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In “Top Gun: Maverick,” the breathless, gravity and logic-defying “ Top Gun ” sequel that somehow makes all the sense in the world despite landing more than three decades after the late Tony Scott ’s original, an admiral refers to Tom Cruise ’s navy aviator Pete Mitchell—call sign “ Maverick ”—as “the fastest man alive.” It’s a chuckle-inducing scene that recalls one in “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” when Alec Baldwin ’s high-ranking Alan Hunley deems Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, “the living manifestation of destiny.” In neither of these instances are Cruise’s co-stars exclusively referring to his make-believe screen personas. They are also (or rather, primarily) talking about the ongoing legacy of Cruise the actor himself. 

Truth be told, our fearless and ever-handsome action hero earns both appraisals with a generous side of applause, being one of the precious remnants of bona-fide movie superstardoms of yore, a slowly dwindling they-don’t-make-'em-like-they-used-to notion of immortality these days. Indeed, Cruise’s consistent commitment to Hollywood showmanship—along with the insane levels of physical craft he unfailingly puts on the table by insisting to do his own stunts—I would argue, deserves the same level of high-brow respect usually reserved for the fully-method sorts such as Daniel Day-Lewis . Even if you somehow overlook the fact that Cruise is one of our most gifted and versatile dramatic and comedic actors with the likes of “ Born on the Fourth of July ,” “ Magnolia ,” “ Tropic Thunder ,” and “ Collateral ” under his belt, you will never forget why you show up to a Tom Cruise movie, thanks in large part to his aforesaid enduring dedication. How many other household names and faces can claim to guarantee “a singular movie event” these days and deliver each time, without exceptions?

In that regard, you will be right at home with “Top Gun: Maverick,” director Joseph Kosinski ’s witty adrenaline booster that allows its leading producer to be exactly what he is—a star—while upping the emotional and dramatic stakes of its predecessor with a healthy (but not overdone) dose of nostalgia. After a title card that explains what “Top Gun” is—the identical one that introduced us to the world of crème-de-la-crème Navy pilots in 1986—we find Maverick in a role on the fringes of the US Navy, working as an undaunted test pilot against the familiar backdrop of Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.” You won’t be surprised that soon enough, he gets called on a one-last-job type of mission as a teacher to a group of recent Top Gun graduates. Their assignment is just as obscure and politically cuckoo as it was in the first movie. There is an unnamed enemy—let’s called it Russia because it’s probably Russia—some targets that need to be destroyed, a flight plan that sounds nuts, and a scheme that will require all successful Top Gun recruits to fly at dangerously low altitudes. But can it be done?

It’s a long shot, if the details of the operation—explained to the aviator hopefuls in a rather “It can’t be done” style reminiscent of “ Mission: Impossible ”—are any indication. But you will be surprised that more appealing than the prospect of the bonkers mission here is the human drama that co-scribes Ehren Kruger , Eric Warren Singer , and Christopher McQuarrie spin from a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks . For starters, the group of potential recruits include Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw ( Miles Teller , terrific), the son of the dearly departed “Goose,” whose accidental death still haunts Maverick as much as it does the rest of us. And if Rooster’s understandable distaste of him wasn’t enough (despite Maverick’s protective instincts towards him), there are skeptics of Maverick’s credentials— Jon Hamm ’s Cyclone, for instance, can’t understand why Maverick’s foe-turned-friend Iceman ( Val Kilmer , returning with a tearjerker of a part) insists on him as the teacher of the mission. Further complicating the matters is Maverick’s on-and-off romance with Penny Benjamin (a bewitching Jennifer Connelly ), a new character that was prominently name-checked in the original movie, as some will recall. What an entanglement through which one is tasked to defend their nation and celebrate a certain brand of American pride ...

In a different package, all the brouhaha jingoism and proud fist-shaking seen in “Top Gun: Maverick” could have been borderline insufferable. But fortunately Kosinski—whose underseen and underrated “Only The Brave” will hopefully find a second life now—seems to understand exactly what kind of movie he is asked to navigate. In his hands, the tone of “Maverick” strikes a fine balance between good-humored vanity and half-serious self-deprecation, complete with plenty of quotable zingers and emotional moments that catch one off-guard.

In some sense, what this movie takes most seriously are concepts like friendship, loyalty, romance, and okay, bromance. Everything else that surrounds those notions—like patriotic egotism—feels like playful winks and embellishments towards fashioning an old-school action movie. And because this mode is clearly shared by the entirety of the cast—from a memorable Ed Harris that begs for more screen time to the always great Glen Powell as the alluringly overconfident “ Hangman ,” Greg Tarzan Davis as “Coyote,” Jay Ellis as “ Payback ,” Danny Ramirez as “Fanboy,” Monica Barbaro as “ Phoenix ,” and Lewis Pullman as “Bob”—“Top Gun: Maverick” runs fully on its enthralling on-screen harmony at times. For evidence, look no further than the intense, fiery chemistry between Connelly and Cruise throughout—it’s genuinely sexy stuff—and (in a nostalgic nod to the original), a rather sensual beach football sequence, shot with crimson hues and suggestive shadows by Claudio Miranda . 

Still, the action sequences—all the low-altitude flights, airborne dogfights as well as Cruise on a motorcycle donned in his original Top Gun leather jacket—are likewise the breathtaking stars of “Maverick,” often accompanied by Harold Faltermeyer ’s celebratory original score (aided by cues from Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe ). Reportedly, all the flying scenes—a pair of which are pure hell-yes moments for Cruise—were shot in actual U.S. Navy F/A-18s, for which the cast had to be trained for during a mind-boggling process. The authentic work that went into every frame generously shows. As the jets cut through the atmosphere and brush their target soils in close-shave movements—all coherently edited by Eddie Hamilton —the sensation they generate feels miraculous and worthy of the biggest screen one can possibly find. Equally worthy of that big screen is the emotional strokes of “Maverick” that pack an unexpected punch. Sure, you might be prepared for a second sky-dance with “Maverick,” but perhaps not one that might require a tissue or two in its final stretch.

Available in theaters May 27th. 

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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Film credits.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action, and some strong language.

131 minutes

Tom Cruise as Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell

Miles Teller as Lt. Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw

Jennifer Connelly as Penny Benjamin

Jon Hamm as Vice Admiral Cyclone

Glen Powell as Hangman

Lewis Pullman as Bob

Charles Parnell as Warlock

Bashir Salahuddin as Coleman

Monica Barbaro as Phoenix

Jay Ellis as Payback

Danny Ramirez as Fanboy

Greg Tarzan Davis as Coyote

Ed Harris as Rear Admiral

Val Kilmer as Admiral Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky

Manny Jacinto as Fritz

• Joseph Kosinski

Writer (based on characters created by)

• Jack Epps Jr.

Writer (story by)

• Peter Craig
• Justin Marks
• Ehren Kruger
• Eric Warren Singer
• Christopher McQuarrie

Cinematographer

• Claudio Miranda
• Chris Lebenzon
• Eddie Hamilton
• Lorne Balfe
• Harold Faltermeyer
• Hans Zimmer

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Top Gun: Maverick review – irresistible Tom Cruise soars in a blockbuster sequel

Cinema’s favourite ageless fighter pilot returns with all the nail-biting aeronautics and emotional sucker punches that made the original an 80s-defining hit

A nd we’re back. A full 36 years (including some Covid-related runway delays) after Tony Scott’s big-screen recruitment advert for US naval aviators became an epoch-defining cinema hit, Tom Cruise is back doing what he does best – flashing his cute/crazy superstar smile and flexing his bizarrely ageless body in an eye-popping blockbuster that, for all its daft macho contrivances, still manages to take your breath away, dammit.

