¹ See Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. ‘The American Empire? Not so Fast’, in World Policy Journal Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 2005): pp. 43-46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lake, David A., ‘The New American Empire?’ in International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 3 (August 2008): pp. 281-289CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Saull, Richard, ‘Empire, Imperialism, and Contemporary American Global Power’, in International Studies Perspectives Vol. 9, No. 3 (August 2008): pp. 309-318CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Many factors contribute to a social imaginary and are the result of theories, ideas, practices, and cultural products. For instance, what starts off as a theory, or ideology, held by a few people, perhaps a circle of intellectual elites, infiltrates the social imaginary and then the whole society. See Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 171–6Google Scholar.

³ The movie received support from the Department of Defense (DOD) Entertainment Media Office in the form of equipment, personnel, and technical expertise. The DOD already collaborated on the making of the first Top Gun. See Zenou, Theo, ‘Top Gun brought to you by the American military’, in The Washington Post. May 27, 2022. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/27/top-gun-maverick-us-military/ Accessed June 30, 2022.Google Scholar See also Redmond, Pearse, ‘The Historical Roots of CIA-Hollywood Propaganda’, in American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 76, No. 2 (March, 2017): pp. 281-310CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lenoir, Tim and Caldwell, Luke, The Military-Entertainment Complex (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

⁴ With regards to the use of cinema as an ideological vehicle and to the co-existence of fiction and non-fiction, T.F. Lindsay, in a 1945 article, notices: ‘By judicious omissions and emphasis, and by a carefully phrased commentary, a series of shots from the battle-fronts (each true in itself) may easily give the impression, to a national audience, that a country is winning the war, when it is in fact losing it.’ Lindsay, T. F., ‘The Film as Propaganda’, in Blackfriars, Vol. 26, No. 308 (November 1945): p. 411CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis added. See also Taylor, Richard, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, revised edition (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁵ See Wilke, Jürgen, ‘Propaganda’, in The International Encyclopedia of Communication, First Edition, edited by Donsbach, Wolfgang (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018), pp. 1-5Google Scholar. See also Chapman, James, ‘The Power of Propaganda’, in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 2000): pp. 679-688CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ As known, the concept of propaganda has a distinctive religious history as demonstrated by Pope Gregory XV's foundation of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) in 1622. See Jowett, Garth S. and O'Donnell, Victoria, Propaganda and Persuasion (London: Sage, 2010), p. 2Google Scholar. See also Sennet, Alan, ‘Film Propaganda: Triumph of the Will as a Case Study’, in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Spring 2014): p. 46Google Scholar. See also Soules, Marshall, Media, Persuasion and Propaganda (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp. 4-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Taylor, Richard, Film Propaganda. Soviet Russian and Nazi Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1979), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Quoted in Sennet, ‘Film Propaganda: Triumph of the Will as a Case Study’, p. 47.

⁸ Huxley, Aldous, ‘Notes on Propaganda’, in Harpers’ Magazine 174 (December 1936): p. 39Google Scholar. Quoted in Sennet, ‘Film Propaganda: Triumph of the Will as a Case Study’, p. 47.

⁹ The ‘idea of the American mission’ is a pillar of American exceptionalism. As pointed out by Paul T. McCartney, already during the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States conceived international relations in a missionary fashion, and a certain missionary rhetoric predated pre-war debate. See McCartney, Paul T., ‘Religion, the Spanish-American War, and the Idea of American Mission’, in Journal of Church and State, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Spring 2012): pp. 257-278CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ A similar definition of Empire has been provided by French philosopher Alexandre Kojéve who writes: ‘This is the epoch of Empires, which is to say of transnational political unities, but formed by affiliated nations.’ Quoted in Howse, Robert, ‘Kojeve's Latin Empire: From the “End of History” to the “epoch of Empires”’, in Hoover Institution, August 1, 2004. URL: https://www.hoover.org/research/kojeves-latin-empire. Accessed August 16, 2022.Google Scholar

¹¹ The production and release of Top Gun: Maverick also provides one of the best overviews on the current drift between Hollywood and China. See Schwartzel, Eric, ‘“Top Gun: Maverick” loses Chinese Investor Due to Pro-U.S. Messaging’, in The Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2022. URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-gun-maverick-loses-chinese-investor-due-to-pro-u-s-messaging-11653643803 Accessed July 1, 2022.Google Scholar See also Smith, Kyle, ‘Hollywood's China break up is long overdue’, in National Review, June 7, 2022. URL: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/hollywoods-china-breakup-is-long-overdue/ Accessed July 1, 2022.Google Scholar

¹² See Immerwahr, Daniel, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (London: Macmillan Publisher 2019)Google Scholar.

