters.
Storytelling is the chief way to teach anyone anything. If that's true, then what does an anti-hero culture teach its citizens?
What kind of people are we hoisting up through stories as examples of what it means to be human, the imago dei?
I have three young daughters. I want them to be warrior princesses. And not in a Frozen idiom but in a spiritual heart kind of way. Noble, good, kind, gritty, virtuous. I don't want them to be vicious.
I watch fewer and fewer films and hardly any television shows these days. And, what's a movie theatre anyway? But I'm glad I saw Maverick. Entertainment commentary is always so tricky because, well, we all have our takes. But I do believe we can honestly and objectively critique what so easily pipes into our imaginations and shapes us cognitively.
Notes
Aristotle et al., The Nicomachean Ethics, second edition., Loeb classical library 73 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1934), Book 10, chapters 12-16; Book I, chapter 2.
“Se7en embodies and interrogates such blunt-force strategies, enfolding a meditation on—and enactment of—avant-garde artistry in genre-movie packaging.” Adam Nayman, “What’s in the Box?: The Terrifying Truth of ‘Se7en,’” The Ringer, last modified November 15, 2021, accessed September 6, 2022, https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/11/15/22726845/seven-david-fincher-mind-games-adam-nayman-brad-pitt.
https://philarchive.org/archive/SCEATM
Todd Calder, “The Concept of Evil,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2020. (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020), accessed September 6, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/concept-evil/.
“Jacques Maritain Center: GC 3.71,” accessed September 6, 2022, https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/gc3_71.htm.
Wyatte Grantham-Philips, “‘Black Adam’ Trailer: Dwayne Johnson Stars in DC’s Anti-Hero Movie,” Variety, June 8, 2022, accessed September 6, 2022, https://variety.com/2022/film/news/black-adam-trailer-dc-dwayne-johnson-1235172462/.
I wrote a short article on it a few years ago. You can access it here.
J. R. R. Tolkien, Verlyn Flieger, and Douglas A. Anderson, Tolkien on Fairy-Stories, Expanded edition with commentary and notes (London: HarperCollinsPubl., 2014), 75.
read this article out loud to my tribe. we’ve had this very dialogue around our kitchen tables. keep writing. it’s giving us language around critical topics.