From the burnished opening shots of planes waltzing off an aircraft carrier to the strains of Kenny Loggins’s Danger Zone , little has changed in the world of Top Gun – least of all Cruise. Maverick may be testing jets out in the Mojave desert, but he’s still got the jacket, the bike(s), the aviator shades and (most importantly) the “need for speed” that made him a hit back in 1986. He also has the machine-tooled rebellious streak that has prevented him rising above the level of captain – showcased in an opening Mach 10 sequence that doesn’t so much tip its hat to Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff as fly straight past it with a super-smug popcorn-eating grin. See ya, serious movie suckers!

“Your kind is headed for extinction,” growls Ed Harris’s forward-looking rear admiral (nicknamed the “Drone Ranger”) before admitting through gritted teeth that Maverick has in fact been called back to the Top Gun programme – not to fly, but to teach the “best of the best” how to blow up a uranium enrichment plant at face-melting velocity, a mission that will require not one but “ two consecutive miracles”. “I’m not a teacher,” Maverick insists, “I’m a fighter pilot.” But, of course, he can be both.

True to form, Maverick promptly throws the rulebook in the bin ( literally – the metaphors are not subtle) and tells his team of fresh-faced hopefuls that the only thing that matters is “your limits; I intend to find them, and test them”. Cue dog-fight training sequences played out to classic jukebox cuts, while thrusting young guns do 200 push-ups on the runway. In the local bar, an underused Jennifer Connelly serves up drinks and love-interest sass (Kelly McGillis was apparently not invited to this party) while Miles Teller ’s Rooster bangs out Great Balls of Fire on the piano, prompting a flashback to Maverick cradling Anthony Edwards’s Goose, who got famously cooked in the first film.

And therein lies what passes for the heart of the piece; because Rooster is Goose’s son, and Maverick (who still blames himself) doesn’t want to be responsible for history repeating itself. “If I send him on this mission,” Cruise emotes, “he might not come back; if I don’t send him, he’ll never forgive me. Either way I could lose him for ever.” Tough call, bro.

Cruise has described making a Top Gun sequel as being like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet – which is exactly the kind of thing that Maverick would say. Yet working with director Joseph Kosinski (with whom Cruise made Oblivion ) and scriptwriters including regular collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, he has done just that. For all its nostalgic, Miller Time sequences of shirtless beach sports and oddly touching character callbacks (a cameo from Val Kilmer ’s Iceman proves unexpectedly affecting), Top Gun: Maverick offers exactly the kind of air-punching spectacle that reminds people why a trip to the cinema beats staying at home and watching Netflix.

The plot trajectory may be predictable to the point of ridicule (like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman , Tom is going up where he belongs) but the emotional beats are as finely choreographed as the stunts. As for the “don’t think, just do” mantra (a cheeky rehash of Star Wars ’s “Use the force, Luke”), it’s as much an instruction to the audience as to the pilots.

Personally, I found myself powerless to resist; overawed by the ‘“real flight” aeronautics and nail-biting sky dances, bludgeoned by the sugar-frosted glow of Cruise’s mercilessly engaging facial muscles, and shamefully brought to tears by moments of hate-yourself-for-going-with-it manipulation. In the immortal words of Abba’s Waterloo, “I was defeated, you won the war”. I give up.

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Review: Will This Stuff Still Fly?

Tom Cruise takes to the air once more in a long-awaited sequel to a much-loved ’80s action blockbuster.

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By A.O. Scott

Every so often in “Top Gun: Maverick,” Pete Mitchell (that’s Maverick) is summoned to a face-to-face with an admiral. Pete, after all these years in the Navy — more than 35, but who’s counting — has stalled at the rank of captain. He’s one of the best fighter pilots ever to take wing, but the U.S. military hierarchy can be a treacherous political business, and Maverick is anything but a politician. In the presence of a superior officer he is apt to salute, smirk and push his career into the middle of the table like a stack of poker chips. He’s all in. Always.

The first such meeting is with Rear Adm. Chester Cain, a weathered chunk of brass played by Ed Harris, who has an impressive in-movie flight record of his own. (Without “The Right Stuff,” there would have been no “Top Gun.”) He seems to be telling Pete that the game is over. Thanks to new technology, flyboys like him are all but obsolete.

Based on this scene, you might think that the movie is setting out to be a meditation on American air power in the age of drone warfare, but that will have to wait for the next sequel. Pete still has a job to do. A teaching job, officially, but we’ll get to that. The conversation with Cain is not so much a red herring as a meta-commentary. Pete, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, is the avatar of Tom Cruise, and the central question posed by this movie has less to do with the necessity of combat pilots than with the relevance of movie stars. With all this cool new technology at hand — you can binge 37 episodes of Silicon Valley grifting without leaving your couch — do we really need guys, or movies, like this?

“Top Gun: Maverick,” directed by Joseph Kosinski ( “Tron: Legacy” ), answers in the affirmative with a confident, aggressive swagger that might look like overcompensation. Not that there is a hint of insecurity in Cruise’s performance — or in Maverick’s. On the brink of 60, he still projects the nimble, cocky, perennially boyish charm that conquered the box office in the 1980s.

Back then — in Tony Scott’s “Top Gun” — Pete was a brash upstart striving to stand out amid the camaraderie and competition of the super-elite Top Gun program. He seduced the instructor Charlie (Kelly McGillis), locked horns with his golden-boy nemesis, Iceman (Val Kilmer), and lost his best friend and radar intercept officer, Goose (Anthony Edwards). Ronald Reagan was president and the Cold War was in its florid final throes, but “Top Gun” wasn’t really a combat picture. It was, at heart, a sports movie decked out in battle gear, about a bunch of guys showboating, trash talking and trying to outdo one another.

Times have changed somewhat. Pete is the instructor now, called to the North Island naval base to train a squad of eager young fliers for an urgent, dangerous mission. The frat-house atmosphere of the ’80s has been toned down, and the pilots are a more diverse, less obnoxious bunch.

One advantage to the long gap between chapters is that the many credited screenwriters are free to fill in or leave blank as much as they want. In the last few decades, Pete has seen plenty of combat — Bosnia and Iraq are both mentioned — and pursued an on-and-off romance with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly). Now he finds her working at a bar near the base and an old spark rekindles. She has a teenage daughter (Lyliana Wray) — Maverick is not the dad — and a world-weary manner that matches Pete’s signature blend of cynicism and sentimentality.

Other reminders of the past include Rooster (Miles Teller), son of Goose, and Iceman himself, who has ascended to the rank of admiral and kept a protective eye on his former rival. Kilmer’s brief appearance has a special poignancy. Apart from the 2021 documentary “Val,” he hasn’t been onscreen much since losing his voice to throat cancer , and seeing him and Cruise in a quiet scene together is as sad and stirring as something from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The first “Top Gun” unfolded against a backdrop of superpower conflict. There was a formidable — if mostly offscreen — real-world adversary (the Soviet Union, in case you forgot) and the hovering possibility of nuclear apocalypse. This time, there’s a real live-ammo skirmish with an unidentified foe, a mysterious entity in possession of super-high-tech aircraft who is building an “unauthorized” weapons facility in a mountainous region of wherever. No names are mentioned, just “the enemy.” The circumspection is a little weird. Who or what are we supposed to be fighting? China? (In this economy?) The Taliban? Netflix? Covid?

