Well, since I reviewed Top Gun, it only seemed appropriate to review the sequel as well.
30 years later, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is still a great pilot, though he's moved from instructor to testing experimental aircraft, and finds his job on the line thanks to Admiral Cain (Ed Harris), who aims to replace pilots with drones. But OH NO! Another vaguely defined "enemy" (who may or may not be the same one from the first film) has built a super dangerous uranium plant, and the Navy needs a special team of fighter pilots to deal with it. And wouldn't you know it, Maverick's old friend Tom "Iceman" Kazinsky (Val Kilmer, in his last acting role) has recommended him to train the new squad.
Despite the reluctance of his commanding officer Beau "Cyclone" Simpson (John Hamm), Maverick is assigned to take a group of top gun graduates and prepare them for a potential suicide mission. But there's another problem - one of the candidates is Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, the son of Maverick's old co-pilot Nick "Goose" Bradshaw, and there's some complicated history between them.
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect going into this one. Part of me was worried it was going to just be the first movie all over again, or it was going to feel like it was still a product of the 80's. And it proved me wrong. Top Gun Maverick takes full advantage of the 30-year gap between installments, allowing it to explore how things have changed over time. The increasing prevalence of drone warfare was an interesting thing to see explored in the opening, though it perhaps could have been given more attention. We get to see how characters have grown and developed.
And the film takes advantage of the time jump to give us a much more varied group of characters. There's actually a woman on the team this time around. Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (Monica Barbaro) is a member of Maverick's strike team who, while not the primary focus, does get her share of action scenes.
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| It is nice to not just get ANOTHER male bonding film. |
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises in this film was the return of Val Kilmer as Iceman. You'd think this would be a logical choice since he was a big part of the first movie, but at the time Val Kilmer was suffering from throat cancer that prevented him acting in other roles. He'd previously been unable to reprise Mad Martigan for the Willow miniseries for this exact reason, yet they somehow actually got him to come back, if briefly, for Top Gun Maverick. And they made an interesting decision for how to do it- by actually incorporating the actor's condition into the character. It limited his screentime to one scene, but that one scene makes the most of him.
The romantic plotline in Top Gun Maverick is definitely an improvement over the original. While the sudden and unexplained disappearance of Kelly McInnis might be jarring to longtime fans, they actually do pretty good with new love interest Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly). It probably helps that they forego having Maverick do any cringey "romantic gestures" and she isn't his teacher this time. She actually feels like a new character and not just "Charlie but with brown hair." The film takes its time building up their relationship but, unlike the original, the romance portion seems to gel a lot better with the rest of the film. It doesn't feel like they're suddenly putting the movie on hold for Tom Cruise to get laid.
One thing that's interesting about Top Gun Maverick is how it manages to mirror scenes from the first movie without feeling like it's directly copying them. It makes for interesting moments, like when Maverick himself is introduced to his class in a scene that feels suspiciously reminiscient of Charlie's reveal as their instructor. Even the opening, which is very clearly modeled on the first right down to using the same font for the credits, feels more like an homage than a direct copy.
And of course, there's the flight sequences which... still look amazing. Maybe a bit hard to follow at times because of all the rapid editing, but they still give you a sense of what the characters are feeling amid all the fast-paced action. It even builds on some of the original's cinematography, experimenting with a few new techniques, like filming a takeoff from inside the cockpit.
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect Top Gun Maverick to be but this... well, it actually does pretty good. Sequels can be hard to pull off, especially when the original is such an icon, but Top Gun Maverick actually does the seemingly impossible and arguably improves on the original Top Gun in many ways. It captures everything that got people into the original and builds on it, creating something that calls back to the original while also feeling like it's own movie.
Apparently, there's a sequel in development. It will be interesting to see where they go with that.
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