'Top Gun: Maverick' movie review: More than just a sequel

Capitalising effectively on its predecessor's foundation, Top Gun: Maverick escalates the tension of aerial combat, while retaining a character-driven story at its core

Top Gun: Maverick

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly

Score: 4.5/5 stars

If there is a benefit to being a Top Gun fan in the 21st century, it is that not many people necessarily think back to the particular appeal of that first film. Only its flaws seem to have remained in memories for many as the years have gone on. And thanks to that film, we have now been treated to Top Gun: Maverick, which is not just a better sequel, it's a better film.

Part of the reason this movie stands tall is because the first Top Gun laid a solid foundation for where to take the story and its characters. Maverick, unlike many sequels, did not blunder on the opportunity to capitalise on it. The sequel rolls with not just high-Gs aerial combat action but also on the smaller, more personal conflicts the people living in the world of the series face, creating a solid balance between the two.

The plot of Top Gun: Maverick follows a rather standard Hollywood fare -- a rogue nation has built a uranium enrichment field, and packed it in a virtual kill box. Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell (Cruise), still a captain after years of service, is rolled into a training programme at TOPGUN to train and select a group that will go and challenge this kill box to destroy the target before any further harm can be done to American interests.

As far as plots go, the film is as gung-ho about being pro-military as the first Top Gun was. Only this time, it doesn't make a bogeyman out of Russians or Iranians (to the point where there is virtually no spoken dialogue to identify the identity of the enemy nation (though it seems rather obvious from the enemy fighter jets). That's because the enemy nation here is just a bogeyman to drive the story forward, primarily for Maverick and Rooster (Teller), the son of Nick 'Goose' Bradshaw, who died most unceremoniously in the first film.

Through most of Maverick's 131-minute runtime, their antagonism remains one of the biggest forces driving everything forward even as Pete engages the 'next generation' of fighter pilots into getting ready for their impending assault. To its credit, the film does not sideline any of the new characters, giving them relatively equal opportunity to develop their own quirks and reputations that their callsigns might suggest of them. Yet, Rooster, with his personal history with Pete, stands heads and shoulders above them as the central pillar of the story. He loathes Pete with a passion, while Pete tries to find a way to mend their old, nearly familial relationship, which is seen through flashbacks and explored through old photos, and with strong encouragement from both returning characters like Iceman (Val Kilmer) and new ones like Penny (Jennifer Connelly).

For much of the film, the pilots are dealt with what is essentially just a drawn-out training arc where they deal with the pressure of potentially entering enemy territory as Maverick literally flies circles around them. However, when it gets down to it, the film shows real tension because it never betrays any of the suspense it's built up about the sheer danger of tangling with highly advanced enemy planes and a barrage of defensive missile arrangements that the pilots contend with in the actual deployment. It relies on a highly effective strategy of capitalising on the threat of the mission that has been repeatedly emphasised since the beginning of the film and a piece of dialogue repeated by multiple characters: "It's not the plane, it's the pilot" to deliver some of the most potent aerial combat in a Hollywood movie in years.

Ultimately, Top Gun: Maverick does what many Hollywood sequels are unable to - take the previous entry as a foundation and build upon it to create something so beautiful, so amazing that it can scarcely be considered a mere sequel.