It doesn’t matter. We never see the faces of the enemy pilots once the mission is underway. Which only confirms the sense that “Top Gun: Maverick” has nothing to say about geopolitics and everything to do with the defense of old-fashioned movie values in the face of streaming-era nihilism.

Is the defense successful? The action sequences are tense and exuberant, reminders that flight has been one of the great thrills of cinema almost from the beginning . The story is a mixed bag. In spite of the emotional crosscurrents and physical hazards that buffet poor Maverick — his career, his love life and his duty to the memory of his dead friend, to say nothing of G-forces and flak — the dramatic stakes seem curiously low.

The junior pilots enact a kind of children’s theater production of the first movie. The cockfight between Maverick and Iceman is echoed in the rivalrous posturing of Rooster and the arrogant Hangman (an interestingly Kilmeresque Glen Powell). We are treated to a shirtless game of touch football on the beach, which doesn’t quite match the original volleyball game for sweaty camp subtext. There are some memorable supporting performances — notably from Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro and the always solid Jon Hamm, as a by-the-book, stick-in-the-mud admiral — but the world they inhabit is textureless and generic.

At times Kosinski seems to be reaching for an updated version of the sun-kissed, high-style ’80s aesthetic that “Top Gun” so effortlessly and elegantly typified. What he comes up with is something bland and basic, without the brazen, trashy sublimity you find in the work of genuine pop auteurs like Scott, his brother Ridley, James Cameron or Michael Bay.

Though you may hear otherwise, “Top Gun: Maverick” is not a great movie. It is a thin, over-strenuous and sometimes very enjoyable movie. But it is also, and perhaps more significantly, an earnest statement of the thesis that movies can and should be great. I’m old enough to remember when that went without saying. For Pete’s sake, I’m almost as old as Maverick.

Top Gun: Maverick Rated PG-13. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this article misstated the role of the character Goose in the first “Top Gun” film. He was the radar intercept officer for Pete Mitchell, not his wingman. It also misstated which naval base Mitchell is called to in “Top Gun: Maverick”; it is the North Island naval base, not Miramar.

How we handle corrections

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Top Gun: Maverick First Reviews: The Most Thrilling Blockbuster We've Gotten in Years

Critics say the long-awaited sequel is a must-see on the big screen and not only potentially better than the original, but also one of the best tom cruise movies ever..

TAGGED AS: Action , blockbusters , Film , films , movie , movies

Tom Cruise returns to the cockpit in Top Gun: Maverick , the long-awaited follow-up to the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun . And if you’re not already feeling the need for speed — again — then you might want to reconsider, because the first reviews for this legacy sequel are clear of the danger zone. In fact, many are even calling it a better movie than the original, and maybe even one of the best Tom Cruise movies of all time.

Here’s what critics are saying about Top Gun: Maverick :

Will Top Gun fans be happy?

On the whole, this is a thrilling sequel which is bound to delight fans of the first film. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

It’s a follow-up that will thrill every Top Gun fan. – Philip De Semlyen, Time Out

Mainstream audiences will be happily airborne, especially the countless dads who loved Top Gun and will eagerly want to share this fresh shot of adrenaline with their sons. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

This follow-up, directed by Joseph Kosinski, deals in the same unexpected-itch-scratching bliss: it’s crammed with images you didn’t know you were desperate to see until the second you see them. – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

In the opening moments… you don’t know if you’re watching the original 1986 Top Gun or a new one. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

Tony Scott’s admirers may miss that disreputable edge, the unrepentantly vulgar sensibility that made the original Top Gun a dreamy, voluptuous hoot. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

(Photo by Scott Garfield/©Paramount Pictures)

How does it compare to the original?

Top Gun: Maverick improves on the original. It’s deeper, it’s not corny, and it has thrilling effects. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The dogfights, chases, and mid-air sequences are truly remarkable — far clearer and far more intense than anything in the original Top Gun . – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

A superior sequel. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

If Top Gun was a fun film because it invented Tom Cruise, Maverick is a great film because it immortalizes him. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Maverick ideally would be less formulaic – and for the record, it doesn’t quite match the magic of the OG Top Gun . – Brian Truitt, USA Today

Is it a worthy legacy sequel?

Few Hollywood reboots can boast this blend of nostalgia, freshness and adrenaline. You will want to high five someone on the way out. – Philip De Semlyen, Time Out

The film is a true legacy sequel. In the tradition of Star Wars: The Force Awakens , it’s a carefully reconstructed clone of its predecessor, tooled not only to reflect changing tastes and attitudes but the ascendancy of its star Tom Cruise to a level of fame that borders on the mythological. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

The sequel follows the original beat for beat, to a degree that’s almost comical. And yet, as formulaic as it is, there’s no denying that it delivers in terms of both nostalgia and reinvention. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Tom Cruise remains deeply ambivalent with the notion of passing the torch to a new generation onscreen and so Top Gun: Maverick remains focused on Maverick and his story, sometimes to the detriment of the young cast. – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

(Photo by ©Paramount Pictures)

Is this one of the best blockbusters we’ve gotten in recent years?

Top Gun: Maverick is as thrilling as blockbusters get. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Top Gun: Maverick is the most fun I’ve had watching a big dumb Hollywood blockbuster for a while. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

Takes to the skies as no blockbuster has before. – Peter Debruge, Variety

The movie soars – a reminder of how good Hollywood can be at popcorn entertainment when it sets its mind to it (and Cruise is involved). – Philip De Semlyen, Time Out

It is unquestionably the best studio action film to have been released since 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road . – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

How does it rank against other Tom Cruise movies?

We have surely arrived at the Cruisiest film he’s yet made. – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

It’s not a Tom Cruise movie so much as it’s “ Tom Cruise: The Movie .” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

In terms of performance, this is one of Cruise’s best pictures. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

It fully surrenders to the grandiose fun that’s marked the best of Cruise’s recent star vehicles. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

Cruise finds new ways to add depth to his signature character (sorry, Ethan Hunt) without sacrificing any of his essential qualities. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

How is Val Kilmer’s return as Iceman?

Kilmer’s brief cameo, in what has the feel of a swan song, carries far more weight than anything directly related to the story. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The film’s most moving element comes during the brief screen time of Kilmer’s Iceman. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

If there’s one scene that really takes your breath away, it’s his. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

In one fictional moment, he gives us something unmistakably, irreducibly real, partly by puncturing the fantasy of human invincibility that his co-star has never stopped trying to sell. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Are there any other standouts in the cast?

Miles Teller [gives] an oddly alluring performance that really shouldn’t work as well as it does. – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

Teller, with his best turn since Whiplash, factors in as a worthy emotional foil. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

Jennifer Connelly brings a lot to a thankless role. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

Does Top Gun: Maverick deliver as an action movie?

It [has] what is surely one of the most impressive plane-based action scenes ever committed to film. – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

The real draw here is, of course, the action, and Kosinski asserts his gift for large-scale filmmaking across the film’s runtime. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The commitment to filming practically-everything practically feels like the cutting-edge equivalent of Howard Hughes’ history-making Hell’s Angels . – Peter Debruge, Variety

You have a series of character-driven, heart-in-your-throat dogfights more vivid than anything in the first previous film. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Breathtakingly balletic, and grounded in the increasingly rare pleasure of the tangible… it’s a true feat for director Joseph Kosinski to make something this ambitious look this effortless. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

The action scenes [have] a breathtaking beauty and urgency: the play of light and gravity on the actors’ faces, and the way the landscapes spin and drop away balletically through the canopy glass, puts other blockbusters’ green-screened swooping to shame. – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

The best thing this movie does is boost visceral analog action over the usual numbing bombardment of CG fakery. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Are there any major criticisms?

