Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Written by Ehren Kruger, Peter Craig & Christopher McQuarrie
Starring Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm & Val Kilmer
Runtime: 2 hrs 11 min
In Theaters on May 26th

By A. Freedman, Staff Writer

The Paramount logo appears as a reverberating, synthesized drumbeat comes in. The sky is an orange amber. The bright lights of jet engines illuminate the silhouettes of soldiers on an aircraft carrier. Cue a familiar 80's song. When you go to see Top Gun: Maverick, you would be forgiven for thinking they popped in a DVD of the 1986 Top Gun by mistake.

Tom Cruise returns to the role that made him a superstar in Top Gun: Maverick. A zeitgeist altering smash hit, it feels surprising that it took 35 years to get a sequel. Like Clint Eastwood holding onto the script for Unforgiven until he had appropriately aged into the role, Cruise was right to wait til now. In Top Gun, air to air combat, or "dogfighting" is already a thing of the past. Maverick and his peers are tasked with carrying on the knowledge, and keeping American supremacy alive in the process. In 2022, air to air combat belongs in a museum, along with so many other relics. But keeping old things alive simply because they are worthy of it is one of the central themes of Maverick.

When we reconnect with Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, he has managed to sidestep the traditional career path for a man of his stature. His peers are admirals, commanders or retired where as he is testing the newest, fastest machines that the military industrial complex has to offer. "He's the fastest man alive," says Hondo (Bashir Salahuddin), his friend and colleague. While Maverick is racing to break a speed record, Hondo’s program is under threat of being defunded. In this moment this is not just about Maverick, this is also about Cruise himself. His peers are mostly retired, going smaller or cashing in on easy nostalgia checks. Cruise won't do that. He won't allow himself to. Cruise is a dedicated steward of the cinema , he doesn't want to go smaller or easier. Doing so could signify another nail in the coffin of the thing he has dedicated his life to: the theatrical experience. He wants you in the theater, and he wants to give you a reason to keep coming back.

Maverick's duties grow more significant when he is reassigned to teach a hot young group of fighter pilots how to pull off a successful bombing mission. This particular mission could end up involving some of that old school dogfighting that no one does anymore. The new crew are an exciting, handsome bunch. We meet Payback (Jay Ellis), Hangman (Glen Powell), Phoenix (Monica Barbaro), "Bob" (Lewis Pullman, whose father was also a great fighter pilot), and others. Among them is Rooster (Miles Teller), who happens to be the son of the late Goose (Anthony Edwards), Maverick's best friend and fly buddy.. The death of Goose was a crux of the first film. Having grown up with the film, Goose's death laid heavily on my psyche much like Bambi's mother's death may have done for generations before me. My anticipation of Maverick was sky high in wondering how these two would try to resolve their tragic, shared past.

Fortunately, director Joseph Kosinski is more than up to the task when it comes to delivering the tears. Having helmed the fantastic Only The Brave, Kosinski showed that he had the goods. He is a fantastic observer of the bonds that form between men in uniform, on a mission together that may be the end for them. Unlike some of his directing peers, he doesn't fetishize toughness but instead he lauds bravery, dedication, purpose and vulnerability. He can make a "guy's movie" while leaving the toxic masculinity at the door. Top Gun: Maverick successfully employs this tone, whether in a scene where Maverick considers his role as a surrogate father, or in an emotional cameo from Val Kilmer, where the now Admiral "Iceman" and Maverick reunite. Maverick, like Cruise, can't let go of the past, even as time threatens to swallow him up. It is his greatest strength, and his greatest weakness. But could there be a middle path? A romance between him and Top Gun offscreen punchline Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly) tries to offer this, even if it ends up feeling a bit underwritten.

By the time we've gotten comfortable in this familiar trot down memory lane, Kosinski and Cruise pull the rug out and suddenly you're on one of those "Tower Of Death" rides where you drop hundreds of feet in just a few seconds. The adrenaline rush of the final third is more than enough reason for Maverick's existence. The technical marvels of it make the original look like an original Nintendo game. To be fair, there simply wasn't the technology at the time, and the fabulous Tony Scott did the best he could with what he had. We have that technology now, and they pull out all the stops to give you a thrilling experience that only a trip to the theater can offer.

Other recent "legacy sequels" like The Matrix: Resurrections and Scream were interested in commenting on, and thereby subverting their original counterparts. They wanted to communicate directly to the viewer, and perhaps make some adjustments to the more troubling aspects of their legacy. I found that Maverick is interested in no such thing. Despite the jingoistic recruitment style ad of the original, it doesn't want to look inward. Not at the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq, PTSD, veteran suicides, and certainly not the election of Trump. Most of all, it doesn't want to look at what role it may have played in shepherding all that along. Cruise is pretty conflict avoidant for a guy who, for decades, has been mired in a whole lot of personal conflict. And so, the military world of Maverick feels oddly false, more like a metaphor for Hollywood than it does like the thing it's pretending to be. But what was I expecting, from a sequel to one of the most successful, glossiest propaganda films of all time?

Not that it ultimately matters, if you are just looking for an incredible blockbuster moviegoing experience like the summers of yesterday. On that, Top Gun: Maverick delivers. Cruise has made sure of it. He has one mission, and it's been accomplished.