The original 1986 film, Top Gun, was its own flavor of 80s male fantasy chess and managed to survive years later on nostalgic appeal and its overly macho atmosphere rather than for its actual merits. While certainly having elements that could draw people in, its hard to label the first film as anything really good, even from just a mindless dumb ‘high flying’ perspective. That’s why it was surprising to see it was going to return in a sequel that would take place years later and continue from where the last one left off. From the initial trailers, Top Gun: Maverick looked like it was going to fall into the ‘sequel reboot’ trap of retreding old waters and not having a true purpose to exist besides banking on nostalgia. Thankfully, when the movie was released in 2022 due to COVID causing delays, the end results couldn’t be any further from this initial thought. Set three decades after the events of the first movie, Captain Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (played again by Tom Cruise) is brought back into the TOP GUN fold when he is asked to be an instructor for the new recruits for an incredibly dangerous up-and-coming mission. Still holding with him incredible flying skills, Maverick is skeptical about this decision not only due to his previous failures as a TOP GUN instructor years prior, but also because his deceased wingman’s (Goose) son who goes by the nickname Rooster (played by Miles Teller) is in this squadron. He holds a grudge against Maverick for blocking his application for the Navy in order to keep him from flying, effectively setting back his career and causing serious bad blood between the two. With the new batch showing talent but lacking comradery and with many people, including the leading generals, believing it is unlikely that many of these pilots will make it back alive from this mission into enemy territory, Maverick has to overcome his past demons, make amends with those he wronged in the present, and make sure he gives these kids a future by teaching them to exceed their limits and push themselves in order to survive this suicide mission. For a follow up sequel that was released 36 years after its original, Top Gun: Maverick not only exceeded expectations enormously, but also greatly exceeded its predecessor by a long margin.

The idea of a sequel to the original Top Gun doesn’t sound like it has much to offer because the first film had practically no story behind it anyway. It was a dumb brainless movie that relied on hot-blooded testosterone pumping flying sequence and everything surrounding the male fantasy to keep its audience even slightly engaged, and everything from the writing, directing, characters, even visuals supported that (just look at that beach scene and try to deny it), so it was already fighting a losing battle, not helped out by the fact that the trailer looked like it was just going to repeat this exact same formula. It would have been a massive mistake to follow such a dated plot that wasn’t even effective the first time around, but miraculously the movie manages to be incredible despite this issue. Going into this movie, the structure of the story is almost exactly the same as the first, to the point where scenes feel like revamps of their originals, just with a new coat of paint. While this would normally be a huge distraction for a movie claiming to not be a remake, the film somehow sidesteps this problem, mostly because the film has actual stakes and purpose behind its narrative, and it’s led by much stronger directing. The now-deceased Tony Scott (who this movie is lovingly dedicated to) directed the first film in a way that made the cliches nowhere near as painful as they could have been, but unfortunately didn’t elevate the material to a serviceable level either. However, this film’s director, Joseph Kosinski, greatly improves the film’s material as well as the first movie with an incredibly well-structured narrative layout with great pacing, an incredible transition from goofy camp to realistic troubles, and by buttering over these past story beats and making them work much stronger in this picture because of proper delivery and pay-off, as well as having a continual build-up of the character’s emotions as well as the final dogfight. The climax of this film is easily the highlight of this film and is executed perfectly. It mixes legitimate intensity while still containing that cheesy atmosphere to create a surprisingly effective blend that consists throughout the whole movie as well, but proves most effective here, where that tone is shattered by the bleak and heart-pounding nature of this final dogfight where it’s hard to determine who will make it out of this alive. It’s a fantastic way to close the film out on.