One would have appreciated a slightly more effective female-centric subplot. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

The film, unfortunately, doesn’t extend as much of a loving hand toward the women of Top Gun . – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Women are few and far between, and even the more prominent ones get mostly perfunctory treatment. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

It would’ve been nice to see Meg Ryan return as the widow/mom, but the rules are cruel when it comes to aging female actors. – Peter Debruge, Variety

Do we need to see this on the big screen?

This is definitely a film that benefits from the IMAX experience, and the big-ass soundscape that comes with it. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

This movie needs the big screen, preferably as big as you can find. I saw it in an IMAX theater, and now I have some idea of what it would feel like to take off in a fighter pilot from an aircraft carrier. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The result is the most immersive flight simulator audiences will have ever experienced, right down to the great Dolby roar of engines vibrating through their seats. – Peter Debruge, Variety

It’s the kind of edge-of-your-seat, fist-pumping spectacular that can unite an entire room full of strangers sitting in the dark and leave them with a wistful tear in their eye. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Will it leave us wanting more?

One can imagine future spinoffs involving any of these characters. – Peter Debruge, Variety

[It’s a] launching pad for a potential second or even third sequel with its young cast at the center of new adventures. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

Top Gun: Maverick opens in theaters on May 27, 2022.

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'Top Gun: Maverick' is ridiculous. It's also ridiculously entertaining

Justin Chang

Tom Cruise is back as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures Corporation hide caption

Tom Cruise is back as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick.

In one of the more memorable lines in the original Top Gun , Maverick gets chewed out by a superior who tells him, "Son, your ego's writing checks your body can't cash."

Sometimes I wonder if Tom Cruise took that putdown as a personal challenge. No movie star seems to work harder or push himself further than Cruise these days. He just keeps going and going, whether he's scaling skyscrapers in a new Mission: Impossible adventure or showing a bunch of fresh-faced pilots how it's done in the ridiculous and ridiculously entertaining Top Gun: Maverick .

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'top gun 2' means one more ride into the danger zone.

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Cruise was in his early 20s when he first played Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, the cocky young Navy pilot with the aviator sunglasses, the Kawasaki motorcycle and the need for speed. In the sequel, he's as arrogant and insubordinate as ever: Now a Navy test pilot in his late 50s, Maverick still knows how to tick off his superiors, as we see in an exciting opening sequence where he pushes a new plane beyond its limits. Partly as punishment, he's ordered to return to TOPGUN, the elite pilot-training school, and train its best and brightest for an impossibly dangerous new mission.

One of his trainees is a hotheaded young pilot called Rooster, played by Miles Teller. Rooster is the son of Maverick's beloved wingman, Goose, who tragically died while flying with Maverick in the first Top Gun . Maverick's lingering guilt over Goose's death affects his relationship with Rooster; so does his desire to protect Rooster from harm, which generates some suspense over whether he'll end up choosing the young man for the assignment.

And so the three screenwriters of Top Gun: Maverick — including Cruise's regular Mission: Impossible writer-director, Christopher McQuarrie — have taken the threads of the original and spun them into an intergenerational male weepie, a dad movie of truly epic proportions. They're tapping into nostalgia for the original, while aiming for new levels of emotional grandeur. To that end, the soundtrack features a Lady Gaga song, "Hold My Hand." It's nowhere near as iconic a chart topper as the original movie's "Take My Breath Away," but tugs at your heartstrings nonetheless.

Much of the plot is unabashedly derivative of the first Top Gun . Once again, Maverick runs afoul of growling authority figures, here played by Ed Harris and Jon Hamm . Cruise's former co-star Kelly McGillis is nowhere to be seen, but Maverick does get another perfunctory love interest, a bartender named Penny, nicely played by Jennifer Connelly despite the thanklessness of the role.

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Lady gaga, 'hold my hand'.

What's interesting about Top Gun: Maverick is how it isn't like its predecessor, mostly in terms of style. The first Top Gun , directed on a relatively low budget by the late Tony Scott , combined the aesthetics of a military recruitment video with some of the ripest homoerotic imagery ever seen in a major Hollywood movie. For better or worse, the sequel, directed by Joseph Kosinski of Tron: Legacy and Oblivion , is a much tamer, slicker, classier affair. Maverick no longer struts around in towels and tighty-whities, though he can still fly a plane like nobody's business.

The action sequences are much more thrilling and immersive than in the original. You feel like you're really in the cockpit with these pilots, and that's because you are: The actors underwent intense flight training and flew actual planes during shooting. In that respect, Top Gun: Maverick feels like a throwback to a lost era of practical moviemaking, before computer-generated visual effects took over Hollywood. You start to understand why Cruise, the creative force behind the movie, was so driven to make it: In telling a story where older and younger pilots butt heads, and state-of-the-art F-18s duke it out with rusty old F-14s, he's trying to show us that there's room for the old and the new to coexist. He's also advancing a case for the enduring appeal of the movies and their power to transport us with viscerally gripping action and big, sweeping emotions.

Which brings us to the movie's most powerful scene, in which Val Kilmer briefly reprises his role as Iceman, Maverick's former nemesis-turned-friend. Kilmer is, in some respects, Cruise's opposite: a onetime star whose career never quite found its groove, and who's been beset by health issues in recent years, including the loss of his voice due to throat cancer. His soulful presence here gives this high-flying melodrama the grounding it needs. Cruise may be this movie's immortal star, but it's Kilmer's aching performance that takes your breath away.

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Top Gun: Maverick review: A high-flying sequel gets it right

The need for speed comes with a fresh young cast, but the Cruise control remains.

In Top Gun: Maverick 's opening scene, someone makes the mistake of asking Tom Cruise to take his fighter jet to Mach 9. He pauses, then flashes that megawatt Cheshire grin. Never mind that it's a practice run; there is only one Mach he knows, and it is 10 (or maybe 10.2). That's because he's a maverick, the Maverick — Captain Pete Mitchell of the United States Navy, a rogue's rogue for whom clouds part and Hans Zimmer synths soar.

He's also 36 years older than the cocky young lieutenant he played on screen in the 1986 original , a bare fact that the sequel (in theaters May 27) both elides and celebrates in a movie whose bright stripes and broad strokes feel somehow bombastic and tenderheartedly nostalgic at the same time. Imagine a world where motorcyclists scoff at helmets, all bars burst into jukebox singalongs, and the U.S. military is simply an unblemished agent for good. A few decades ago you didn't have to, because you lived in it; Top Gun: Maverick can because it never left.

Inevitably, a few things have changed: Lady Gaga is on the soundtrack now , and there's a whole new class of lion-cub recruits. But that's still Kenny Loggins' " Danger Zone " chugging over the title credits, and Maverick is still the fastest man alive in an F-14, even if he's never managed to exceed the lowly rank of Captain. "You should be at least a two-star admiral by now, or a Senator," Ed Harris 's Rear Admiral grouses early on, before grudgingly sending him off to the Top Gun base in San Diego. Maverick's constant insubordination and looming obsolescence should have gotten him discharged years ago, he reminds him; instead, he's been saved by an old friend, Iceman ( Val Kilmer ), now an admiral himself.

