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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Top Gun: Maverick (Lorne Balfe/Harold Faltermeyer/Various)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you love the blissfully nostalgic tone of the film
itself, for the sequel's soundtrack is appreciably thoughtful in its
continuation of the 1986 film's themes.
Avoid it... if you expect Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer to supply refreshingly compelling or complex new material that is not derived at least in part from the prior score or the new and returning songs.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Top Gun: Maverick (Lorne Balfe/Harold
Faltermeyer/Various) Rarely do nostalgic sequels succeed with such
universal acceptance as 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, the long
awaited and long overdue but ultimately perfectly timed sequel to the
1986 blockbuster, Top Gun. Paramount reunited Jerry Bruckheimer
and Tom Cruise for an intelligent continuation of the original story,
Cruise's character of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell still defying U.S. Navy
rules in his plight to prove himself and the technology of his planes.
Reassigned from testing an experimental "Darkstar" aircraft unsafely,
his former competitor and now lifelong friend, Admiral Tom "Iceman"
Kazansky protects and supports his career, sending him to train young
aviators for a dangerous foreign mission. With one of those pilots the
son of his lost flight partner from the first film, Nick "Goose"
Bradshaw, tensions abound. Maverick eventually proves himself to the
team, leads the mission, and rekindles a failed prior romance. The movie
struck all the right feel-good chords with audiences and pleased the
U.S. Department of Defense with its accuracy and positive depiction of
fighter pilots in an age of increasingly unmanned weaponry. Cruise
absolutely insisted upon two vital ingredients to this triumph: the
emotional return of Val Kilmer as Iceman despite his difficulty speaking
after battling throat cancer and, as a boon to his own payday, the
refusal to sell the movie's rights to any streaming services for
up-front distribution. As a lifeline for struggling theatre chains,
Top Gun: Maverick collected nearly $1.5 billion in grosses, a sum
only surpassed later in the year by Avatar: The Way of Water;
these two spectacular visual feasts provided renewed hope for saving
theatrical cinematic releases as a concept. The soundtrack of Top
Gun remains among the most successful of all-time, its collection of
songs and Harold Faltermeyer's score persisting as iconic
representations of 1980's pop culture. It was impossible in the
following ten years to avoid Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone," Berlin's
"Take My Breath Away," or Faltermeyer's score anthem on radio stations
or in Paramount's theme parks. They were as ubiquitous as any soundtrack
in a generation.
For Top Gun: Maverick, the production clearly sought to extend its mission of nostalgia to its soundtrack, and the results are largely successful at that task. The Loggins song, "Danger Zone," returns, as does the source usage of "Great Balls of Fire." The two new songs leading the soundtrack are "I Ain't Worried" by OneRepublic and "Hold My Hand" by Lady Gaga, the latter a retro rock ballad clearly meant as a substitute for the Berlin song. Half a dozen other songs litter the film but do not feature on the soundtrack album. The Lady Gaga entry is the awards bait from the presentation, a pleasantly belted number except for the awful vocal manipulations at its start. Hans Zimmer was tasked with tackling the score for Top Gun: Maverick, a simmering mess which he approached with trepidation out of a fear that he would yield an inferior product compared to the 1986 soundtrack. In an effort to maintain the same character and quality of Top Gun, he reached out to Faltermeyer and moved him into the Zimmer-led Remote Control Productions (RCP) complex for close involvement on the new score. After initial tumult with the score, frequent Zimmer collaborator Lorne Balfe took the lead in coordinating its composition, though because of the usual, frustrating legalities of contractual credit, Balfe doesn't receive a compositional nod in the film itself. (He does, however, lead the compositional credit on the album.) Balfe and Zimmer teamed up for their usual synthesizer programming duties, and they closely involved Lady Gaga in the construction of several cues that adapt her song's melody, leading to her receiving top composer credit as well. (Faltermeyer, interestingly, disliked sharing composing credit with Lady Gaga, taking his displeasure public.) While scores adapt song melodies without credit all the time, Zimmer and Balfe insist that Lady Gaga's collaboration with them was significant enough to merit the top line credit. Not as fortunate, of course, is the army of Zimmer (and now Balfe) clones wandering the halls of RCP and contributing to this score as ghostwriters. Leading these aspiring souls are Andrew Kawczynski, David Fleming, and Steve Mazzaro, along with five other arrangers and hordes of assistants and "music consultants." Zimmer