Luca Guadagnino Just Called ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ a Bad Movie — And It’s a Full 180 From What He Said in 2022
Few forces in modern cinema have proven as commercially reliable as nostalgia. From animated sequels to legacy blockbusters and live-action remakes of beloved classics, Hollywood has spent the better part of two decades leaning hard into the familiar. Films like ‘Inside Out 2,’ ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,’ and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ have all demonstrated just how powerfully audiences respond to stories that reconnect them with something they already love. It is a machine that has minted billions, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Into this conversation steps Luca Guadagnino, the Italian director behind ‘Challengers’ and ‘Queer,’ who has never been shy about sharing his views on cinema and culture. Speaking at an appearance at Il Foglio’s Innovation Festival, Guadagnino addressed the role nostalgia now plays as a dominant force in Hollywood storytelling, framing it as an “economy” that has become the industry’s most dependable commodity. He even took aim at Steven Spielberg’s upcoming project ‘Disclosure Day,’ suggesting that even filmmakers of that stature have been pulled into the same nostalgic current.
Then came the comment that stopped everyone cold. Recalling watching ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ while he was in production on ‘Challengers,’ Guadagnino said, “It was huge for thousands of people, and it was a very bad movie. But at the same time people were screaming, throwing popcorn, they were very happy because the economy of nostalgia right seems to be the only commodity that can be dominated by all types of markets.” It was a pointed dismissal of one of the most celebrated blockbusters in recent memory.
The sting of that verdict is sharpened considerably by what Guadagnino said just a few years prior. Back in 2022, he told Deadline that ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ came “with the novelty of happening 25 years later,” calling the decision to make the long-delayed sequel “a very smart, intelligent, and thoughtful way of doing business.” For a filmmaker to so cleanly reverse his public position on a film is unusual, and the contrast has not been lost on observers.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Tom Cruise, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ was widely credited with helping pull audiences back into theaters during the COVID-19 recovery period, ultimately earning $1.5 billion at the global box office — the biggest haul of Cruise’s lengthy career — while earning strong marks from both critics and general audiences. The film received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and generated the kind of universal goodwill that rarely surrounds a blockbuster of its scale.
Guadagnino’s critique is less about the film itself and more about what it represents in the broader cultural landscape. His argument frames ‘Maverick’ not as a failure of craft but as a symptom of an industry that has found a formula — stir deep emotional memory, deliver a polished product, repeat — and has little incentive to deviate from it. He sees the audience joy in that packed theater not as evidence of the film’s quality but as proof that familiarity alone can manufacture euphoria. Whether that reads as a sharp cultural critique or as a director being contrarian about a universally beloved film is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Given how strongly fans feel about ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ Guadagnino’s reversal is bound to spark debate — so is his take a bold indictment of Hollywood’s nostalgia problem, or does it simply miss what made Maverick soar?
