TOP GUN: MAVERICK: NOSTALGIA DONE RIGHT

Top Gun: Maverick is an American Action Drama film directed by Joseph Kosinski and written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie. The film comes from stories by Peter Craig and Justin Marks, and is a sequel to the 1986 film Top Gun. Tom Cruise reprises his starring role as the rebellious naval aviator Pete Mitchell, call sign “Maverick”. The film was based on the characters from the original film, created by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. The film also stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris and Val Kilmer, who reprises his role as Tom “Iceman” Kyzanski. In the film, Maverick is forced to confront his past while training a group of younger Top Gun graduates, including the son of his deceased best friend, for a dangerous mission.

Development on a Top Gun sequel was announced back in 2010 by Paramount Pictures. Cruise, along with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott, were all asked to return. A draft of the screenplay was written in 2012, but the project stalled when Scott died later that year (The film was later dedicated to Scott's memory). Production resumed in 2017 after Kosinski was hired to step in and direct the film. Principal photography started in May 2018, and took place in California, Washington and Maryland. An initial release date was scheduled for July 12, 2019, but was delayed due the pandemic. During the pandemic, several streaming companies attempted to purchase the streaming rights to the film from Paramount, but all offers were declined because Tom Cruise insisted that the film be released exclusively in theaters.

Top Gun: Maverick premiered at CinemaCon on April 28, 2022 and was theatrically released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on May 27, 2022. The film was acclaimed by critics, with many calling it better than the original. It won Best Film from the National Board of Review and was also named one of the top ten films of 2022 by the American Film Institute. The film was nominated for six awards at the 95th Academy Awards (including Best Picture), winning Best Sound and received numerous other accolades. It went on to gross $1.493 billion worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2022 and the highest-grossing film of Tom Cruise's career. The film currently has an impressive 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an Audience Score of 99%, and it has a Metascore of 78 with a User Score of 7.8 on Metacritic, and boasts a 8.3/10 on IMDB (with over 500,000 ratings).

Simply put, Top Gun: Maverick is the best Action Drama I’ve seen in twenty years, and it proves that as a screenwriter, you don’t have to re-invent the wheel in order to write a good movie. In fact, the film copies several beats directly from the original film. It’s the action that is the key to this film’s success, or rather the execution of said action. All of the actors, especially the ones who played aviators were absolutely fantastic, and the writers managed to avoid falling into the trap of cheesy one liners from the supporting cast while in the cockpit of the planes (like Redtails or the Fast and Furious movies did). For the most part, the dialogue of the supporting characters was shrewdly used to further develop the characters, as they of course, got less screen time than Cruise.

The film makes room for you to feel nostalgic (if you were alive when the first movie was released) while simultaneously giving itself permission to be its own thing, and the replay value of this movie is off the charts (which is why despite it being available on most streaming platforms, I still bought it on blu-ray). There are some feminist themes in this film, but they were handled with a delicate touch, so as not to beat you over the head, and instead, simply allowing you to be entertained. And, despite it being a modern war movie, I think it makes you low-key proud to be an American. It took ten years to get this movie made, and I have to say it was well worth the wait. And it reminds all of us that Tom Cruise is America’s last action hero.

You can watch Top Gun: Maverick on Apple TV, Redbox, Google Play Movies and Vudu for a fee, and you can find it on YouTube, Paramount Plus, Roku, Amazon Prime, Sling TV and Philo with a subscription.