earns his pay collecting all this talent for projects such as this, though the results vary in quality. On the surface, the soundtrack for Top Gun: Maverick is just as much a success as the film itself. Zimmer and Balfe strike the right balance of Faltermeyer's 1980's character and the more contemporary techniques that have made Zimmer's music popular in more recent decades. The product as a whole is a decent modernization of the prior soundtrack, with more than enough references to Top Gun at the proper times to suffice. Something has to said for Zimmer and Balfe in their ability to please a crowd. At the same time, the score for Top Gun: Maverick offers extremely simple, repetitive new themes and no really complex constructs anywhere, the density sparse and the rather bonehead techniques of brooding instrumental tones and tired action ostinatos consistent to Zimmer and Balfe's most standard styles. In short, this is dumb but mostly satisfying music, and few viewers will be expecting high art in this circumstance. The Zimmer technique of constructing a cue around one long crescendo of repeating chords, a habit adopted by Balfe, is extremely tiresome and is applied a few times here. The synthetics and orchestra are heavily weighted towards the bass region, emphasizing masculine heroism without much lofty treble interference. The action music is the weakness in the score, a really obnoxious, slurring bass pitch effect against pointlessly slapping rhythms causing annoyance in "Tally Two" and "Canyon Dogfight," the latter cue mashing the score's themes together inelegantly and concluding with orchestral stinger effects that are extremely grating; these passages are reportedly the work of Andrew Kawczynski, though cue sheet attribution is tough to trust on a project like this. Outside of these cues, you do receive the standard ostinatos chugging through their anonymous low string mannerisms, and overblown melodrama from Zimmer's earlier days does influence "Dagger One is Hit." Perhaps more interesting are the shadows of Crimson Tide in "Give 'Em Hell," a cue credited to Zimmer himself. Most audiences will be far more interested in the anthemic and romantic portions, however, and these cues are better handled by Zimmer and Balfe. The simplistic nature of the performances suits these aspects of the score, their style prevailing well over their substance as they convey the easily digestible themes from the franchise. While the orchestrations and performance-oriented aspects of the themes in Top Gun: Maverick may sound tonally juvenile, Zimmer and Balfe do apply them quite intelligently in the spotting process. Returning at the forefront is Faltermeyer's main 1986 anthem and, in a notable surprise, his theme for Goose. Interpolated extensively is the Lady Gaga song's theme for Maverick's romantic inclinations and sense of family with his fellow pilots. Most likely from Balfe comes a simple new theme for the Darkstar concept that represents Maverick's renegade nature more generally. Finally, the best theme in the score derives from Giorgio Moroder's melody from the "Danger Zone" song, reportedly adapted by Zimmer here as a determination motif to augment the action sequences. The primary anthem from Faltermeyer is modernized in "Main Titles (You've Been Called Back to Top Gun)," prominent electric guitar renditions provided at 1:15 and 1:34, the latter beefed up with Zimmer's synthetic style. The wet reverb and clarity of synthesizers and percussion in this rendition are superb. The track ends with only the initial three notes of the melody on a horn-like tone at 2:09, and this technique of abbreviating the theme like this is everywhere in the score, often supplied as counterpoint to other activity. (Ignore album credits that indicate that this theme is in only a few tracks; it's in nearly everything.) The first three notes as a reminder motif continue at 1:03 and 1:26 into "Darkstar," becoming more prominent at 2:16 as counterpoint to the Darkstar/Maverick theme. The interlude sequence of the anthem is transformed for melodrama in the second minute of "Dagger One is Hit." The three-note motif recurs at 1:44 and 2:07 into "What's the Plan" and opens "The Man, The Legend" multiple times before resolving to the full theme at 1:01 on brass and synths. The motif of the first three notes returns over the Darkstar/Maverick theme at 1:05 in "Canyon Dogfight" and again at that cue's end. An obligatory, suite-like performance of the main theme closes out the album in "Top Gun Anthem" with orchestral backing to the electric guitar, which is performed well in both the "Main Titles" and here. It's unclear the extent to which Faltermeyer coordinated the applications of the anthem's fragments to the rest of the score, but he is at least credited with compositional credit on the majority of the cues. The love theme of Top Gun: Maverick serves not only Maverick's own romantic endeavors but also a broader sense of redemption and family. It's built upon truly basic pop song progressions, six-note phrases repeating with only the final two notes changing over ultra-pleasant chords. Zimmer seems to have taken the forefront in adapting this melody into the score, and he and Lady Gaga