There's a reason for that intervention: a uranium plant in a heavily guarded secret bunker that needs to be eliminated before it becomes operational for the enemy. (What enemy? Don't ask, don't tell.) And only jets can infiltrate it, if the Academy's ten best recruits can be taught to thread the needle and get out of there alive. Leading the team is Maverick's new job, though the bossman there (a scowling Jon Hamm) is not exactly overjoyed to welcome him — and a promising young pilot called Rooster ( Miles Teller , in a kicky little mustache) even less enthused. That's because Rooster's parents were Goose and Carole (Anthony Edwards and Meg Ryan, who appear only in misty flashbacks), and all he knows is that Pete had something to do with him getting pulled from the fast-track flight program years ago.

Otherwise, Rooster's main rival amongst the new hopefuls is Hangman ( Hidden Figures ' great Glen Powell), a fellow pilot whose smirky antagonism recalls the last movie's Iceman rivalry in everything except the frosted tips (Powell is a more natural kind of blonde, but the square-jawed swagger and resting smug face play the same). Director Joseph Kosinski ( TRON: Legacy ) revels in the sonic-boom rush of their many flight scenes, sending his jets swooping and spinning in impossible, equilibrium-rattling arcs. On the ground, too, his camera caresses every object in its view, almost as if he's making a rippling ad for America itself: The unfurling snap of a boat sail; the gleaming Formica in a desert rest-stop diner; golden bodies playing touch football in the California surf while a magic-hour sun goes down.

That nationalistic glow extends to Maverick's courting of a former paramour, Jennifer Connelly , but there's a bittersweet sentimentality in their reconnection, the kind of unhurried adult romance that doesn't make it on screen much anymore. (A brief interlude with Kilmer, who has largely lost his voice to cancer , is also surprisingly moving.) Kosinksi, of course, has to make his Maverick work with or without the context of the original, and the script, by Peter Craig ( The Batman ) and Justin Marks ( The Jungle Book ) toggles deftly between winking callbacks and standard big-beat action stuff meant to stand on its own. Teller and Powell are breezily appealing, actors at the apex of their youth and beauty, though the movie still belongs in almost every scene to Cruise. At this point in his career, he's not really playing characters so much as variations on a theme — the theme being, perhaps, The Last Movie Star. And in the air up there, he stands alone. Grade: B+

Related content:

• Tom Cruise revisits Goose's Top Gun death in Lady Gaga's 'Hold My Hand' music video
• The sky's the limit for Top Gun: Maverick hotshot Glen Powell
• Val Kilmer says he feels 'a lot better than I sound' after tracheotomy due to throat cancer

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Soars Above the Original With One of the Best Blockbusters in Years | Review

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

In many ways, Maverick’s ( Tom Cruise ) story in 1986’s Top Gun feels like a story told with the hindsight of an older man reflecting on the foolishness of his youth. The original Top Gun is two hours of machismo, sweaty showoffs, and toxic personalities, centered around a careless character who eventually learns the dangers of his cockiness and shenanigans. Top Gun is the kind of story that one could imagine an older character sharing with the younger generation, a cautionary tale about how life isn’t all hot dogging in planes, oiled-up volleyball, and Kenny Loggins songs. It’s not hard to imagine an older Maverick telling people that he used to be a real piece of shit.

Maverick made choices back in his 20s, choices that still have reverberations to this day, that haunt him, that inform his decisions almost forty years later. With Top Gun , we saw Maverick as a selfish character who put himself before everyone else, and while he still lives up to his name, now, he’s more interested in what’s best for the group as opposed to what’s best for him. In Top Gun: Maverick , the staggeringly great sequel from director Joseph Kosinski ( Oblivion , TRON: Legacy ), Maverick has been living in the shadow of the choices that younger Maverick made, and now, 36 years later, this character is back, ready to confront the danger zone of a past that has haunted him since the first film.

The changes in Maverick are apparent from the very first action sequence. The former hotshot pilot is trying to prove that he can take a plane to Mach 10 in order to prove that a plane with a living, breathing person behind it is more effective than an unmanned drone. The Maverick we last saw in Top Gun would’ve attempted this feat simply to boost his own ego, an attempt to prove that he’s the greatest pilot in the world. Yet in this sequence, Kosinski shows us that this isn’t his focus anymore, but rather, if he succeeds, it’ll be better for his team, who will likely lose their jobs if he fails. This selflessness is a completely different Maverick than the character we’ve seen before.

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But that doesn’t mean Maverick doesn’t still have the same daring and desire to push his boundaries. It’s this type of attitude that has left him at his current captain’s rank. As Vice Admiral “Cyclone” ( Jon Hamm ) tells Maverick, he can’t get promoted, he won’t retire, and he refuses to die. At the end of Top Gun , Maverick wanted to be a teacher, but after two months in the classroom thirty years ago, Maverick also couldn’t maintain that position. But Admiral Cyclone gives Maverick a choice: either he trains a group of Top Gun graduates for a highly-specialized mission, or Maverick will never fly again for the Navy. Maverick agrees, and heads back to Top Gun, where he trains an elite team of pilots, including the cocky Hangman ( Glen Powell ) and Rooster ( Miles Teller ), the son of Maverick’s late best friend, Goose.

As Maverick trains Hangman, Rooster, and the rest of these Top Gun graduates, Top Gun: Maverick finds a way to pay homage to the iconic moments of Top Gun , but in a way that doesn’t feel frivolous and serves a purpose in this new, more urgent story. For example, the sun-drenched beachside game this time around is used as a team-building tool, whereas this new gang getting together and singing at a bar leads to one of the film’s surprisingly emotional moments—of which there are several. Maverick finds a way to pay tribute to the past, but in a way that builds upon the film we know and adds weight to these moments.

Similarly, with Cruise returning as Maverick, Top Gun: Maverick feels like a character and an actor reliving their glory days in the most joyous way possible. Through Maverick, Cruise gets to explore one of his most infamous characters, but in a way that now has a significant amount of emotional heft. As Maverick, we get a reminder of just how many things Cruise does extremely well as an actor, and in some of these aspects, we’re seeing parts of Cruise in this role that we haven’t seen in years. Of course, Top Gun: Maverick allows Cruise to show that he remains one of the greatest living action stars, who—like Maverick—is willing to push his limitations to their breaking point. But Maverick also shows Cruise’s gifts at playing a compelling leading man, an effective romantic lead—alongside an equally wonderful Jennifer Connelly —a comedian with excellent timing, and an actor who can really make a film’s emotional moments sing.

Maverick , with its screenplay by Ehren Kruger , Eric Warren Singer , and Christopher McQuarrie , knows how to tap into that nostalgia for the original and find the emotional moments that would hit Maverick’s character hard, and Cruise plays these scenes with grace and power. There’s a clear love that Cruise, Kosinski, and this team of writers have for these characters and this story, and thanks in large part to Cruise’s performance, this love really shines through, especially in scenes where Maverick has to explore his past and the decisions that led him to where he is today.

The growth that this film shows over the original is arguably at its clearest with the new squad of pilots. Of course, there's still the arrogant pilot who thinks he's the best in Powell's Hangman, but especially with Teller's Rooster, we're seeing a character like Maverick, who is haunted by the legacy of this father and with something to prove, but without the smugness and pride. Through Teller's performance, we can see the weight of Maverick's past in human form, the pain he's caused, and the wrongs he wishes he could right, and some of Maverick 's best scenes involve Rooster and Maverick having to reckon with this difficult past. It's also exciting to see a new crew with more diversity and more character than we're genuinely excited to spend time with.

