“Top Gun: Maverick” starring Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, is one of the best movies of all time in my opinion. “Top Gun: Maverick” passed the expectations of many people including me. I think this is the best movie released in the last few years due to its movie-watching experience, the characters, and the cast.
“Top Gun: Maverick” is a sequel to the original “Top Gun,” released 31 years later. The original “Top Gun” features Maverick and his best friend, Goose, attending Top Gun, a prestigious US Navy fighter school where the best of the best pilots train and learn. However, in the original movie, Goose is killed in a flying accident before the final mission at the end. The storyline of the original movie focuses on Maverick’s journey through Top Gun Fighter Academy with his rival, Iceman.
“Top Gun: Maverick” features 57-year-old Maverick training a group of fighters, all Top Gun graduates, on a special tactical mission. One of the fighters being trained by Maverick is Goose’s son, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, who doesn’t have a good relationship with Maverick after Maverick tried to prevent him from becoming a pilot at the request of Goose’s wife. The movie deals with their conflict as a subplot with the main plot being to carry out the mission successfully, which is nearly impossible.
I love this movie because of the film elements, score, length, and suspense. The characters have a lot of depth to them in “Top Gun: Maverick” as there are multiple conflicts going on at the same time, leading to plot twists. When watching this movie you can see the characters truly bond with each other as the movie progresses.
One evident scene which showcases the characters’ bonding is the football on the beach scene, which is a call back to the beach volleyball scene in the original movie. This scene showcases the pilots bonding with each other as before they had no camaraderie. Maverick’s supervisor instructs him to create a team within the fighters he was training and the scene showcases him telling his instructor at the beach, “There’s your team.” This highlights the development of their camaraderie throughout the movie. A cool film score is used during this scene, as they play the song “Ain’t Worried” by OneRepublic. This song has been a hit recently and was made for the movie.
Another great element of the film is that it still maintained the nostalgia of the first film, even surpassing it at times. The film includes lots of hidden Easter Eggs leading back to the first movie. For example, the opening scene uses the same music as the opening scene of the first “Top Gun,” as Maverick flies right over the Admiral’s car which is the same as when he flew right around the tower on the aircraft carrier in the original movie. Another Easter Egg is about the hard decks as Maverick has a collective hatred for them. A hard deck is the lowest altitude the pilots can fly at during drills. He gets himself in trouble in the first movie about hardecks and he does the same in the second movie, getting yelled at by his superior officer.
The final reason why “Top Gun: Maverick” ranks so high on my list of movies is the fantastic movie-watching experience. The movie does its absolute best to make scenes as close to reality as possible. One example of this is when Tom Cruise makes all the cast members take a course on flight control and air sickness to help them tolerate G’s of force while in the air and not get airsick during their dogfights. Although the actors aren’t the real pilots driving the plane, they still have to be in the air and take the force.
The experience is even better when watching the movie in theaters with the sound effects and sharp turns affecting viewers, simulating a rollercoaster so to speak. Due to this, “Top Gun: Maverick” was brought back to theaters for two more weeks to play.
To conclude, “Top Gun: Maverick” is one of the best movies released this year in my opinion because of the film elements, nostalgia, and movie-watching experience. Critics also agree as Rotten Tomatoes ranked the movie 96%, incredibly high for the organization. I highly recommend watching the movie while it is still in theaters!
