Movie Poster

Talk to me Goose.

Past Top Gun reviews:

• Top Gun

# Review

It’s rare for a sequel to rival an iconic original and rarer yet for a sequel to surpass said iconic original, but this is precisely what happened with Top Gun: Maverick. This film first came on my radar at a OneRepublic concert, where Tom Cruise gave an endorsement of OneRepublic's single I Ain’t Worried used in the film. I recently watched this with a free movie rental given by Cineplex for seeing Avatar: The Way of Water.

Top Gun: Maverick continues the story of Pete Mitchel, callsign Maverick (Tom Cruise) 36 years after the first Top Gun, as Maverick gets called back to the Top Gun school to instruct a group of top fighter pilots to complete a near suicidal mission. The film features characters from the first Top Gun such as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer), as well as new characters such as Bradley “Rooster” Bradshow (Miles Teller) and Jake "Hangman" Seresin (Glen Powell).

The story is very good and designed for maximum action. While there still is romance in the story (between Maverick and Jennifer Connelly’s Penny), it’s much less of a focus in Maverick and instead much of the story centers around Maverick’s relationship with Goose's son Rooster. The various callbacks to the original Top Gun were tasteful and Maverick felt like it was building on top of the original and served as a good bookend for Maverick’s story.

The special effects are gorgeous and the film feels like an upgrade visually in every respect compared to the original Top Gun. The acting was also phenomenal, Cruise as Maverick is solid but Teller’s Rooster definitely gives Cruise’s Maverick a run for his money.

# Conclusion

An improvement upon an iconic film.

# Overall rating: 8.7

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