When it comes to speed in the sky, there is no beating Capt. Pete Mitchell, call sign: Maverick (Tom Cruise).  Graduating from the Top Gun flight program nearly 40 years ago, he is called back to the elite academy to train some of the top pilots in the field for an upcoming mission.  A bunker full of uranium was discovered nestled in the mountains and accessible only through a heavily guarded canyon.  With a short training window, the pressure is on to get these pilots ready to go but past actions threaten to derail the entire mission. 

One of the last films to be released from the Covid holding pattern, Top Gun: Maverick soars back onto screens with all the excitement and nostalgia of the 1986 breakout while incorporating modern storytelling conventions to create a broadly appealing spectacle of a film for the whole family.  Cruise, reprising his role, is at the center of the Joseph Kosinski-directed film working from a group effort script by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie.  Patience proved to be a virtue for Paramount Studios who held the release until they could take it wide theatrically, and in return, they claimed a box office record-breaking gross for Memorial Day weekend and earned Cruise his first +$100mill opener.  For a legacy sequel to a campy, 1980s action film – or for any film in today’s climate – those numbers are nothing to scoff at! 

With a title sequence that plays out almost like a shot-for-shot remake of the original, Top Gun: Maverick gets off to a rocky start.  The narrative opens to find Maverick with the same defiant attitude possessed in his younger years as he zooms overhead of Radm. Chester Cain (Ed Harris) who is to serve Maverick with his orders to report, though he would much rather see the manned-pilot program shut down in favor of drone technology.  From the get-go, we are reminded that the impossibility of any situation is just the fuel Maverick needs to bend the laws of both institution and physics to his will and whim.  For the most part, this is to be expected as the title affords certain allowances in the name of action and implausibility, but the script’s consistent reminder that Mav’s still got it quickly wears thin. 

Once back on base at Top Gun, Maverick saunters around like a washed-up frat boy that never moved out of the college town.  It is all in favor of being able to recreate the dynamic where some of the younger pilots can sit with egg on their faces the following morning when the butt of their harassment the previous night at the bar walks to the podium of their class to begin the day’s lesson.  What makes this sequence so difficult to get through is the endless parade of empty-headed bravado displayed by the entirety of the younger cast.  With the exception of the meek Bob (Lewis Pullman) who finds himself the butt of the jokes, here, the crew of pilots all talk smack and soothe their egos in a seemingly endless barrage of one-liners that are so heavily scripted and carefully crafted that it becomes a joke unto itself. It is a writing style that permeates through the entire film and becomes more and more grating with each witty retort. 

The only pilot who does not immediately blend into this sea of khaki-colored machismo is Lt. Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Miles Teller), son of the departed ‘Goose’ (Anthony Edwards), Maverick’s original wingman when he was in school.  Rooster enters the film not only looking incredibly like Goose, himself but also as the stand in for a younger Cruise in his luau-inspired button-down. He is immediately targeted by Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin (Glen Powell), the self-proclaimed best pilot of the group and who is not shy about rattling off his own resume.  The allusions to Iceman (Val Kilmer) from the original here are impossible to miss so that the film teases this antagonist-turned-confidant arc so heavily is quite tiresome as Top Gun: Maverick is not looking to stray too far from format.  The script pays a nice tribute to Kilmer and it works to create comfort for the actor who lost his voice in a fight with cancer.  It does not make many concessions for Rooster, though, because of the deep-seated feud between him and Maverick, it forces Teller into a largely quiet and sulking role for much of the film.  As mentioned, filling the role of a young Cruise character in his prime, Rooster would be an almost impossible task for even the most skilled actors, and unfortunately, Teller just does not reach the levels of charisma that is required, but in his defense, he is not allowed to, either, given the confines of the script.  Unlike other legacy sequels that bring back original cast members for glorified cameo roles, Top Gun: Maverick is still very much Tom Cruise’s film.     

Thankfully, there is a turning point in the film when the crew finally starts to come together as a team and Maverick becomes a much more enjoyable watch in this second half.  This might be attributed as the final 45 of the 130-minute film are spent in the air where the only dialogue is mission-related and not banter, but whatever the reason it is a refreshing and revitalizing jolt of life into a sequel bogged down in callbacks and connections to a film that was never franchise-minded in the first place.   

The action-packed finale is a pure delight to behold as we have been given the promise of this death-defying mission for most of the film, and everything we have been witnessing has finally led to the moment of takeoff into undefined enemy territory.  One of the stumbling blocks for the 1986 original is that it was seeking to do too much with the camera technology available at the time.  The speed and scale of the dogfighting, while still impressive for the time, never felt like they were appropriately captured on screen.  In Maverick, that has been corrected and even at its most hectic, the action remains totally legible as the camera rapidly cuts between cockpits and closeups with only ever flashes of wide shots to show off an aerial stunt.  This is because of the low altitude of the flight allows us to see the canyon zipping by as opposed to the vast, open, nothingness of an empty sky and is a welcome improvement over the original.   

Similar to the initial film, Top Gun: Maverick remains staunchly apolitical.  It is not necessarily a bad thing as when your enemy in a PG-13 popcorn-munching action flick possesses a bunker full of uranium, the only real way to approach the villain would be with the stylization of an over-the-top James Bond-style nemesis.  That type of antagonistic force just would not work in the universe of the film and by having it be The US Navy against an opposing country – even one unnamed – the film can lean heavy on themes of American imperialism and glorify the rampant military-industrial complex.  Like in 1986, the film does throw a quick line to say that the Navy is cost-conscious as it is funded by taxpayers, but it comes off even more disingenuous than before as Adm. Beau Simpson (Jon Hamm) muses, among other things, about the safety of his career after Maverick returns from an unsanctioned and very expensive flight which renders the aircraft unsuited for any further duty.  Maverick, however, is not interested in dissecting those themes too deeply, and it is a far cry from some of the more blatantly propaganda-minded films, especially those from the early 2000s that would more openly engage in us against them rhetoric in an effort to justify the war machine.  The themes are very present, but almost innocently so, here; a byproduct of the narrative, not its sole intention. 

Written with all the subtlety of a fighter jet taking off, and with an equally nuanced cast of characters, Top Gun: Maverick delivers an adrenaline-fueled second half that is pure cinematic glory.  The phrase “don’t think” is often shared between Maverick and Rooster, and it is helpful advice for the audience, too.  With a script that would struggle to pass any tests of logic or process, it rides – miraculously – on the shoulders of an aging Cruise who refuses to give up on the old ways of filmmaking.  The parallels between star and character are as obvious as anything else in the film, but for as loose and uninterested as the script seems in exploring any deeper meaning, its active avoidance of interrogation eventually allows audiences to settle in and enjoy a good old fashioned summer blockbuster… and what is more American than that?