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36 years after the original film and more than two years after filming ended, the long-awaited Top Gun: Maverick has finally arrived on the big screen. Tom Cruise returns to the role that launched him into the firmament of Hollywood stars with an intelligent work that ranks among the most innovative and successful sequels ever. The film directed by Joseph Kosinski and written by Christopher McQuarrie, Ehren Kruger, and Eric Warren Singer will premiere in theaters on May 21 and 22, with the official release set for May 25. We have reviewed it and this is our opinion.

After more than thirty years of service in the Navy, Lt. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is right where he wants to be: a brave pilot who can push himself to the limit by courageously testing new aircraft, and trying to dodge career advancement. which would put a brake on his freedom. When called upon to train a detachment of Top Gun Academy students for a specialized mission that no one in the world has ever accomplished, Maverick will meet Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), nickname ‘Rooster’, the son of the Maverick’s friend, Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka ‘Goose’. 

Grappling with an uncertain future and the ghosts of the past, Maverick will have to confront his deepest fears to complete a mission that will require a great sacrifice from all who choose to participate. Top Gun was probably together with Rocky IV the film that most defined the American 80s, a decade marked culturally by Reaganian hedonism and politically by the flare-up of the Cold War. 

In this context, the film directed by the late Tony Scott has shaped an entire imaginary made of Ray-Ban Aviator glasses, leather bomber jackets, and romantic motorbike races towards the sunset thus clearing the beauty of the young Tom Cruise. Pressing, visceral, and with a big heart, the 1986 film quickly established itself as one of the benchmarks that future blockbusters would have to contend with in the future.

Now, after a release initially scheduled for 2020 and postponed to 2022 due to the pandemic, Tom Cruise returns as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell 36 years later in a totally different world, or almost. The Navy has changed, technology is gradually giving up pilots in favor of drones, and close air combat – the so-called dogfight – is increasingly far-fetched.

The end is inevitable, Maverick. Your race is doomed to extinction.

The words that Rear Admiral Chester Cain, played by Ed Harris, addressed to Maverick, immediately make it clear how the protagonist – now assumed to be a real legend of the US Navy – is considered the relic of a world that no longer exists. Despite his exceptional service status, Maverick has always gone to great lengths to avoid career advancements, which would otherwise have progressively taken him away from the adrenaline of flying, an element he is not yet ready to give up and which has led him to become a pilot. 

The pilot of experimental aircraft. Despite his reluctance, he is recalled to the Top Gun school as an Instructor following the decisive request of the old friend/rival Tom “Iceman” Kazansky who has become an Admiral of the Pacific Fleet over time. In the new (ill-tolerated) role of teacher Maverick will have to train and select six pilots in a few weeks for a very high-risk mission on the territory of an unspecified “rogue state”.

With such an operation set along the lines of the legacy fuel, the risk of making a story that was a simple carbon copy of the original film full of fan service was just around the corner, but fortunately, this is not the case. The screenplay written by Christopher McQuarrie, who created an artistic partnership with Tom Cruise as effective as it is close-knit, transports the iconic 1986 imagery into modern times, accompanying and adapting it without forcing. 

Among the merits of the film, there is also being permeated by a nostalgia effect which, although present and fundamental to the entire operation, is never invasive or artificial. Element enhanced by a high-impact soundtrack that saw the return of the composer of the first film Harold Faltermayer assisted for the occasion by Hans Zimmer and Lady Gaga, who signed the exciting single Hold My Hand, composed for the release of the film.

Although the narrative revolves around the figure of its twilight protagonist (The choice of using Maverick as a subtitle rather than another or a generic Top Gun 2 is significant) the storytelling is becoming more and more wide-ranging by integrating into an organic and never forced way the relationships with the other characters. The script takes the time necessary to show the various psychologies by triggering a choral story where everyone walks their own narrative path. 

Strengthened by writing that speaks of the military, but not of militarism, this ranges between universal themes such as inheritance, mourning, revenge, and rapprochement. All issues dealt with balance in a path that will represent a sort of trait union between two generations of pilots who must understand and reconnect.

One of these is made up of young pilots who best represent the 1% of the best pilots exited from the Top Gun program, each with a marked personality that will in turn arouse the likes or dislikes of the public, from the contemptuous “Hangman” of Glen Powell to the decided “Phoenix” by Monica Barbaro. 

In this context, we no longer have handsome young drivers competing with each other to establish themselves as the best of the best, but a meeting (and clash) between very different personalities who will have to overcome their limits and team up to succeed in a mission that it will require more than their courage. There is also Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, played by the talented Miles Teller, son of the late Goose whose disappearance is still an open wound in the protagonist’s heart. The conflicting relationship between the two will be one of the film’s narrative and emotional epicenters.

It is also hard not to see an extension of Tom Cruise himself in Maverick himself. Two men who do not resign themselves to the passage of time and who look dreamily towards their glorious past, refusing to let it go. Cruise, however, has the merit of proposing an interpretation far removed from the Ethan Hunt of Mission: Impossible. Maverick is still reluctant to take orders and still defends his independence, but he does so with an unfamiliar maturity and awareness. He is a loner who still hides frailties that disappear only when he is in the air and can take a plane to his limits. 

The rest of the cast is well-matched and close-knit, starting with Jon Hamm in the role of Vice Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson, to Charles Parnell in the role of Rear Admiral Solomon “Warlock” Bates, up to Jennifer Connelly in the role of Penny Benjamin, old and Maverick’s new love interest briefly also mentioned in the first film. A special mention is reserved for the announced presence of Val Kilmer returning as Tom “Iceman” Kazanski, the protagonist of what is one of the most touching and self-referential scenes in the film.

But the greatest merit of Top Gun: Maverick is to tell the true adrenaline of a fighter pilot committed to defying the laws of physics in a potentially deadly mission. The vast renunciation of CGI in favor of live aerial shots brings to the stage an action never so lively and vibrant, a real flagship of the film enhanced by the dry and adrenaline-fueled staging of Joseph Kosinski. 

It is the first taste of what it means to fly to the limit we have during training flights, with the first spectacular sequences, shot live onboard the F / A-18E Super Hornet fighters. It is almost inevitable for the spectator not to feel involved in the physical exertion of pilots trying to remain conscious while facing the violent acceleration of gravity. The experience is then made even more immersive by the excellent sound design work, thanks to which we hear the breathlessness of the pilots who are struggling to breathe, with the sounds of the yoke and jets that contribute to composing a sound carpet among the most complete never made.

This display of technique then explodes in all its power in the last epic 40 minutes of the film in an adrenaline rush that takes the experience of on-screen action to levels never seen before in the history of cinema. A sensory tsunami of extraordinary emotional impact that overwhelms the viewer with an experience that is always poised between vibrant excitement and exhausting tension. In the cockpit of fighters, we experience danger through the eyes of the pilots and experience first-hand the fear of not getting out alive, feeling the inexorable weight of choices. In this dynamic, the action takes on a broad epic breath that becomes an integral part of the development of the characters and the plot.

Thanks to all this, the film manages to perform the miracle of being in 2022 which was the first Top Gun in 1986, or a new reference point for the blockbusters to come. With the passing of Tony Scott, to whom the film is dedicated, it was reasonable to expect that a certain idea of cinema – like real fighter pilots – was now close to extinction. They thought about Top Gun: Maverick and his stainless protagonist played by Tom Cruise to dispel all doubts, thus responding to the aforementioned provocation of Rear Admiral Cain:

Maybe so, Lord… but not today.