alternate between providing extended adaptations of the full melody and restrained conveyance of only its underlying chords. Those chords alone debut at 0:14 into "You're Where You Belong," and the full theme emerges at 1:00 on keyboard, leading to a dramatic escalation on strings and brass. Thereafter, the melody simply repeats for 100 seconds without clear, compelling secondary phrasing; it's pleasant, but it never arrives at a particular destination. The melody slides into anthemic form over string ostinatos at 1:54 into "Touchdown," the fuller treatment for the song's secondary phrases nice though simplistic. A reduction from trumpet counterpoint to solo keyboard at the end of this cue is a poignantly heartfelt touch. For the actual romantic part of the story, the theme enjoys a performance on keyboards and synth wash at 0:29 into "Penny Returns (Interlude)," after which the orchestra takes only the melody's chords in the cue's second half. Balfe's new material for the Darkstar concept and associated Maverick tendencies towards insubordination manifests in the score's most generic idea. The slowly rising, four-note sequence utilizes dramatically easy but simplistic chords familiar to the safest expressions of Zimmer and Balfe for such situations in prior works. The motif is muted at 0:19 and 0:39 into "Darkstar" over urgent string rhythms, gaining strength at 1:14 and 1:33 and eventually shifting to more noble brass at 1:56 with consecutive statements to end the cue's expected crescendo format. With different harmonies, the idea accesses essentially the same four chords at 3:57 into "Give 'Em Hell." The chords shift around again in "What's the Plan," but the same four-note formation persists, becoming an obnoxiously loud crescendo of repetition on strings by "F-14." The Darkstar/Maverick motif returns in a three-note abbreviation at 0:54 and 2:02 into "Canyon Dogfight" before rediscovering its full form at 0:40 into "The Man, The Legend" on strings and then low brass. All of this material suffices on a basic level but generates little extroverted excitement in the process. The most intellectually interesting thematic choices in Top Gun: Maverick involve Zimmer and Balfe's (though presumably mostly Zimmer's) choice to adapt two musical identities from Top Gun for logical extensions in the sequel. Hearing the melody of the "Danger Zone" song (specifically the "highway to the danger zone" lyrical sequence) translated into this score's determination theme is a true delight. These descending seven-note phrases that also shift only their final few notes each time may not trigger connections to the song for some listeners because the instrumental tones are so different from those of the song, but the structural connection is impossible to miss once you make it. This theme is heard at 3:07 and thereafter in "Give 'Em Hell" on nervous strings over deep brass pulses and chime, exposed on full brass at 4:56 in brute force. The usage recurs at 2:38 into "What's the Plan" on brass, repeated several times. It's obvious with frantic urgency at 0:42 and 1:37 into "Canyon Dogfight" as well. The other heart-warming expansion of the 1986 soundtrack involves the reapplication of the Faltermeyer theme for Goose, long forgotten by many because of its absence from the 1986 soundtrack album, to represent Maverick's interactions with that character's son here. It's alluded to in the dramatic first minute of "Dagger One is Hit" but becomes explicit at 4:19 on horn and at 4:47 on strings in "Time to Let Go." This melody has always been one of the emotional peaks of Faltermeyer's 1986 score, so kudos to Zimmer and his team for applying it as clearly appropriate in the sequel. These spotting victories are the bright points of the soundtrack for Top Gun: Maverick, and the whole product is largely satisfying even if its new material lacks distinction. As typical for an Interscope album, only half an hour of score is included amongst the most prominent songs. The Top Gun cue "Viper Comes Down on Mav" is credited in the film as being reprised but is not on the album. The challenging "Canyon Dogfight" action cue is only available on the Japanese CD version of the release. Balfe himself has assured fans of the score and film that he is assembling a longer release of the score despite its repetitive nature, and this work was happening with the blessing of the studio and label. But that product never materialized before the end of 2022, as Balfe had busied himself with new scoring assignments. Regardless, the main commercial album will suffice for most listeners. The predictably simplistic score, while thoughtful at times and blissfully nostalgic, struggles to find new skies to conquer.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Interscope Album:
Total Time: 41:49
Universal Album (Japan): Total Time: 45:07
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts of the Interscope album and regular Japanese
Universal album contain extensive credits but no extra information about
the score or film. That of the Japanese Universal "Deluxe Edition"
variant features a 7-inch cardboard sleeve and contains a sticker and
poster.
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