¹³ For an opposite view that stresses, instead, the geopolitical vagueness of the movie see Harrington, Erin, ‘Top Gun: Maverick is a Film Obsessed with Its Former Self’, in The Conversation. June 1, 2022. URL: https://theconversation.com/top-gun-maverick-is-a-film-obsessed-with-its-former-self-179461 Accessed: June 29, 2022.Google Scholar

¹⁴ One should notice here a problem within this emphasis on excellence. Films like Top Gun try to convince the general audience that the top 1% is not an elite of privileged, but an elite of talented. The Top Gun saga tries to reshape the American perception of the idea of the 1%, an idea that today recalls economic privileges, and that in the movie, instead, is presented as a form of privilege grounded in talent.

¹⁵ This is also pointed out by Jack Butler in his review ‘Two Reasons to Love Top Gun: Maverick’, in The National Review, June 8, 2022. URL: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/two-reasons-to-love-top-gun-maverick/ Accessed June 30, 2022.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Of course, this continuity of past and present can be connected to the theme of nostalgia. The first scene of the movie, and the opening credit are almost identical to the original Top Gun creating an ideal continuity between the original version and this one, from the iconic main theme to the title card outlining the real-life Top Gun program to shots of planes flying off the runaway. But Top Gun: Maverick is not a movie obsessed with the past, as much as it tries to reflect on the possible continuity between past and present. Historical roots are always necessary to feed imperial myths in the present. See Caracciolo, Danilo, ‘Il Potere del Mito’, in Limes. Rivista Italiana di Geopolitica 2/20 (2020): p. 4Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See Girard, René, Violence and the Sacred, translated by Gregory, Patrick (London: Athlone Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ See Gentile, Emilio, Il Culto del Littorio (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1993)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, ‘'Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function’, in L'Année Sociologique (1898). Quoted in Phillips, Peter, ‘The Cross of Christ, Sacrifice and Sacred Violence’, in New Blackfriars, Vol. 81, No. 952 (June 2000): p. 259CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ To a certain extent the gesture might be read as anti-intellectual, and it emphasizes pragmatism and hands-on knowledge in opposition to everything that feels overtly bookish. Yet this would be only one possible interpretation, and I guess not the most exhaustive since the lieutenants have all already studied the rulebook.

²¹ This scene has multiple metaphorical implications. First, it testifies that human beings, when they escape from a stronger connection with a team of other humans, end up entering a state of self-destructive competition with machines. Furthermore, this scene also reminds that a central ethos of the American Empire perennially states two opposite statements: on the one hand, this world has been made for us, as the pilots happily playing football on the beach seem to prove with their excited behaviors, and comfortable postures; on the other hand, this world is not our home. The American Empire, as any empire, does not know boundaries. Lastly, that sequence also states that future geopolitical competitions will be fought in the sky, and functions as a message to the contenders of geopolitical dominance.

²² For an insightful analysis of the contrast between ‘man’ and ‘machine’ in Top Gun: Maverick see Spohn, Lauren, ‘Top Gun, James Bond, and the Myth of Obsolete Heroes’, in Genealogies of Modernity, August 9, 2022. URL: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/journal/2022/8/8/top-gun-james-bond-and-the-myth-of-obsolete-heroes. Accessed August 16, 2022.Google Scholar

²³ The best words on this issue remain those professed by Hannah Arendt: ‘The modern age has carried with it a theoretical glorification of labor and has resulted in a factual transformation of the whole of society into a laboring society.’ With the advent of automation we would find ourselves within a ‘society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the fetters of labor [...]. What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse.’ Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, Second Edition, with an introduction by Canovan, Margaret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 4-5Google Scholar.

