[Review] Top Gun: Maverick (8.5/10)

 
Title - Top Gun: Maverick
Production - Paramount Pictures, Skydance Media, Jerry Bruckheimer Films
Starring - Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jom Hamm, Bashir Salahuddin, Glen Powell, Charles Parnell, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, Val Kilmer
Writer - Peter Craig
Director - Joseph Kosinski
Release - 27 May 2022

Here's a movie that did every thing right. And I do mean, everything. 

You want to bring back an old 80's, popular property? You want to bank on the nostalgia factor? You want to do some fan service as well in between? Look no further than Top Gun: Maverick, because it will show you how and why something like Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Jurassic World: Dominion failed.

First ingredient in the recipe, you have someone who is overly committed by the name of Tom Cruise. He is always in the driver's seat and always pushing the boundaries. Doesn't hurt that he is always doing his own stunts as well.

Let's talk about stunts first. Just by putting cameras in the cockpit and flying the jet himself, it's a totally different point-of-view and a completely personal energy that you could feel while watching all these scenes. 

Then there's the entertainment factor. There wasn't any complicated script. Like the first movie, we don't really see a face for the enemy; just that we know they were there. But there was so much fun with every scene and especially with every aerial sequence, I found myself with exclamations many times throughout those scenes. There was almost that surreal feeling that I felt while watching The Batman earlier this year - that I was experiencing the movie magic in its purest and intended form.

And then there was Val Kilmer, used in a very personal and heartfelt way (very unlike the shoehorning in of the original Ghostbusters cast in Afterlife). It took its time, let the scene breathe a lot, and I almost teared up.

And then there was the rivalry between Miles Teller and Glen Powell which, of course, harkened back to Cruise and Kilmer's in the original. It did not feel forced, instead I was cheering at the end of it when they held each other in congratulatory, directly mirroring the first movie. 

This is the biggest Tom Cruise movie to date, by a billion. And it's well deserved and a long time coming.