Rating. 70%
"On March 3, 1969 the United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world.
They succeeded.
Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it: Top Gun."
From the aforementioned opening credits and reportage-style footage of silhouettes of ground crew readying fighter jets for take-off to the unmistakable high-octane guitar riff of Kenny Loggins' Danger Zone, the first five minutes of Top Gun: Maverick feels like director, Joseph Kosinski's homage to Top Gun.
Before I knew it, 40 minutes had elapsed and I began to wonder what was actually different from the original? Because Top Gun: Maverick is laced with hat-tips to the original film - A chance encounter with the instructor in a bar the night before school starts; a reckless training exercise below the 'hard deck'; a dogfight football match replaces the beach volleyball sequence. And in a particularly brilliant piece of screenwriting, even Maverick's (Tom Cruise) love interest Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly) is given a fleeting name-check in the original film, "With a history of high speed passes over five air control towers and one admiral's daughter."
But whereas Top Gun was "a disjointed series of music videos and aftershave commercials", the same criticism cannot be levelled at Top Gun: Maverick. There's a storyline, albeit an unoriginal one, and Tom Cruise's performance is endearing, demanding the audience connect with Maverick once again.
Top Gun: Maverick is no sequel - a reboot or remix, yes - but no sequel. A love letter to aviation.
Didn't only feel like a love letter to the original Top Gun but also to Tom Cruise and I thought that was a nice touch
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