Good Morning Aviators: Top Gun Maverick Review

Top Gun Maverick revitalizes a long lost film legend and brings Tom Cruise back into the limelight. As someone who has never seen the original Top Gun, this was a brand new experience, but don’t let the lack of context scare you away from this one.

Top Gun Maverick is worth watching for fans new and old. It brings many connections from the original, but not so many as to ostracize new audiences. Top Gun Maverick shows the power of practical stunts in a world of CGI, and we are graced by another fantastic Tom Cruise performance.

Although this is primarily an action movie, the underlying struggles our characters face bring this movie to life.

Top Gun Maverick Review

Okay, okay, okay, we are all watching this movie for the action. The big planes zooming across the sky is enough to make a grown man feel like he is 6 years old again. The magnitude of the planes and the way they maneuver is nothing less than graceful. The cinematography makes you feel like you are sitting on the wing beside Captain Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. The speed, the danger, and the Gs are incredible. It is unlike anything I have ever seen, and I’m not sure it’s something that could be recreated by CGI.

The acting in Top Gun Maverick is quite good, but no amount of acting can replicate the real reactions to high Gs. Each actor has a significantly different reaction to the forces of the different high speed maneuvers, and it gives the movie a really cool atmosphere. All of our cadets bring slightly different things to the team, and you can tell the writers have created a diverse group of characters. I will say I remember the characters based on their call signs and not their names, but so will most people.

The plot is slightly lacklustre, it’s very “action movie”, but I thought they leaned into it and made it enjoyable. If you can’t handle the kind of slightly “popcorn movie” plot that comes with these type of action movie, I’d suggest you close this page and go find another movie. The plot makes sense within the movie, and while it doesn’t have many deep moments, it’s entertaining. The elements of suspense mixed with the action glues your eyeballs to the screen.

The training scene realized in front of Doctor Strange 2, check out that review here, is one of my favourites in the entire movie. The cadets up in the air with Maverick is one of the first lengthy plane senes we get, and it’s super cool. It was also a really cool way to introduce each character to the viewers without having roll call or something similar. We learn a lot about our characters in a really short period of time, and it really moved the movie along nicely.

Out of all the movies I have seen recently, this is going at the top of the list. Tom Cruise is awesome, and his supporting cast is wonderful. Miles Teller and Lewis Pullman were my favourite two cadets, but the list of good actors in this movie is wayyyy too long to list out here. Go give the IMDB page a look and see if you recognize any other names. Even actors I hadn’t seen before really grew on me throughout this film, and I’d love to see a third. Although it’s nearly 40 years in the making, Top Gun Maverick is awesome, and it makes me want to watch the original.