Kosinski does all this in what also is likely to be the best action film of 2022, a tense and continuously exciting epic that knows exactly how to escalate the tension of every impressive action sequence. Top Gun: Maverick might contain some of the best plane scenes in the history of film, and soars over the stunts of the original. This is the type of white-knuckle, awe-inducing action film that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible, with an audience stuck at the edge of their seats. Yet again, Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t include action for action's sake, each remarkable action sequence serves a narrative purpose, and expands what we know about these characters when they are in their element in the skies.

When talking about Top Gun: Maverick , it’s hard not to sound hyperbolic, but this is the rare case where it absolutely deserves all the massive praise. Top Gun: Maverick improves upon the original in every conceivable way (well, the soundtrack doesn’t have Berlin, so that’s one strike against it), and does so in a way that might make this one of the greatest sequels ever made. It’s also hard not to say this might have some of the most exciting action scenes to ever hit the skies, and gives Cruise one of his best performances by returning to the role that made him a star. Top Gun: Maverick is a marvel of a film, one that will truly take your breath away.

Top Gun: Maverick opens in theaters on May 27.

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“Top Gun: Maverick,” Reviewed: Tom Cruise Takes Empty Thrills to New Heights

By Richard Brody

When Ronald Reagan was elected President, in 1980, it seemed only slightly more absurd than if Ronald McDonald had won. Both were entertainers, but the burger clown knew it, whereas Reagan believed the nostalgic and noxious verities of the movies that he had appeared in—and as a politician he attempted to force modern American life to conform to them. Thus “Top Gun,” which I saw when it came out, in 1986, felt like the cultural nadir of a time that was itself something of a nadir. As a film of cheaply rousing drama and jingoistic nonsense, “Top Gun” played like feedback—a shrill distillation of the very world view that it reproduced. Little did we know that there was another, less accomplished yet more bilious entertainer waiting in the wings to wreak even more grievous damage, more than three decades later, on the polity and the national psyche.

No less than the original “Top Gun,” its new sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” directed by Joseph Kosinski, is an emblem of its benighted political times. That’s why, in comparison with the sequel, the original comes off as a work of warmhearted humanism. Yet, paradoxically, and disturbingly, “Maverick” is also a more satisfying drama, a more accomplished action film—I enjoyed it more, yet its dosed-out, juiced-up pleasures reveal something terrifying about the implications and the effects of its narrative efficiency.

“Maverick” is less a sequel to “Top Gun” than a renovation of it. The framework of the story is borrowed from the original, nearly scene for scene; drastic changes, while updating it for the present time, leave it recognizable still. In the new film, Tom Cruise returns as Lieutenant Pete Mitchell, whose call sign is Maverick. Now he’s a test pilot at an isolated post in the Mojave Desert, where the project he’s working on—the development of a new airplane—is about to be cancelled in favor of drones, on the pretext of a performance standard that can’t be met. So Maverick, defying an admiral’s order, takes the plane airborne and, against all odds and at grave personal danger, pushes it past Mach 10 (which, for the record, is more than seven thousand miles per hour), thus temporarily saving the project but also risking court martial. Instead, Maverick is sent back to Fighter Weapons School, a.k.a., Top Gun—of which he is, of course, a graduate—in San Diego, summoned by the academy’s commanding officer, Admiral Tom (Iceman) Kazansky, his classmate and respected rival in the first film (again played by Val Kilmer). Maverick’s assignment is to train a dozen young ace pilots for a top-secret and crucial mission, to fly into a mountainous region in an unnamed “rogue” state and destroy a subterranean uranium-enrichment plant.

Yet soon another admiral, Beau (Cyclone) Simpson, played by Jon Hamm, sidelines Maverick and changes the mission’s parameters. In response, Maverick steals another plane and undertakes another unauthorized and dangerous flight, thereby justifying his own set of parameters to Cyclone—who orders him back to lead the younger flyers. Yet Maverick has history with one of those flyers, Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign Rooster, whose late father, Nick (Goose) Bradshaw, played by Anthony Edwards, was Maverick’s wingman in the original “Top Gun” and died saving Maverick’s life. There’s more to that history (spoiler), but the dramatic point is that Maverick has to overcome both the distrust and the enmity of one of the best pilots he’s training—for the sake of the mission, the unit’s esprit de corps, Rooster’s peace of mind, and his own sense of responsibility for a fatherless young man for whom he assumed paternal responsibilities.

There’s also a romance, perhaps the most perfunctory one this side of a children’s movie. Like the one in the original “Top Gun,” it is centered on a bar. This time, Maverick re-meets cute a former lover named Penny (Jennifer Connelly), the owner of the bar where the pilots all hang out. (In the original “Top Gun,” there’s mention of a woman named Penny as one of Maverick’s romantic partners, but the hint goes undeveloped.) What it takes for them to get back together is a kind of barroom hazing that costs Maverick money and dignity, plus a jaunt on her sailboat where she literally teaches him the ropes. (As to what happened between him and Charlie, his instructor and lover in the first film, played by Kelly McGillis, the new film says not a word.) Their relationship is the hollow core around which the movie is modelled, and its emptiness comes off not as accidental or oblivious but as the self-conscious dramatic strategy of the director and the film’s group of screenwriters.

The first ten minutes of “Top Gun”—showing the midair freakout of a pilot called Cougar (John Stockwell)—contain more real emotion than the entire running time of the sequel, and therein lie the key differences between the two films. The powerful feelings, troubled circumstances, and unsettling ambiguities in the original posed dramatic challenges that its director, Tony Scott, and its screenwriters never met. Their film thrusted a handful of significant complexities onto the screen but never explored or resolved them. It wasn’t only Cougar who fell apart in “Top Gun.” Maverick himself, racked with guilt over Goose’s death, first attempted to quit the Navy and then, returning to combat duty, froze up in midair. Of course, Maverick quickly got over it (thanks to Goose’s dog tags), and his suddenly resurgent heroic skills saved the day, brought the movie to a quick triumph, and aroused three decades of impatience for a sequel—but his vulnerability and fallibility at least made a daunting appearance.

By contrast, “Maverick” allows for no such doubts or hesitations. There’s certainly danger in the film, including a pilot who passes out midair and needs to be rescued. Maverick himself ends up in some perilous straits. But none of these situations suggests any weakness or failure of will, any questioning of the mission or of the pilots’ own abilities. The challenges are visceral rather than psychological, technical rather than dramatic, and the script offers them not resolutions but merely solutions—ones that are as impersonal as putting a key in a lock and as gratifying as hearing it click open. “Maverick” feels less written and directed than engineered. It is a work that achieves a certain sort of perfection, a perfect substancelessness—which is a deft way of making its forceful, and wildly political, implicit subject matter pass unnoticed.

Again, comparison with the original is telling. Whatever else the original “Top Gun” is, it’s a movie of procedure. The astounding upside-down maneuver with which Maverick flaunts his daring and prowess early on isn’t a violation of rules, just a departure from textbook methods. On another flight, he does break the rules, in relatively minor ways—he goes briefly below the “hard deck” (the lower limit) to win a competition and then playfully buzzes officers in a tower—and gets seriously called on the carpet for it. By contrast, in the sequel Maverick openly defies the orders of his superior officers, and not merely for a quick maneuver or a playful twit—he steals two planes, and destroys one of them. (For that matter, the destruction is kept offscreen and is merely played for laughs.) The essence of “Maverick” is that a naval officer breaks the law but gets away with it, because he and he alone can save the country from imminent danger.

