Video: Topgun: Maverick Review

Topgun Maverick came as a huge surprise — a sequel to a 1986 film that nobody saw coming. With a timespan of 36 years between the first and second film, this colossal gap is enough to make virtually anyone who had watched Topgun in its prime days grow a grey hair or two, but still, apparently it is not enough to drastically age the leading actor — the legendary Tom Cruise itself.

Good. I am quite sure that everyone in the aviator academy, both fictional or reality, would not mind having an instructor who looks a little younger and more attractive. But judging from the trailer itself, Cruise’s character, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell will have to go against a group of overpowering millennials who threaten to defy him and make him look really bad.

It is not that I would skip Topgun: Maverick entirely based on this factor alone, but I definitely thought that this type of plot material fits better in real life documentaries where bad and despicable culture in the military operations are exposed to the public. But for a sequel-film, with almost no follow-up at all for more than 30 years since the first one? As much as I love Cruise’s work, I genuinely believed that it was a bad idea. I quickly realized that I was wrong as Topgun: Maverick’s credits rolled, and now funnily I am on a quest to explain how wrong I was, or how right the movie is.

Originally published at https://www.thefilmaddict.com on June 16, 2022.