Jon Hamm praises Top Gun: Maverick as a successful movie about “real people” rather than superheroes

Oh, Jon Hamm, you’ve avoided the discourse for so long! Why, oh why, would you choose now to wade into the superhero movie slog? You could’ve just promoted your fun little Fletch film and been done with it. Alas, when you’re in the biggest blockbuster of the year, you can’t help but take a sideswipe at the competition, can you?

That’s right, Hamm is pleased as punch about the success of Top Gun: Maverick, and he’s delighted to point out that they did it all without the weight of a comic book franchise behind them. Sure, they had Tom freakin’ Cruise and the power of a highly anticipated legacyquel, but that’s beside the point. Maverick is about real people, man!

No, really: “It’s the only film to be number one on Memorial Day and number one on Labor Day,” Hamm proudly pronounces to Entertainment Tonight. “That’s unprecedented in many ways. It’s one of the only top five [films] that doesn’t have somebody in a cape or on a spaceship. It’s a story about real people, it’s got a lot of emotional resonance, people are really responding to it.”

Look, Cruise might not wear a cape in Maverick, but he’s not not a superhero. We all saw him casually lounging on the wing of a flying plane to promote Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part One. And the big-budget naval spectacle of Top Gun is not exactly “the little movie that could” in a way that an indie like Everything Everywhere All At Once is.

Still, Hamm has nothing but praise for Maverick’s cast and crew, saying, “[It] couldn’t have happened to a nicer movie. It’s so nice to see that happen to that younger generation of actors too, who really get to experience this and build on it and have their career blossom because of it.”

Of his upcoming appearance on The Morning Show, by the way, he says only that the series’ set is “a cool place to be.” Hey, not every project can be Maverick.