The lawbreaker-as-hero model rings differently in an age of Trumpian politics and practices, of open insurrection and a near-coup. “Maverick” is evidence, as strong as any in the political arena, that the Overton window of authoritarianism has shifted. This is apparent in the movie’s cavalier attitude toward the rule of law, even in the seemingly sacrosanct domain of military discipline. In the original “Top Gun,” Maverick and the other pilots are told, by the instructor Viper (Tom Skerritt), “Now, we don’t make policy here, gentlemen. Elected officials, civilians do that. We are the instruments of that policy.” (Yes, “gentlemen”—all the fliers in the original are men.) In “Maverick,” there is no parallel line of dialogue, and the military is hermetically sealed off from any reference to politics—perhaps because such sentiments would likely now, in many parts of the country, be booed.

In “Top Gun,” Maverick is a warrior who needs to master his emotions in order to serve his country and to protect his colleagues. In the new film, Maverick, nearing sixty, succeeds solely by giving in to his emotions, by expressly not controlling them—and this, above all, is the doctrine that he imparts to young pilots: “Don’t think, just do.” That mantra, which his best students repeat back to him and follow, is a strange perversion of a key phrase that the young Maverick, explaining himself in class, blurts out in “Top Gun”: “You don’t have time to think up there; if you think, you’re dead.” There’s a world of difference between the young Maverick’s nearly apologetic instrumentalizing of instinct and the elder Maverick’s exaltation of unthinking action. This key line—which, following the quotability of the original film, seems devised to become a catchphrase—isn’t limited to flying and fighting but is delivered as a dictum that could as easily be echoed by anyone with anything to do anywhere.

Thinking means reflecting on consequences and contexts, going past immediate desires and appearances to consider causes and implications. Not thinking is easy for the characters in “Maverick,” because they have no individual attributes at all. The pilots and the officers are played by a diverse group of actors, but the screenwriters give them identities outside of their military actions and no backstories beside the ones that issue from the original “Top Gun.” In the entire film, not a single event or idea or experience is discussed that doesn’t specifically relate to the plot. As a result, the stars and the supporting cast alike have little to do and are reduced to flattened emblems of themselves. Yet the reduction of the characters to cipher-like mechanical functions is part of the charm of “Maverick,” thrusting into the foreground the many extended sequences of high-risk flight, and rendering them more dramatically characterized than anything that takes place on the ground. Also, these airborne scenes far outshine the ones in “Top Gun,” because they are filmed largely from the point of view of the pilots, looking out through the front of the cockpit into the onrush of other planes and in the face of looming and menacing obstacles. They are some of the most impressive and exciting—and strikingly simple—action sequences that I’ve seen in a while.

Apparently, the flight scenes in “Maverick” were realized in actual planes in flight, and the cameras in the cockpits were wielded by the actors themselves. Cruise, who famously enjoys doing his own stunts, supposedly trained his castmates in the requisite skills of aerial cinematography. I wouldn’t have guessed any of this, though, if I hadn’t read the publicity materials in which Cruise and others say so. The scenes of pilots in flight are cut into rapid fragments that reduce aerial views to mere moments of excitement. They are interspersed with aggrandizing grunt-and-sweat closeups of the actors, especially Cruise. This amounts to a kind of malpractice in the editing room, transforming the actors’ brave and devoted exertions into a seeming cheat, an ersatz experience that might as well have been created with C.G.I.

What’s most impressive about “Top Gun: Maverick” is its speed—not the speed of the planes in flight but the speed with which the movie dashes in a straight line from its opening act to its conclusion. The flights at the center of the film are vertiginously twisty, but the drama is a bullet train on a rigid track. Both midair and on the ground, Kosinski is an approximator. He doesn’t let his eye get distracted by the piquant detail, and he doesn’t turn his head to overhear a stray confidence or an incidental remark. He’s narrowly focussed on the relentless course of the action, and incurious about its byways, its implications, its material or emotional realities. He keeps the drama as abstract as the military software and as inhuman as the military hardware that are the movie’s true protagonists. I repeat: I enjoyed it, and you might, too—if you don’t think, just watch.

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‘top gun: maverick’ ties as the all-time best reviewed tom cruise film.

‘Top Gun 2’ ties with ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’ to rank as the highest-scoring Cruise movie on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Hollywood summer tentpoles aren’t necessarily known for being critical darlings. There are always exceptions, of course. One of those is Top Gun: Maverick , which is finally hitting theaters today after being grounded for two years because of the pandemic.

From Paramount and Skydance, the pic ranks as the best-reviewed movie of Tom Cruise ‘s prolific career, alongside the most recent installment in the Mission: Impossible series.

The movie presently sports a stellar 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the same score as Mission: Impossible — Fallout (2018) . It’s possible the score for Top Gun 2 could move a point or two in either direction as final reviews are tallied.

The first Top Gun (1986) may have been a huge commercial success, but it didn’t garner the same respect of reviewers. Top Gun’ s score is 58 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Cruise’s lowest score on Rotten Tomatoes is 1988’s Cocktail (7 percent).

From Paramount and Skydance, Top Gun: Maverick   earned $19.3 million in previews this week , the highest preview number in Paramount’s history and the best preview for a Memorial Day release.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski , the long-awaited sequel to the iconic film returns Cruise as the ultra-gifted and confident Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.

The film co-stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell and Ed Harris, while Val Kilmer also makes a brief appearance as “Iceman,” Maverick’s onetime nemesis turned pal. The film also features Lady Gaga’s ballad “Hold My Hand,” while the producing team includes Jerry Bruckheimer, who guided the original film.

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'Top Gun: Maverick' Review: Smash Hit Tom Cruise Sequel Streaming in December

You'll feel the need for speed in this box office smash sequel to the '80s classic, streaming on Paramount Plus in time for the holidays.

Tom Cruise takes to the skies in Top Gun: Maverick with Miles Teller and Val Kilmer.

Welcome back to the danger zone. You might not think 2022 needed a sequel to the most '80s movie ever, but Top Gun: Maverick is way more wildly entertaining than it has any right to be. Top Gun 2 reboots the original film's heart-pounding aerial action, infectiously cheesy character drama and don't-think-too-hard-about-it military fetishism in a winning spectacle of cinematic escapism.

It's been more than 35 years since the release of the original Top Gun, in which Tom Cruise employed his widest grin as a US Navy aviator with a point to prove and a childlike delight in playing with high-speed toys (which just happen to be built for killing people, but whatever). Having smashed over a billion dollars in theaters, it's available now in digital stores, on 4K Blu-ray and on DVD (so that's your dad's Christmas present sorted). Top Gun: Maverick will also stream on Paramount Plus from Dec. 22.

Cruise reportedly resisted a sequel for decades, but it turns out if you wait long enough, a story presents itself. He returns to the cockpit as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, still feeling the need for speed no matter what the top brass says. And now, enough time has passed since his co-pilot Goose's death in the original film for Goose's son to be a fully grown man.

Played by Miles Teller , the son is a chip off the old chock, flying with the Navy under the callsign Rooster. When Maverick is called in to train the next generation of cocky kids for a Dambusters-meets-Death-Star suicide mission, the pair are locked onto an intercept course. "And we're off," one character wryly observes of Maverick's anti-authoritarian antics, but he could be talking about the full-tilt re-creation of the original film's glossy thrills. 

