Top Gun: Maverick is finally out after decades of anticipation, but is it worth the wait?
In Top Gun: Maverick, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is put in charge of training a group of Top Gun recruits for a special mission in an unnamed hostile country. This group includes Rooster (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick's former co-pilot, Goose.
But enough about the plot, does the film live up to the classic Top Gun?
Yes.
Very much yes.
In fact, Top Gun: Maverick is much better than Top Gun.
Top Gun has no doubt earned it's place in cinema history. We all love Berlin's Take My Breath Away playing every few moments and the level of 80s camp and homo-eroticism is almost unmatched.
Having said that, it's good, not great.
Top Gun: Maverick builds on everything great about the first film, the action is better, due to the advances in camera technology. We're introduced to a lot of fun new characters who are all much more fleshed out than any from the original.
If you're a purist though, there is another shirtless beach sport scene, don't worry.
The film fixes perhaps my biggest issue with the original film as well. Due to limitations of 1986 technology, a lot of the action was quite hard to follow as there wasn't a lot of care taken to make sure the audience can follow what's going on.
In Top Gun: Maverick, the stakes are stated much more clearly, along with the route required for the mission being spelled out very simply. Every training exercise before the real thing its obvious what they're doing and why.
When the real thing does come towards the climax of the film, it's exhilarating. By this point we've seen so many dry runs and know the course as well as the team and we're on the edge of our seats with them the whole way.
In many ways, the film has a lot more in common with Cruise's Mission: Impossible series than the original Top Gun, mainly that it revolves around a mission which is deemed impossible for anyone but Tom Cruise.
This is by no means a bad thing, Tom Cruise & Christopher McQuarrie (director of Missions: Impossible 5-8) are both producers on this film and they seem to understand action and spectacle better than anyone else in Hollywood. I'm convinced they should make every film together at this point.
For all his weird quirks, Tom Cruise really cares about giving audiences a cinema-going experience to remember. The man is going to be celebrating his 60th birthday in a matter of weeks and currently shows no signs of slowing down.
If Top Gun 3 drops in another 36 years with a mid-nineties Cruise (who presumably will still look 40) I'll be there at the first screening.
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