The hotly anticipated sequel to Top Gun, the 1986 movie that made Tom Cruise a star, is raking in cash, great reviews, and even Oscar buzz. Don’t be fooled — it’s the same glorified military recruitment video that the original was.

Is it any use pointing out that the first Top Gun was a ludicrous piece of shit? That it was a functioning part of the Ronald Reagan administration’s insane military buildup and aggressive pro-war policies of the 1980s? Or that in a 1990 interview, playing dumb about the obvious way the Navy made use of the film, Tom Cruise refuted the idea of ever making a sequel?

But that was then, this is now, and Tom Cruise is about to turn sixty and wants to be a star forever. So a sequel to Top Gun looked good, not only to him but to the desperate film industry mavens trying to figure out some way to get audiences back into theaters en masse. The result is Top Gun: Maverick, every bit as vile and idiotic as the first film, but slicker, better edited, featuring more gripping action scenes, and now awash in tears of nostalgia for the 1980s when Hollywood was booming and “It’s Morning in America” was a slogan people actually believed in.

Of course, it wasn’t morning. It was a grim twilight with a hard polluted rain pouring down. And now it’s midnight, and we’re at it again with another Top Gun. Plus the new movie is somehow even more ludicrous than Top Gun I, which I didn’t think was possible.