Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell finds himself training a detachment of TOP GUN graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen.

I waited in anticipation to watch this sequel. Top Gun is without doubt my favourite ever movie ….I could watch it over and over again and recite it word for word.

Unfortunately my 3yr old autistic son dictated that we couldn’t get to the cinema to see Maverick on the big screen so perhaps not being able to do so hindered my overall score but here we go anyway…… I had goosebumps at the opening scenes with the original background music and danger zone hitting the speakers at full blast. The film quickly set the scene that Maverick was still only at ‘captain’ status. I expected that tbh as we all kind of knew anyway that he’d be drawn back to Top Gun to teach in this film.

The effects and overall blockbuster type scenes were nothing short of spectacular but I was hoping to get some sort of back story to some of the main characters.

We all knew that Rooster was the son of Goose but never really got a good description of Maverick & Rooster’s relationship over the years, however turbulent that relationship was. Some better context would have led the storyline a bit better here. Also the character of Penny wasn’t described very well and how her previous with Maverick played out in the past….she kind of just appeared as a bar owner and Maverick seemed to know her from the past.

The film was amazing but personally I would have preferred to have had an extra 15 minutes to watch where the producers have more of a backdrop to the main stars of the film…..it just left me wondering at the end rather than thinking ‘Woah…what a great film’ Val Kilmers scene was essential for the movie I thought but once again left a lot to be desired…yes I know Val is not in a good place with his health but could have been done better.

In summary then, I think it’s a fabulous movie but would have liked to have seen Maverick play more of a mentor type role to Rooster and have Miles play the main role rather than Tom.

Great effects but more character story backdrop would have been nice.