Kevin C. Wong

Movie - Top Gun: Maverick (2022) [+]

In Top Gun: Maverick Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is reassigned to teach a special class at the Navy's Top Gun school. The mission is an almost suicide run to destroy weapons-grade nuclear enrichment facility of an unnamed rogue nation. Maverick's personal hurdle is that one of the students is Goose's son Lt Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller) who resents Maverick maybe for getting his dad killed and definitely for blocking his initial admission into Annapolis. There's a second subplot where Maverick tries to reconnect with old flame Penelope "Penny" Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly).

Much like the first movie we have great fighter jet training scenes, an outdoor sports in the sun scene, a bar scene, rivalry between the top two students: Rooster and Lt Jake "Hangman" Seresin (Glen Powell), a great mission which leads to deadly aerial dogfights. We also get a cameo with Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer) and a woman fighter pilot in Lt Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (Monica Barbaro).

I watched this on my 11" iPad and it looks great. Definitely would look fantastic on IMAX. Good number of callbacks to the previous film. Although, like many sequels, it sort of does the first film again, it's been 35 years so it's fine reusing the same plot elements and beats as the first film. Overall quite happy with Top Gun: Maverick.