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by Jacob Kinman, Contributing Writer

In the last 15 years or so, there has been one thing that movie studios and fans alike gravitate towards more than anything else: nostalgia. Reboots, sequels, prequels, and the like have inundated pop culture, especially in film and television. The quality of these projects have ranged from acceptable to cringeworthy over the years. A lot of the time, any sequel to a movie that was released 36 years ago, like Top Gun, is not going to be very good. 

Top Gun: Maverick is the exception, by a sky-high margin. 

The film, originally set to be released in July 2019, before being pushed back for reshoots, and again several times more for the pandemic, was finally released last Friday. Tom Cruise returns as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the skilled and adventurous pilot who soared onto the screen so many years ago.

In the present day, we find Pete as a test pilot for the Navy, still as bold and self-confident as ever. After pushing too far when testing a new plane, Admiral Cain (Ed Harris) wants him grounded, but Maverick’s old friend and Top Gun classmate Tom “Iceman” Kasanzky (Val Kilmer) has chosen him to train a group of elite fighter pilots on North Island put together by Vice Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm) and Rear Admiral Solomon “Warlock” Bates (Charles Parnell) for a dangerous mission to destroy a uranium enrichment facility overseas. 

Among the group is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late wingman, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, who resents Maverick for blocking his application to the Naval Academy. Maverick also reunites with his old flame mentioned in the first film, Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly). The group of mission candidates, besides Rooster, includes the cocky Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell), nerdy weapons specialist Robert “Bob” Floyd (Lewis Pullman), and Natasha “Phoenix” Trace (Monica Barbaro), Bob’s flying partner, to name a few. 

Despite the disapproval of Maverick’s tactics, Cyclone appoints him to lead the mission. Maverick then selects Phoenix, Bob, Payback, Fanboy and Rooster to fly the mission with him. What follows is around an hour of visually striking, incredible action as the team goes abroad to destroy the uranium. I don’t want to go much further into plot details here, because the last act of this movie is freaking amazing. 

I’ll be honest. Up until last week, I had not seen the original Top Gun, for which I was derided by my friends and colleagues. When I watched it, I found it exciting and fun, but, in parts, its cheesiness shined through a bit. The best part of that film, to me, is the relationship between Maverick and Goose, and the way it informs the rest of the movie. The relationship between him and Charlotte Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), seemed forced, and the action scenes show the film’s age.

Top Gun: Maverick, in many ways, is better than its predecessor. The cast is much more diverse, featuring many people of color portraying pilots and officers. The story is more focused and develops the character of Maverick in a satisfying way. The supporting cast, especially the pilots, are prominently featured, whereas the first film mostly focuses on Maverick, Goose, and Iceman. Connelly and Cruise have a lot more chemistry than he and McGillis ever did. That being said, Top Gun: Maverick knows where it came from and goes to great lengths to remind its audience of that. The opening credits play almost exactly like the 1986 film: same font, opening title sequence, Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” and all. 

The most obvious improvement from Top Gun is the cinematography. That sounds obvious considering how far technology has come in 36 years, but Top Gun: Maverick, thanks to Cruise, actually has its actors in the jets, fitted with IMAX cameras to capture both the sights of the sky as well as the performances of the actors. Director Joseph Kosinsky, in collaboration with Cruise and legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer, went to great lengths to make this film look as realistic as possible; Cruise even put the actors through a “flight school boot camp” to get them acclimated with flying at top speeds. Considering the limitations of the production of Top Gun, wherein the film could only use footage of real operations of Navy jets, and not even Cruise was in the sky, Top Gun: Maverick had nowhere to go but up in that regard, and it definitely hits Mach-10. 

Another amazing way this film honors the past is the inclusion of Val Kilmer. The actor announced in 2017 that he had been battling throat cancer. While he is now in remission, his voice and throat will never be the same after two tracheostomies. It would have been easy to write Kilmer’s Iceman out, but the writers did the right thing and allowed him to continue his legacy in the world of Top Gun. Though he only has one scene, and he speaks but a few short lines, it is a pivotal moment in the movie that informs the decisions Maverick makes. 

This film is exactly what our post-COVID world of cinema needed. Poised to be one of the top-grossing films of 2022, making more than 50 million dollars just on opening day, it’s brought some of the best action sequences I’ve ever seen on the big screen. Yet, more than action, or performances, what this movie really gets right is nostalgia. It finds the perfect balance of giving the audience exactly what it wants without rehashing everything from Top Gun. I never would have imagined that Top Gun: Maverick could take all the great things about the first film and enhance them tenfold, but it did exactly that. 

Score: 9/10

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