Top Gun

Fans of Top Gun have had to wait 36 years for the long-promised sequel to the 1986 film - but with Maverick finally flying into cinemas next week, does the ...

But the movie treads a delicate balance between the old and the new. It raises a wry smile when Maverick is told towards the start of the film "the future is coming, and you're not in it" - little did the cast and crew know that the film would come out years after it was scheduled to. His kind will be extinct soon as new remote technology negates the need for pilots.

Dir: Joseph Kosinski. Starring: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer. 12A, 131 minutes.

Kosinski allows space for Val Kilmer’s Iceman, whose rivalry with Maverick was so integral to the original, to be celebrated, without the film cruelly papering over the loss of Kilmer’s voice due to cancer. He also works enough in the language and tone of Cruise’s recent collaborations with Christopher McQuarrie (the screenwriter of Edge of Tomorrow and the last two Mission: Impossibles) that Maverick plays as much as a Top Gun film as it does a Cruise film. But Top Gun: Maverick really isn’t packed with the kind of craven nostalgia that we’re used to these days. This time, at least, she gets to be one of the pilots. The new recruits are roughly reshaped versions of the old characters: we’ve got a new Iceman in Glen Powell’s Hangman (he finds just the right level of assholery for the role), while Monica Barbaro’s Phoenix is, like Kelly McGillis’s Charlie before her, the one woman on the base with any lines. When Maverick is called in to train naval recruits in what, on paper, comes across as an impossible mission – hint hint, there’s a generous dollop of Ethan Hunt in this film – their relationship becomes all the more fraught. Due to the practical limitations of the time, Top Gun’s original dog fights were robust but always a little hard to follow. It’s the kind of edge-of-your-seat, fist-pumping spectacular that can unite an entire room full of strangers sitting in the dark and leave them with a wistful tear in their eye. The military may have cleared him of responsibility, but he’ll never shake the feeling that his own bravado caused the death of his best friend Goose during a routine training exercise. But people do change, and this Maverick is a man haunted by his past. The film is a true legacy sequel. The most gee-whiz kid you’ve ever seen gazes up at him in awe (place your bets now on whether he joins the navy when he grows up).

With a smarter story, funnier dialogue and more nausea-inducing aerial stunts, Top Gun: Maverick outpaces the 1986 original, writes Nicholas Barber.

There was death in the 1986 Top Gun, of course, and there was a combat mission tacked on at the end, but for most of the film the biggest risk faced by Pete was that Iceman might sneer at him in the locker room. There is even a drop of bad blood between Pete and his old flame Penny the Conveniently Single Bar Owner (Jennifer Connelly), but she is better suited to him than the first film's love interest, Charlie (Kelly McGillis, who doesn't get a mention, let alone a cameo appearance). The tentative romance between Pete and Penny is predictable, but quite touching because there is chemistry and history between them, and an awareness that they aren't in the first flush of youth. The admiral in charge of the school, Cyclone (Jon Hamm, doing a good line in goggle-eyed exasperation), doesn't approve of Pete's methods because he fears they might compromise the mission. The navy wants to send in some of its own jets to blow up the plant, and so 12 of Top Gun's finest graduates are brought back to brush up on their dog-fighting skills. Despite what he said in the original film, he hasn't spent much of the last 30-odd years as a Top Gun instructor. And yet the new film improves on the old one in every respect. In Top Gun: Maverick, the stakes are higher because we know that some of them will be going on a hazardous mission that they might not survive. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (who made another belated 1980s sequel, Tron: Legacy), and co-written by Cruise's regular Mission: Impossible director, Christopher McQuarrie, it's a sincere homage to the original Top Gun. The opening blurb and aircraft-carrier montage are pretty much identical to their 1986 equivalents; it closes with a dedication to Tony Scott, who died in 2012; and in between it keeps referring back to the characters and incidents of its predecessor. Top Gun was one of the most fundamentally 1980s-ish of all the films made in the 1980s. The plot outline is similar, too, in that it is set in the navy's elite flying school – aka Top Gun – where a group of cocky "best of the best" pilots all have such superhero-worthy call signs as Hangman (Glenn Powell) and Phoenix (Monica Barbaro). Glossy, superficial and drenched in soft-rock anthems, Tony Scott's aerobatic male-bonding movie was a celebration of US militarism, expensive hardware and the burning of oceans of fossil fuels. But times have changed since 1986, so to bring back Cruise as the US Navy's Pete "Maverick" Mitchell this far into the 21st Century was always going to be – to quote another of his 1980s hits – a risky business.

Cruise presides over some surprising differences from his first outing as the navy pilot hotshot in a film that's missing the homoerotic tensions of the 80s ...

