When it comes to picking a best picture winner, there are many factors that may sway Oscar voters. Great performances, gorgeous cinematography, cultural relevance – all significant, sure. But if I had a ballot, I would go with the film Steven Spielberg reckons saved the entire industry: Top Gun: Maverick.
Spielberg’s breathless aside to Tom Cruise at the Oscar nominees luncheon in February – “You saved Hollywood’s ass and you might have saved theatrical distribution” – was notable for who was saying it, but wasn’t exactly an original observation. After all, people have been calling Top Gun Maverick cinema’s saviour ever since it roared into multiplexes last summer, and quickly grossed $1.5 billion. What’s more, they’re right. Maverick’s success, according to Forbes, “made the difference between a halfway decent summer season and a product-starved catastrophe” in 2022, when cinemas were otherwise starved of releases. This was a period when Cineworld filed for bankruptcy protection, so it doesn’t seem a stretch to suggest that quite a few cinema chains, not to mention independents, would have been staring into the abyss were it not for an ageless A-lister and his battered F-14.
