Top Gun was THE cool blockbuster of the 1986. Never mind Crocodile Dundee, never mind Highlander or Cobra or 9½ Weeks, never mind Police Academy 3. Top Gun was the one. Sure, it was dramatically pretty thin, and it really wasn't much more than an advert for the US Navy and their massive penises fighter jets, with ranks of impossibly ripped, indeed sculpted, buff young guys hanging around shirtless in the locker rooms or on the beach playing volleyball, each with a cool nickname like Viper, Iceman, Cougar or Maverick. This time around it's almost a joke that one of the guys answers to the callsign Bob because that's his actual name, but back in 1986 no-one flew with a callsign like Cystitis, Average, or Potato, and none of them looked like a plumber or a traffic warden or Ron Jeremy. They looked like the elite of the elite of the elite, because that's what they were.
Top Gun: Maverick starts in exactly the same way as the 1986 film, pretty much shot for shot (possibly even the same footage), complete with a reprise of the Harold Faltermeyer anthem on the soundtrack, and if it weren't for the new names in the credits I'd have wondered if my local Vue hadn't put the wrong film on by mistake. (I'm also fairly sure the BBFC black card at the start just said Top Gun.) Tom Cruise may now be 59 years old, but Pete "Maverick" Mitchell never climbed the promotional ranks because that would have taken him away from flying. Then he gets the summons to return to the Top Gun Academy as an instructor, because there's an underground nuclear facility in an unnamed rogue state that's about to start processing uranium and Maverick's mission, should he choose to accept it, is to train the youngsters, as arrogant and cocky as he was thirty-odd years ago, for a ludicrously dangerous one-shot-only action setpiece to take the bunker out...
It is another Mission Impossible, albeit without Simon Pegg, and it's basically the trench run from the last reel of Star Wars all over again. En route there's time for romance with an old flame (Jennifer Connelly, who I shamefully didn't recognise, rather than Kelly McGillis) and more shirtless guys in the locker room and on the beach playing volleyball, with more cool nicknames like Hangman, Warlock and Coyote, like they're third-tier X-Men or something. (Which would be appropriate because there's also a Phoenix, the first female Top Gun pilot.) The only serious note in this is the presence of the slightly less coolly-named Rooster (Miles Teller), son of Maverick's best friend and co-pilot Goose, who I'd completely forgotten had bought the farm until rewatching the first film the night before this one: not just a question of whether Rooster can forgive Maverick, but whether Maverick can finally forgive himself.
So, just like the first film, it's dramatically pretty thin. But who cares? The aerial training and combat sequences, which are the core of the movie, are adrenalin-pumping thrilling in a way that surpasses the late Tony Scott's work, and are predominantly done with real planes rather than with boring CGI and greenscreen. That's where Top Gun: Maverick scores highest. Not the cardboard emotional stuff, not the callbacks to 1986 (was Jennifer Connelly living in Kelly McGillis' old house?), not the brief return of ailing Admiral Val "Iceman" Kilmer, not even the thoroughly welcome absence of Berlin's ghastly Take My Breath Away dirge cluttering up the soundtrack. It's the grab-your-armrest don't-spill-the-cola scenes of flying upside down, dodging enemy missiles, nosediving to the desert floor, whizzing sideways through bridges, dogfighting through canyons and seeing off the pesky unidentified bad guys.
It's a lot of fun and I enjoyed it enormously, certainly more than I expected. Maybe there's not a huge amount a substance underneath it all, but I don't really think there's supposed to be. I was never that much of a fan of Top Gun anyway: I guess I enjoyed it enough back in 1986 but I've never felt the urge to rewatch it until now. Top Gun: Maverick is dedicated to Tony Scott and certainly new director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) has cut it from the same star-spangled cloth, with a similar feel and look to it (for example, the glorious bright orange sunsets). See it in a cinema because it's not going to look a fraction as good streamed through a Firestick.
****
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