Cinema nostalgia: “Manta 2” is German “Top Gun 2”. Were we happier analogously?
Cinema has always been an escape from everyday life. Cinema is dreams and substitute life.
In the first week, 400,000 fans watched “Manta – Zwoter Teil” with Til Schweiger (59) as the cult car mechanic “Berti”, with a gold chain and deep laugh lines in his life. A comeback after 32 years (1991). Why? Even critics cheer.
What lures us back to the lifestyle of the hot 80s?
★★★
It is the longing for the good analog days – for the simple man with rough edges who acts instead of doubting.
There was a simple bliss before the internet. Without pins and passwords.
Til Schweiger with Tina Ruland in “Manta Manta – Second Part”. The sequel topped the box office in its first week
★★★
The 80s is a rear-view mirror to the good old cool pre-cell days when everything was simpler. Kohl ruled, Reagan and Gorbi.
ABBA sang. 20 million families watched “Schwarzwaldklinik” on TV. In the cinema, “Indian Jones” and “Rambo” – and “Otto – the film” fought. It was the time of the Walkman, the Opel Manta. Computers looked like TV fridges. The towers of the World Trade Center were still standing in New York. A vanished time.
Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly in Top Gun: Maverick. The sequel to the 1986 cinema hit was the most successful blockbuster in 2022, grossing 1.3 billion euros worldwide
★★★
In our time, in which the car navigation system is smarter than the driver, we have a romantic desire for the simpler, more comfortable yesterday.
Knowledge guru Prof. Vaclav Smil (79) prophesies: Our “understanding deficit” is the biggest problem of mankind. Everyone has a mobile phone – but nobody knows how it works!
★★★
Superstar Tom Cruise (60) may have “saved the cinema!” with the billion-dollar remake “Maverick – Top Gun 2” (believes Steven Spielberg, 76).
Story: A macho pilot grows old but grows up.
Is Til Schweiger our Tom Cruise? Yes! He is a cinema Tarzan of the analog era.
White shirt, jeans, rough-edged guy: Cruise as a “Top Gun” pilot
★★★
Til and Tom could also be brothers.
Both are as old as the ZDF Mainzelmännchen. 60 years! Both are family fathers. Both are in great shape. Both are always single. Both wear jeans and t-shirts. Both love private life. Tom flies jets, Til drives Manta. We are passengers in the cinema.
Car and horsepower lovers: Schweiger in “Manta Manta – Second Part”
★★★
Of course, cinema is also a lie. The 80s are a museum of our memoirs – the wall fell in 1989.
But nobody can take our memories away from us – not even the gold chain.
