Top Gun: Maverick

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Regardless of how you feel about Tom Cruise, you've got to give it up for his dedication to his craft. Between the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise and movies like this, he keeps learning new things and pushing the envelope. I further learned that aside from Cruise doing his own flying stunts in this, he also got his fellow cast members trained in flying, and 100% of the flying in this movie is real! Incredible stuff, considering some of the maneuvers you see these pilots pull off. And all of this on an IMAX screen? *chef's kiss*.

Now, concerning the plot of this one, you might not want to continue reading if you care about spoilers for the original film. A lot of this film's plot hinges on spoiler territory, but seeing as the original IS about 36 years old, I'd imagine most people interested already know about these spoilers as though I might as well be trying to cover Darth Vader being Luke's father. Anyway, we begin over 30 years after the events of 'Top Gun', and we see Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Cruise) has gotten into being a test pilot for the US Navy. His current project is to get the hypersonic "Darkstar" scramjet to Mach 10.

Rear Admiral Chester "Hammer" Cain (Ed Harris), however, plans on shutting the project down to redirect funds to drone programs. Of course, Maverick goes ahead and makes the attempt anyway, which gets him into a spot of trouble. Luckily, for Maverick, he still has Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer) in his corner, as he has since become Commander of the US Pacific Fleet and can pull some strings rather than see him grounded. This results in Maverick being sent back to Top Gun to teach a whole new crew of the best of the best to fly some F-18s into a dangerous mission to bomb a uranium enrichment facility that the Pentagon deems a threat to the US.

Among the crew of top pilots are the cocky Jake 'Hangman' Seresin (Glen Powell), token female pilot, Natasha 'Phoenix' Trace (Monica Barbaro), Javy 'Coyote' Machado (Greg Tarzan Davis), the somewhat geeky Robert 'Bob' Floyd (Lewis Pullman), Reuben 'Payback' Fitch (Jay Ellis), Mickey 'Fanboy' Garcia (Danny Ramirez) and last but not least, Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), who happens to be the son of Maverick's former best friend and RIO, Nick "Goose" Bradshaw. Here's where the major spoiler comes into play, as Goose dies in the original while flying with Maverick. This, and more that one might not expect, causes Rooster and Maverick to have a very rocky relationship.

In the meantime, Maverick also reunites with the famous Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly); an Admiral's daughter who Maverick and Goose once did a high-speed pass over, as mentioned a couple of times in the original film. But while this is going on, this doesn't place any sort of love story front and center as the original pretty much did. Yes, I know it's about more than that, but one can't really deny that a good chunk of that movie IS a love story. For the most part, in this chapter, we see a LOT more of what we came to see - a lot of jet-flying action. Even if it's about 90% training for the mission, it's all not only a fun thrill ride we take with these pilots, but it's even somewhat educational. Sound boring? Well, trust me, it's far from it.

If I have any sot of criticism about this one, it's that we see a whole lot of similarities between this and the original within the storyline. There's even the equivalent of the famous shirts-off volleyball scene - but this time, it's a football, and it has the purpose of team building behind it. Little tweaks like that make me appreciate it so much more. It's a very bold statement, but I think I can quite honestly stand by it; I liked this MORE than I liked the original. It also appears that I'm not exactly alone on that. But if you really wanna have a good time in the theater right now - not just a movie, but an experience - then definitely go check this out in whatever maximized format you can. I had a GREAT time with this one!

5/5

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