The first film had incredibly weak characters whose only purpose was to either say catchphrases, exist to be pawns in the flow of the story (Goose’s purpose is just to die) and look great while doing all those great action stunts. Its shallow and weirdly doesn’t even feature any silly 80s charm which would have at least added a hint of memorability. This movie does something truly special by not only making the cast of this film much more interesting and well thought-out, but actually makes characters from the previous film much better due to how there are treated here. Cruise as Maverick was the only character with some semblance of personality in the first film, but it was one that had little depth and was mostly unlikeable for the good chunk of the film, whereas Top Gun: Maverick adds a surprising amount of aged depth and vulnerability to the character, made extra surprising due to Cruise’s usual fear of ever appearing weak or less than spotless in his films. This Maverick has a lot more tragedy and trauma put into his character, and it makes for a great role which proves even stronger when he pulls off these incredible stunts because he shows genuine fear and struggle when performing them. The way that Goose’s memory is constantly haunting this film though Rooster’s splitting image, as well as the guilt constantly hammering at Maverick throughout and how it caused problems between him and Rooster, it really gives a great pay-off to that previous film’s decision, and Val Kilmer’s Iceman is also given more dimension through his and Maverick’s relationship over the years, as well as his brief but impactful scene near the end of the film, both of these characters were made much stronger thanks to this film. Unlike in other films of its type where the younger generation characters aren’t made very distinct and only prove to be annoying add-ons, here the new pilots are much more memorable than any of the pilots from the first film. They aren’t incredibly distinct characters, but the acting from all of them is incredibly strong and those that are given more screen time (mainly Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Lewis Pulman and Monica Barbaro) are great new additions. Even the admiral characters played by Ed Harris, Jon Hamm, Charles Parnell, and Bashir Salahuddin are much stronger than the previous versions of said characters who mostly felt like replaceable archetypes. Jennifer Connelly also does good as Cruise’s love interest as the two have good chemistry, but her character really only exists for support and nothing much else, which is still an improvement over the first love interest’s purpose of ‘’be won by Cruise’’.

The one thing that first film did nail and was worth watching for that one element alone was some of the flying scenes, as they did look incredibly cool and feature a level of physicality and stunt work that wasn’t normally seen in that kind of film of that era. Due to evolving technology and with more films bringing out very impressive dogfight flying scenes in these kind of films, Top Gun: Maverick was going to be impressive with its action, and they definitely are incredibly filmed, paced and acted during these scenes. How cinematographer Claudio Miranda shows both the aerial combat from an outside view, as well as the close and claustrophobic viewpoint of the actors within the cockpit allow for a lot of great scenes that can be just as playful and flashy as they are intense and heart-racing. Much like everything in this film, it’s an evolution from the first film’s 80s atmosphere for aerial combat, which had time for more goofing around and even during ‘dramatic scenes’ wasn’t portrayed as that scary, whereas here even the light-hearted flight sequence has an element of fear in it. Its an element that has been rarely been captured in cinematic films or even blockbuster films outside of specific war-based stories, and it really adds a new layer not just to Top Gun as a whole, but action movies of its ilk in general. While the first film had a hardcore 80s soundtrack which also remained relatively popular throughout the ages (Danger Zone became pretty iconic), this film’s soundtrack is relatively average. Definitely not bad by any means as it gets the job done (even most of the song choices feel appropriate for Top Gun), but the original’s soundtrack is weirdly fitting whereas this feels like it could be on any other movie.

Top Gun: Maverick is a movie that a lot of people have been greatly pleased with, and considering the original film was split in reception between critics and audience members, to know that this film is viewed as incredible by both parties is always a great sign. This movie had the challenge of providing a follow-up film to a movie that was made almost thirty years prior, but also faced the troubles of not having their original pilot behind the helm, but this movie proved it was worth the wait and is more than worthy as a follow-up to Tony Scott’s original film. Its an improvement over its original while also not disrespecting it, actively improving upon its shortcomings without rejecting and throwing away what came before (maybe Thor could use a lesson in that for his films). With a great story with fantastic directing, engaging actors, and incredible action sequences with an outstanding finale, Top Gun: Maverick is a film that will not only be loved by Top Gun fans, but even those that didn’t like the original, its one for the ages and should definitely been seen. Avoiding the danger zone by being a sequel even better than its first, Top Gun: Maverick is high-flying fun done right.

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