²⁴ These features are key aspects of the American ideology which is an imperial ideology. In our attempt to remind further what is the nature of empires, it is worth recalling that any empire must rely on universalist scopes and causes. I agree with Krishan Kumar when he observes that: ‘Imperialist ideologies are universalistic, not particularistic. […] Imperial peoples do not, unlike nationalists, celebrate themselves; they celebrate the causes of which they are the agents or carriers. It is from this that they derive their sense of themselves and their place in the world.’ The cult of work, the adoration for innovation, the transfiguration of the individual in the collective, these are all universalistic and not strictly particularistic causes. Kumar, Krishan, Visions of Empire: How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 30Google Scholar.

²⁵ Commenting upon the effectiveness of Lori Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will in supporting the Nazi regime, Sennet recalls that ‘Foreign policy and economic successes of the regime would win it far greater popularity’, than the movie itself. Perhaps the same could be stated about Top Gun: Maverick, too, yet one could hardly underestimate the importance that cinema can play in the formation of the national self-perception and the role played by cinema to foster American soft power. That said, how to gauge the effectiveness of propaganda is a problem that has chased professional scholarship at any time. Chapman rightly notices that ‘It is difficult enough to assess accurately the precise nature of public opinion; it is even more difficult to gauge the extent to which public opinion may have been influenced by specific instances of propaganda. The effectiveness of propaganda can be determined only by its results, but there are no reliable quantitative mechanisms for evaluating those results. The verdicts of historians, therefore, are inevitably rather speculative’. See Sennet, ‘Film Propaganda: Triumph of the Will as a Case Study’, p. 56. See also Chapman, ‘The Power of Propaganda’, pp. 688.

²⁶ One example among innumerable others is provided by the initial scene in which Maverick tests the Darkstar. Maverick overcomes the speed limit of the hypersonic jet and ends up destroying it. Everyone thinks that he is dead, but, of course, somehow, he manages to survive. This incapacity to die is a distinctive feature of action movie heroes, but it metaphorically points towards this image of the United States as the empire that cannot die. See also Spohn, Lauren, ‘Top Gun, James Bond, and the Myth of Obsolete Heroes’, in Genealogies of Modernity, August 9, 2022. URL: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/journal/2022/8/8/top-gun-james-bond-and-the-myth-of-obsolete-heroes. Accessed August 16, 2022.Google Scholar

²⁷ See Mello-Klein, Cody, ‘How A.I. Helped Val Kilmer Get His Voice Back for Top Gun: Maverick’, in News@Northwestern, June 7, 2022. URL: https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/06/07/a-i-clones-val-kilmers-voice-in-top-gun/ Accessed July 1, 2022.Google Scholar

²⁸ One could notice here how Barack Obama himself, who seemed to desire to detach himself from the rhetoric of ‘American exceptionalism’, ultimately revised his position throughout his tenure as President of the United States and, condemning Russian's invasion of Crimea, would state: ‘We must meet the challenge to our ideals and our international order with strength and conviction’. [There could be] ‘no going back’. Quoted in Tisdall, Simon, ‘Barack Obama delivers withering civics lesson to Putin over Crimea’, in The Guardian, March 26 2014. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/26/barack-obama-putin-withering-civics-lesson-crimea. Accessed August 16, 2022.Google Scholar See also Fabbri, Dario, ‘La Città Sulla Collina, Mito Imperituro d'America’, in Limes. Rivista Italiana di Geopolitica 2/20 (2020): p. 69Google Scholar.

²⁹ There is a crucial sentence in the movie which I believe captures the drama of the American Civilization, and to a certain extent any civilization project with an imperialistic dimension. At some point in the movie, Maverick is upset since Rooster is risking his life to save him, after that Maverick has been forced to eject himself from his flight and land in the enemy's territory. What were you thinking, screams Maverick, and Rooster replies: ‘You told me to not think’, a sentence that Maverick has repeated to Rooster before during the training stage. There is all the drama of any empire in this sentence. Any empire must learn how to not think. First and foremost, it must learn how to not think about its ineluctable finitude. Yet, this creates troubles, as Maverick demonstrates with his reaction that proves that any empire should also learn, at some point of its historical and existential trajectory, to think better. Yet by the time it might arrive at this realization, it might have learnt how to not think. And it might be too late.

³⁰ I owe a debt of gratitude to the reviewer who made comments on a first draft version, and to my colleagues and friends who shared with me essential advice and comments on several topics that I discuss in this text, especially Deirdre M. Smith, Emma Rossoff, and Phoebe Zipper.