Top Gun: Maverick – Movie Review
131 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
**NOTE: I have updated this post with the audio of our discussion. Also, you can READ Ryan’s review over at KUTV.com**
Synopsis:
After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him.
Thirty-plus years and countless Covid delays later, Tom Cruise returns to the world that launched a thousand Naval careers, and ironically derailed countless others.
Allow me to explain.
Anecdotally, I was in High School when the original film came out, and the class ahead of me had a guy who had been planning to apply to (and was likely to get in) the Naval Academy.
Then Top Gun came out and caused an insane increase in the number of applications by people who probably didn’t really understand what it meant to people who weren’t band-wagonners.
Long story short: guy didn’t get in.
Anyway, Top Gun: Maverick hits theaters this Friday, and is the ultra-rare example of the fans of a film wanting a sequel, the people involved in the original wanting a sequel, the studio wanting a sequel, but circumstances conspired against it happening.
And then, when all seems lost: wow.
In the end, I think we can thank Tom Cruise for the delay, and I mean that sincerely, as his involvement was so critical that by the time a sequel could realistically be considered, he had the power to effectively dictate terms as to how it was going to be done.
The original was famously shot with real actors in real aircraft, which brought the overpowering sense of realism to the film which hadn’t really been seen before, and Tom Cruise knew that this would be critical if the sequel was going to work.
And so the sequel eventually came together, with the US Navy again offering full support and shooting happening –in IMAX– in cramped F/A-18 cockpits, once again providing the visceral realism that simply can’t be duplicated on a soundstage with CGI.
Cruise brings an emotional depth to Maverick that, while teased at in the original following Goose’s death, is now made tangible for the audience with a lifetime of experience and awareness behind it, and it bleeds into his training interactions with the group of hot-shot pilots he is desperately trying to keep alive on a one-of-a-kind mission.
The young cast around him is bold and brash, full of the archetypes the story needs, and the inclusion of Val Kilmer as Iceman was a touching scene that while not necessary, was absolutely NECESSARY, if you get me.
Miles Teller channels Anthony Edwards as his son, call-sign “Rooster,” as he navigates not just the missions training, but his anger at Maverick.
Glen Powell is Hangman, the Iceman to Rooster’s Maverick, and the all-American boyishness he brought to the role of John Glenn in Hidden Figures here transforms into near ego-maniacal psychosis.
The aerial sequences are stunning, again made all the more so by the practicality of the filming.
And since I know we’re going to be talking about this in depth, I’ll not bore you here by talking about the stuff that is near and dear to my heart, which is the military stuff, the interaction of the people, the dogged attention to detail concerning equipment, etc.
But it makes me happy when that kind of thing is intelligently and intentionally included, and included well.
I don’t say this often, but God bless Tom Cruise.
His insistence on doing the film right, and delaying it so it could have the cinematic release it deserves, makes Top Gun: Maverick everything you wanted, and everything you didn’t know you wanted.
This film is immensely LESS without Cruise putting his 3 decades of star power behind it.
And in IMAX, it’s utterly spectacular.
Welcome back to the theaters, world. Streaming may be here to stay, but it’s still a cinematic world.
Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max are all just living in it.
Top Gun: Maverick opens exclusively in theaters (FIANLLY!) on May 27 and stars Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Bashir Salahuddin, Jon Hamm, Charles Parnell, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Glen Powell, Jack Schumacher, Manny Jacinto, Kara Wang, Greg Tarzan Davis, Jake Picking, Raymond Lee, and features appearances by Ed Harris and Val Kilmer.
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