Teller has to be a tough guy, so his late father Goose is remembered by this film as more of an alpha than he actually was: in fact, Goose was a nerdier and more retiring type, closer to this film’s bespectacled comedy turn Bob (Lewis Pullman). Glen Powell plays an arrogant young pilot, call-sign Hangman, who has the burden of incarnating the big-headedness of both the younger Iceman and the younger Maverick. Weirder still, it is actually less progressive on gender issues than the original film, which did after all put a woman in charge: astrophysicist Charlotte Blackwood, played by Kelly McGillis, was the trainer (inspired by real-life Pentagon official Christine Fox). Now it’s Maverick in charge and there is just the one female pilot under his instruction: Phoenix, a thin role for Monica Barbaro. McGillis has evidently not been invited back and her character is never mentioned. But where, oh where, is the towel-round-the-waist, semi-nude locker-room intensity between the guys? Despite his badass attitude, he’s respected by the real flyers and loathed by the pointy-headed brass, and is protected by his enduring bromance with former classmate and rival Iceman, who is now an admiral. Almost 40 years on from the first film, which was directed by Tony Scott, Maverick is still speedy, less needy – more centred and calmer, in fact, but still in humungous shape and in love with flying. Commanding officer Cyclone (Jon Hamm) has the ticklish diplomatic task of telling Maverick to train this new generation of adorable hotheads without joining them in the skies himself.

Tom Cruise settles back into the pilot's seat for a nostalgic last hurrah. 'Top Gun: Maverick'. Source: Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer ...

That said, it remains very easy to enjoy Cruise’s roguish charm, with the veteran actor finding some emotional shading to a man who feels like a fossil. What is both moving and limiting about the backwards-looking Top Gun: Maverick is that, like its hero, the sequel does not want to listen to that advice, either. One of his pupils is Rooster (Teller), the son of Maverick’s closest friend and flying partner Goose, who died during Top Gun. Rooster has never forgiven Maverick, but they must find common cause if they are to complete their mission. We do not learn much about the other characters — even Rooster is not particularly well-developed — so that the focus can be on Maverick’s quest for closure. Featuring a rousing finale — two of them, actually — and substantial nostalgic pleasures, the new film can’t quite balance its desire to be both wistful and escapist, knowingly cheesy and surprisingly touching. The seemingly ageless star returns as the brave, reckless Navy pilot who has never forgiven himself for the death of his best friend, a lingering pain he hopes to remedy when he becomes an instructor for the son of his fallen comrade.

Tom Cruise is back in the air in the fan-friendly legacy sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

This is where diehard fans, who are sure to be giddy from having their nostalgia joy buttons pushed for the length of the movie, and the rest of us may part ways, with Maverick striving for drama but settling for sentimentality. On the other hand, Cruise is as effortlessly charismatic and watchable as ever in the role he may be most remembered for, and the movie fills the screen and passes the time reasonably quickly. And then there are the aerial sequences, in which Top Gun: Maverick truly comes to full, stunning, jaw-dropping life. They’re needed again for an urgent mission: six of them must fly into a hazardous, narrow path between two mountains and launch missiles directly at a suspected enemy’s underground uranium laboratory, which is of course guarded by enemy fighters and rocket launchers (the enemy is never identified and politics are kept carefully out of the story, but the landscape sure looks like North Korea). It plays exceptionally well as large-scale summer fare meant to be seen on the big screen (we recommend IMAX). At the same time, the things that people disliked about Top Gun—the one-dimensional characters, the maudlin melodrama, and the montages of military porn that play almost like Navy recruitment videos—still remain. Top Gun: Maverick is probably the best possible follow-up that fans of the late Tony Scott’s original 1986 movie—now very much considered a classic—could hope for.

Maverick is back on the big screen and film critics are hailing it as a triumphant return for lead star Tom Cruise.

(Maverick’s response to a warning that the future is coming fast? But in the end, the moral of the heart-stopping story is clear: Tom Cruise is a rootin'-tootin' hero. Top Gun: Maverick may not do the most thorough job of exploring these unsettling developments. Admittedly, there is a lot here that is retread. He’s still going by the call sign ‘Maverick’ – and acting the tough guy, too. Nowadays, they could get computers to do all the work, but Cruise refuses to stand aside. He’s actually up there in the sky going at 1,189mph as the camera rolls. And Cruise leaves no question that he's the pilot, despite hiring a pro craft team and a solid ensemble cast who were put through extensive flight training.' It’s the point. 'Kosinski aims to make moviegoers feel what it's like to have your head squished by G-forces and wonder where in the blue blazes the bad guys are coming from. We all know that Tom Cruise does his own stunts, but this is something else. Because it does, and not for the first time.'

