Top Gun: Maverick has been a huge hit for Paramount Pictures, breaking countless records and quickly becoming the biggest movie of Tom Cruise's career.
It was undeniably the feel-good hit of the summer, and a movie that didn't get too bogged down by what's happening in the real world. Just like in Top Gun, the foreign enemy is unidentified, with no mention of where they are from and zero indication of who they are. In fact, those villainous pilots are faceless and nameless, making them little more than an enemy of the United States.
There's been a lot of speculation about who they might have been, with many viewers wondering if they were either Chinese or Russian.
Talking to The New York Times, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski was asked who the enemy was meant to be, and confirmed the hope was that by leaving them so ambiguous, it would allow this to be a fun action movie that doesn't get bogged down in politics.
"We had that great guidance from the first movie - it’s this faceless, nameless bad guy, which is perfect because, again, we didn’t want to make a movie about politics," the filmmaker says. "You can’t really connect it to any real-world enemies. The mirrored, masked pilots also contribute to this feeling of this being a little bit in an alternate reality."
"That was a fun exercise as a director, to create a non-traceable enemy."
An alternate reality makes sense, and this is one of those things it's best not to overthink as their identity has little to no importance to the plot. They're just the bad guys who need to be taken down...and it's really as simple as that! As a result, we don't blame Kosinski for remaining fairly vague here.
Top Gun: Maverick is now playing in theaters and is available on Digital platforms.