THREE New Directors Shortlisted for Top Gun 3! Good, Weird, or Bad Choices?
New news and announcements for Top Gun 3 have been dropping over the last couple of weeks. We got a short list of directors the other day regarding who could be in the running to direct the film. What do I think about the list? Are they good picks? Bad picks? Somewhere in between? Let’s talk about it!
NOTE: This shortlist isn’t officially from Paramount or producers. This is coming from Jeff Sneider who is an independent film journalist. He’s not an official tabloid or anything like that. But if he says something in regards to movie news, you should pay attention to him because he’s been right a number of times and he has actual sources. He revealed this shortlist as well as some additional news that we’ll also talk about.
Backstory: So we’ve known that Top Gun 3 has been in development for a few years now. It’s not too surprising when you look at Top Gun: Maverick’s box office numbers and the critical acclaim, a third film was bound to happen. Last month at CinemaCon, it was confirmed that the film was moving forward with Ehren Kruger and Christopher McQuarrie writing the screenplay. I think most people assumed that Joseph Kosinski, the director of Top Gun: Maverick would return but it was reported a few weeks back that he won’t return to director. There was a little bit of a question in the air as to who would be directing the film. That would lead us to the main topic of today’s blog post…
The Director’s Shortlist
I’ll just say this right now, I don’t like any of the picks that are being shortlisted. None of them immediately strike me as an obvious pick to direct a Top Gun film. Joseph Kosinski did such a great job with that film that I feel like no matter who they get to direct will do a lesser job.
The big one to talk about in my mind where I have the most opinions about is Jon M. Chu. This is the guy who did the Wicked movies. I loved Wicked, and I thought Wicked: For Good had a lot of great elements but overall wasn’t a great movie. But the problem with that film wasn’t Chu’s direction, that was still on point. But I don’t watch those movies and think “Chu for Top Gun”. Granted, directors can be versatile. I’m not saying he’ll make a bad movie, I’m sure he’ll make a good one. But I just don’t see the natural transition from fantasy musical to military plane movie.
The other two directors, I don’t really have much opinions on as I haven’t seen enough of their work to have an opinion. The other guy in contention is Joachim Rønning who directed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Tron: Ares. I’ve seen Dead Men Tell No Tales a couple of times, it’s just not a great movie. None of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels were able to capture the magic of the original in my mind and that movie is another example of that. I haven’t seen Tron: Ares, but it didn’t get great reviews. And the people that did go positive on it seem to acknowledge the flaws and it being good but not great. That right there, his track record with big budgeted movies isn’t great, so the fact that he’s the guy that could direct this film makes me very skeptical about this film. Maybe since he’s not working under the Disney banner that he’ll do a better job with Top Gun 3. But as of right now, his track record isn’t great so I don’t have the most faith in him at the moment.
And then the other guys are Adli El Arbi and Bilalla Fallah who directed several episodes of Ms. Marvel as well as the last two Bad Boys movies, and they were going to direct Batgirl before that one got canceled. I’ve only seen their work on Ms. Marvel, I haven’t seen the Bad Boys movie they directed (or any Bad Boys movies for that matter). So I don’t have too much of an opinion on them, except for the fact that their tone and style don’t seem to fit. One of the fun things about Ms. Marvel that really made it stand out from the other MCU shows was that it felt like a comic book brought to life. Where there’s all of this creative imagery on display and putting Ms. Marvel’s thoughts onto the screen so the audience can see what she’s thinking. That fourth wall breaking style is cool for a comic book show about a teenager, but not with a movie that involves Tom Cruise flying a jet for two hours. Maybe there’s something in their Bad Boys movies that would make them a more obvious pick, but even from the clips and reviews I’ve seen it feels like more of the same.
Who Should Direct The Film?
So, when it was announced that Kosinski wasn’t returning to direct the film a lot of people were saying that Christopher McQuarrie should direct the film. That’s the very obvious and safe answer after he and Tom Cruise directed four Mission Impossible movies and McQuarrie wrote Top Gun: Maverick, so on every level it made sense to have McQuarrie step in to direct the film. Well, recently Jeff Sneider wrote that apparently Tom Cruise is disappointed with the box office performance of the last two Mission Impossible movies and the mixed reception and he blames McQuarrie for that. I don’t know if this that’s true, I’m not have conversations with them. I do find it a little bit weird that Cruise is blaming McQuarrie because when it comes to Mission Impossible movies, I feel like Tom Cruise is the top guy and everybody works for him. Besides, I wanna see McQuarrie do something different besides continuing to work with Tom Cruise.
My pick, I’d want to see Brad Bird direct the film. His Mission Impossible film, Ghost Protocol is fantastic and I wanna see Bird reunite with Cruise and a Top Gun 3 could be just that. One of the things that Bird is so good at are his action set pieces, whether that’s in animation with The Incredibles or with the Dubai Tower sequence in Ghost Protocol he knows how to direct awesome sequences. If he can apply his abilities to the jet fighter scenes in Top Gun 3, that could be really cool and he could be a worthy successor to Kosinski.
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