Do Critics Like Patriotism?

 Like many movie and TV lovers, I often turn to Rotten Tomatoes for a selection of reviews before investing time in a movie or a show. Though Rotten Tomatoes provides both a critic score and an audience score, for the first 8 years that I used the review aggregator site, I never glanced at the audience scores. I am slightly elitist when it comes to movies and TV, and am generally more prone to consult the opinion of someone who has seen many other films and shows and has been paid to make a living from assessing their quality. Recently, however, I have wearied of watching TV and movies—and the reactions to them—grow more politicized. I loathe watching something that I might otherwise enjoy only to roll my eyes because the writers and producers chose to sacrifice character complexity, compelling plot, and nuanced themes to sermonize. I naturally also loathe critical appraisals of those shows that hinge on overzealous ideologies. Regrettably, even highly educated and sophisticated critics are just as prone to these ideological spats as comparatively unsophisticated movie-goers who don’t bring as broad or deep a matrix of cultural associations to bear on any given piece of entertainment.

 

Given this unfortunate truth, I have started taking greater heed of audience scores, particularly when those scores are at great variance with critic scores. Though not every piece that critics slam and audiences adore is a misunderstood masterwork, I often find something of value that I might have missed if I only went to critical smashes. Likewise, many projects that have had oodles of critical praise have underwhelmed or disappointed me. Most recently, I sat down to watch The Terminal List, which became insanely popular with audiences, but less so with critics, The Daily Beast even referring to the show as “an unhinged right-wing revenge fantasy.” Though I would say that the critics’ reactions to The Terminal List do bear some animus to the show on ideological grounds, some of the countercriticisms towards those who dismissed The Terminal List don’t ring true either. Did the critics just bag on The Terminal List because it was patriotic and pro-military, or are there some genuine flaws in the show? If it really was only anti-American or anti-military sentiment motivating Terminal List’s negative reviews, then we have to explain the positive audience and critical reception that Top Gun: Maverick has received. Like Terminal List, Maverick features a tale of genuine heroism with the American military at its center. Why then did Maverick succeed not only with audiences but with critics as well?

Shameless Pandering or Misunderstood Masterpiece?

Essentially it comes down to one critical factor that I’ve discussed in various contexts on this blog: weakness. While Terminal List’s protagonist, James Reece, is out-manned, out-gunned, and suffers a head injury that impairs his memories, none of these characteristics qualifies as a true weakness. They are disadvantages. While stacking the odds against your hero is still an excellent storytelling technique, it doesn't meet the criteria for a weakness, which has to be characterological. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best ways of looking at two types of weaknesses comes from John Truby’s Anatomy of Story. In Anatomy, Truby lays out the difference between a psychological weakness and a moral weakness. A psychological weakness is a weakness that only hurts the hero. A moral weakness is a weakness that causes the hero to hurt others around him. Though James Reece has several disadvantages, he has no psychological or moral weakness. The closest thing to a weakness is his impaired memory. When it comes to Reece’s character as a person, however, this lets Reece off the hook for the times he makes mistakes, and it’s revealed early on in the series, that even though it’s easy for others to think that Reece might be crazy, his suspicions are not only correct but lead to a grander conspiracy than he had first imagined.

 

Let’s imagine for a moment, that instead of an unalloyed hero, Reece suffered from the weakness of overworking his men and ignoring the signs they exhibit of PTSD, not unlike the real-life titular hero depicted in Patton smacking a shell-shocked soldier and calling him a coward. Then, Reece finds out that his actions towards his men have actually directly contributed to a failed mission. Then Reece has to come to terms with his own weakness, as well as face enemies from the outside.

"Send him up to the front, do you hear me?!"

It is precisely this quality that Top Gun: Maverick has. Maverick is overconfident, which we already know from the previous film got his best friend killed. He also takes immoral actions against his deceased friend’s son, Rooster—whose admission into the Navy Maverick postponed; and his ex-girlfriend, whom he left out to dry. Far from making the audience shy away from Maverick, these immoral actions make him relatable and give him somewhere more meaningful to go than simply carrying out his mission. Not only that but Maverick’s success hinges in many respects on overcoming the weakness he has of always thinking that he knows best no matter what others say. For example, Maverick’s attempt to protect Rooster only succeeds in alienating his friend’s son and delaying his career, which Rooster embarks on anyway, completely sabotaging Maverick’s attempts to keep him out of danger. During the film’s climax, Maverick and Rooster are the only ones that each can count on to accomplish their mission and get home safely. The only way that Maverick can do his part in achieving this is by trusting Rooster rather than trying to protect him. Maverick is aided in this self-revelation by his old girlfriend, Penny, who gives Maverick some much-needed perspective on his actions towards Rooster after he matures, forms a committed relationship with her, and opens up about his doubts.

 

"Talk to me, Rooster!"

No one wants to see the quality of film and TV that isn’t beholden to a toxic agenda more than I. However, the greatest weapon against propaganda isn’t more propaganda. It is art, the best art that writers, directors, and producers can create. If we want to see stories and not sermons, that has to cut both ways. We can’t just call out sloppy characterization only when it is propping up an agenda that we happen to agree with. If we do that, we can write films and TV that not only score well with audiences but persuade more recalcitrant ideological opponents to consider things from outside their current paradigm.