With just over two weeks until Top Gun: Maverick hits theaters, star Glenn Powell revealed his unconventional method of reading reviews: shirtless.

Premiere: Paris was clad in a sparkling gown while posing alongside her boyfriend, along with other snaps from the special day It’s gonna be a good day.' Paris was clad in a sparkling gown while posing alongside her boyfriend, along with other snaps from the special day.

Sequel to 1986 fighter pilot classic is released in cinemas later this month.

See it on the biggest screen possible. Until then, who can be blamed for getting swept up by a film this damned fun?” However, while she praises the film’s technical ambition and action sequences, she criticises the film’s treatment of the female characters from the original, writing: “Neither McGillis nor Meg Ryan, who played Rooster’s mother, make any kind of return.

A breathless, gravity and logic-defying sequel.

And because this mode is clearly shared by the entirety of the cast—from a memorable Ed Harris that begs for more screen time to the always great Glen Powell as the alluringly overconfident “ Hangman,” Greg Tarzan Davis as “Coyote,” Jay Ellis as “ Payback,” Danny Ramirez as “Fanboy,” Monica Barbaro as “ Phoenix,” and Lewis Pullman as “Bob”—“Top Gun: Maverick” runs fully on its enthralling on-screen harmony at times. Still, the action sequences—all the low-altitude flights, airborne dogfights as well as Cruise on a motorcycle donned in his original Top Gun leather jacket—are likewise the breathtaking stars of “Maverick,” often accompanied by Harold Faltermeyer’s celebratory original score (aided by cues from Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe). Reportedly, all the flying scenes—a pair of which are pure hell-yes moments for Cruise—were shot in actual U.S. Navy F/A-18s, for which the cast had to be trained for during a mind-boggling process. After a title card that explains what “Top Gun” is—the identical one that introduced us to the world of crème-de-la-crème Navy pilots in 1986—we find Maverick in a role on the fringes of the US Navy, working as an undaunted test pilot against the familiar backdrop of Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.” You won’t be surprised that soon enough, he gets called on a one-last-job type of mission as a teacher to a group of recent Top Gun graduates. And if Rooster’s understandable distaste of him wasn’t enough (despite Maverick’s protective instincts towards him), there are skeptics of Maverick’s credentials— Jon Hamm’s Cyclone, for instance, can’t understand why Maverick’s foe-turned-friend Iceman ( Val Kilmer, returning with a tearjerker of a part) insists on him as the teacher of the mission. In a different package, all the brouhaha jingoism and proud fist-shaking seen in “Top Gun: Maverick” could have been borderline insufferable. In that regard, you will be right at home with “Top Gun: Maverick,” director Joseph Kosinski’s witty adrenaline booster that allows its leading producer to be exactly what he is—a star—while upping the emotional and dramatic stakes of its predecessor with a healthy (but not overdone) dose of nostalgia.

Dir: Joseph Kosinski. Starring: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer. 12A, 131 minutes.

He also works enough in the language and tone of Cruise’s recent collaborations with Christopher McQuarrie (the screenwriter of Edge of Tomorrow and the last two Mission: Impossibles) that Maverick plays as much as a Top Gun film as it does a Cruise film. Kosinski allows space for Val Kilmer’s Iceman, whose rivalry with Maverick was so integral to the original, to be celebrated, without the film cruelly papering over the loss of Kilmer’s voice due to cancer. But Top Gun: Maverick really isn’t packed with the kind of craven nostalgia that we’re used to these days. This time, at least, she gets to be one of the pilots. The new recruits are roughly reshaped versions of the old characters: we’ve got a new Iceman in Glen Powell’s Hangman (he finds just the right level of assholery for the role), while Monica Barbaro’s Phoenix is, like Kelly McGillis’s Charlie before her, the one woman on the base with any lines. When Maverick is called in to train naval recruits in what, on paper, comes across as an impossible mission – hint hint, there’s a generous dollop of Ethan Hunt in this film – their relationship becomes all the more fraught. Due to the practical limitations of the time, Top Gun’s original dog fights were robust but always a little hard to follow. It’s the kind of edge-of-your-seat, fist-pumping spectacular that can unite an entire room full of strangers sitting in the dark and leave them with a wistful tear in their eye. The military may have cleared him of responsibility, but he’ll never shake the feeling that his own bravado caused the death of his best friend Goose during a routine training exercise. But people do change, and this Maverick is a man haunted by his past. The film is a true legacy sequel. The most gee-whiz kid you’ve ever seen gazes up at him in awe (place your bets now on whether he joins the navy when he grows up).