Test pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell returns to Top Gun to train a batch of Navy fighter pilots. Things start to get hectic as Mitchell's past with his compatriots has now taken a life of its own, and he navigates a tumultuous Navy base through and leads them on a very special mission.

Was there any need to sequel the 1986 original, or do Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm and others do a good job of lighting up the skies? Here's what the reviews say.

It's Not The Worst Sequel

“Top Gun: Maverick” satisfies with one foot in the past by hitting all the touchstones of the first film — fast motorcycles, the song “Danger Zone,” military fetishisms, humorless Navy bosses, shirtless bonding sports, “the hard deck,” bar singalongs and buzzing the tower — and yet stands on its own. It’s not weighed down by its past like the last “Ghostbusters” sequel, but rather soars by using the second to answer and echo issues with the first.

[Associated Press]

A lot of consideration and calculation have clearly gone into this long-aborning blockbuster sequel, insofar as Cruise (one of the producers) and his collaborators have taken such clear pains to maintain continuity with the events, if not the style, of the first film. That’s no small thing, more than 30 years after the fiery young Maverick lost Goose, made peace with Iceman and rode off into the annals of fictional U.S. Navy history. And rather than let bygones be bygones, the director Joseph Kosinski and a trio of screenwriters (Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Cruise’s favorite auteur-wingman, Christopher McQuarrie) have resurrected those threads of rivalry, tragedy and triumph and spun them into uncharted realms of male-weepie grandiosity.

[LA Times]

Val Kilmer Gets A Touching Tribute

The film’s most moving element comes during the brief screen time of Kilmer’s Iceman, whose health issues reflect those suffered by the actor in real life, generating resonant pathos. There’s reciprocal warmth, even love, in a scene between Iceman and Maverick that acknowledges the characters’ hard-won bond as well as the rivalry that preceded it, with gentle humor.

[THR]

What It Lacked

One of those younger pilots is Rooster (Miles Teller, who previously appeared in Kosinski’s underappreciated firefighter drama "Only the Brave"), the son of Maverick’s late wingman Goose (Anthony Edwards pops up in photos and flashbacks). Rooster resents Maverick for letting his dad die on his watch and for blocking his entry into the Naval Academy. (It was actually at the behest of Rooster’s late mother, but Maverick is too swell a guy to throw her under the bus.) Granted, if you do the math, Goose’s three- or four-year-old kid from the first movie would now be pushing 40, but again, this is not a movie that rewards thinking.

[The Wrap]

The film, unfortunately, doesn’t extend as much of a loving hand toward the women of Top Gun – neither McGillis nor Meg Ryan, who played Rooster’s mother, make any kind of return. Maverick, instead, gets a new love interest in the form of Jennifer Connelly’s Penny, the admiral’s daughter offhandedly mentioned in the first film, now a bar owner and a single mother. Again, there’ll come a time when we need to talk about why Hollywood only accepts older women who look a certain way. Until then, who can be blamed for getting swept up by a film this damned fun?

[Independent]

The Aerial Sequences Are Great

And then there are the aerial sequences, in which Top Gun: Maverick truly comes to full, stunning, jaw-dropping life. The flying sequences are nothing short of amazing to experience, with the actors clearly seated in actual F/A-18s being flown by experienced pilots. Special camera rigs were built for the planes, while Cruise himself reportedly put the rest of the cast through intensive flight training, but the results capture the grandeur, wonder and terror of blazing through the skies at death-defying speeds in a way that no CG or Volume (the hi-def LED panels used in "The Mandalorian") could ever replicate.

[Den Of Geek]

When the action finally starts, not even the wildest aerial maneuvers can disorient us. Factor in Kosinski’s ultra-crisp direction (made possible by Claudio Miranda’s camera-in-the-cockpit cinematography), and you have a series of character-driven, heart-in-your-throat dogfights more vivid than anything in the first previous film. Kosinski may not be able to match Tony Scott’s formalist bravado, but he makes up for it with speed, clarity, and a moral imperative to push the limits of what seems possible. Kosinski feels the need… the need… to remind multiplex audiences of what’s possible when people give their entire bodies to a movie instead of simply lending them to a brand (not as catchy, I’ll admit). So what if America’s top guns “no longer possess the technological advantage”? It’s the pilot, not the plane.

[IndieWire]

TL;DR

Thirty-six years after the original, Maverick returns for a sequel that will take your breath away.

[Collider]

Watch the official trailer below: