Nearly three months ago bbc.com’s Nicholas Barber explained why Top Gun: Maverick is the only film that deservers to win the Best Picture Oscar….okay, he didn’t say that but he might as well have.

Barber also made it clear that anyone who votes instead for Everything Everywhere All At Once is a cinematic philistine and a sworn enemy of the Movie Godz ethos…okay, he didn’t say that but he might as well have.

Barber: “Top Gun: Maverick was a romantic-comedy-drama-action-thriller – which is another way of saying that it was simply a Hollywood movie that everyone could enjoy. To people who had stayed away from cinemas since before the pandemic, TG:M felt like a warm welcome home.

“Still, it was a bittersweet feeling — as if we were being welcomed home, but we had to leave again soon. Even while we were cheering, laughing and crying at the film, we were aware, on some level, that it was a one-off. Top Gun: Maverick won’t set any trends because it isn’t part of a trend. It’s unique, the last of its kind — just as its hero was the last of his. It marked the end of an era. But as long as the film was on the screen, we could tell ourselves that it hadn’t ended yet.

“The screenwriters put it best. ‘The future is coming, and you’re not in it,’ says Ed Harris says to Tom Cruise. ‘Your kind is heading for extinction.’

“‘Maybe so, sir,’ says Cruise. ‘But not today.'”