Who plays Rooster in Top Gun 2? Miles Teller is the next generation of cocky cockpit jockey.

From the moment you hear the instantly recognizable tolling of the synth bell in Harold Faltermeyer's stirring Top Gun Anthem, it's like the past 30 years never happened. The opening credits describe Maverick, like the original, as a Don Simpson / Jerry Bruckheimer production, even though Simpson died in 1996. The opening text caption explaining the concept of the US Navy's Fighter Weapons School uses the same wording as the first film. And throughout, director Joseph Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda faithfully re-create the late Tony Scott's cinematic style, from a backlit bustling flight deck to ramrod-straight silhouettes arrayed in a hangar. This new version even begins by dropping you into the controlled chaos of an aircraft carrier flight deck with a shot-for-shot re-creation of the first film's iconic intro (probably).

This flight deck sequence has zero connection to what comes after, but it's still a pretty great introduction, instantly immersing you in the familiar feel of a film you may have seen many times or may not have seen for years. More importantly, it feels real , the film setting out its stall from the very beginning: It's about real stuff, like fighter planes and sailboats and proper old-fashioned stunts, not fake stuff like drones and phones and computer-generated spectacle. The marketing makes a big deal out of how the actors really went up in planes, and while there's doubtless a ton of invisible CGI -- as in every film, whether you notice it or not -- almost every shot at least feels like it was done for real. Unlike recent blockbusters (ahem, Marvel movies) which distance you from the action with clearly impossible camera angles and over-the-top CG effects, Top Gun: Maverick uses the visual language of the original, the camera jammed claustrophobically into a cockpit or shaking as it struggles to keep up with a jet screaming past.

Making this explicit connection to such a beloved movie is a risk, of course. The first film was crammed with iconic moments and quotes, and the sequel does little more than rearrange the planes on the flight deck. Still, it's pretty restrained with the catchphrases and callbacks. Yes, Maverick's leather jacket and motorbike get their own theme tune. But the fighter jets and aircraft carriers furnished by the United States Navy aren't the only formidable weapons deployed by the sequel: The toppest gun in the Top Gun arsenal is Cruise's still-explosive charisma.

While the flick again pushes credulity with its deification of Maverick and his godlike flying abilities, Cruise's secret weapon is always his willingness to look silly. So the over-the-top action is balanced with appealing humor and even a little pathos in Cruise's relationship with the younger flyers and his rekindled romance with a bar owner. She's played by Jennifer Connelly , another star who rose in the 1980s (check out who's singing on the jukebox when she first turns up). With Connelly as his old flame and Teller as his surrogate son, Cruise's aging Maverick provides just enough heart to keep things moving as he grapples with the prospect of keeping his feet on the ground permanently. A bittersweet scene reuniting Cruise with the original film's co-star, an ailing Val Kilmer, is also a touching and surprisingly funny moment.

Take to the skies in Top Gun: Maverick.

There's no disguising that a lot of the story is a rerun of the original. For example, Cruise takes the Kelly McGillis role, just for fun. But somehow, despite the fact it's all geared toward a life-or-death mission, the stakes don't feel as immediate as they did the first time around. The original film was fueled by the sense Maverick was genuinely dangerous to the people around him, but this new model doesn't capture the same headlong rush into the danger zone. Partly because the younger models look more like, well, models, rather than warriors. But the main problem is that the mission is so improbably specific to the needs of the plot. The G-force of narrative silliness will start to crush your brain, especially when a late-stage twist fires the afterburners and jets into absurdity that might tempt you to eject.

There are certainly reasons not to like a film like this, whether it's Cruise's personal life or the film's unquestioning attitude to war. Matthew Modine and Bryan Adams were among the '80s stars who declined to be involved in the original because of its jingoistic tone, which was a post-Vietnam reassertion of American military (and masculine) might. Even Cruise dodged a sequel because he didn't want to glorify war. Oddly, Top Gun: Maverick is so bloodless and untroubled by ambiguity it barely feels like a war film. It's just boys with toys.

There's a vague subplot about Jon Hamm's pencil neck in the tower caring that the pilots complete the mission and not so much about them coming back alive, but that only makes the flick's explicit disdain for unmanned combat drones somewhat confusing. In fact, a much truer Top Gun sequel was actually made a few years ago: Good Kill, in which Ethan Hawke plays a Cruise-esque fighter pilot exiled to drone duty, losing his mind in a metal box in the Las Vegas desert as he presses a button and kills civilians thousands of miles away .

Top Gun: Maverick, meanwhile, doesn't even tell us who Tom's fighting against. There's an unnamed faceless adversary, black-helmeted bogeys and boogeymen, stripped of sovereignty or even humanity. The eternal enemy, somewhere out there, doing vaguely defined bad-sounding things that need to be blown up by missiles and helicopters and aircraft carriers. Your tax dollars at work.

But who cares about that? This isn't Saving Private Ryan, this is Top Gun. Ask not for whom the synth bell tolls, because the synth bell tolls for anyone who loves a great popcorn action movie that's as enjoyable as it is ridiculous. Top Gun: Maverick is a blast. The film keeps insisting this is Maverick's last post, but this polished action movie powerhouse is a fun way to fly into the sunset. 

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ review: The danger zone has never felt so dangerous (and worth watching)

Movie review.

Let me be clear: I don’t like 1986’s “Top Gun.” I think it’s macho-military propaganda with a schmaltzy script and a semi-good beach volleyball scene. 

So when I tell you the sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” is worth seeing in a theater, you know I mean it. Yes, it’s still a propagandistic fantasy — a dogfight simulator preloaded with an unnamed enemy somehow possessing better technology than the U.S. military — made from a script melting with cheesy one-liners.

But the beach scene (football, this time) is pretty good. And the flying scenes? I’ve never seen anything like them. While F-14s and MiGs in the first one floated in empty space in vague proximity to each other, the jet fighters here feel dangerously close to canyons, trees, bridges and each other, and you can follow each move like a deadly dance.

Flight feels fragile here. Tom Cruise, the indestructible stuntman movie star, feels fragile as he races down canyons huffing like he’s running every mile himself, eyes bugging as he feels the G-force, and we feel it, too. From the beginning of the movie, every flight feels like it could really end in flames and death. In an era of Disney franchise pictures where the stakes rarely feel real and any deaths are a business calculation, this movie flies in guns blazing like a relic aircraft from a bygone age.

In fact, if there’s one issue with “Top Gun: Maverick,” it’s Maverick himself. I’ll explain.

First, the basics: Tom Cruise’s Pete Mitchell, aka “Maverick,” is a weather-beaten test pilot with a stalled career. Two months after the events of the first movie, he was fired from Top Gun (the slang for the Navy’s school for its best pilots), everyone in the Navy hates him now because he doesn’t obey orders, and he’s never married or had kids — just a broken romance with a bar owner played by Jennifer Connelly. 

(It’s as if Kelly McGillis, who played his astrophysicist love interest in the first movie, never existed; McGillis says producers never approached her to reprise the part. A whole other article could be written about how both of these movies are wholly uninterested in women but almost homoerotically fixated on sweaty men, their egos and their airplanes.)

Maverick is even estranged from his surrogate son, Bradley Bradshaw, aka Rooster, played by Miles Teller, whose main feat is looking a lot like his father, Maverick’s old wingman whose death Maverick blames on himself. Through a favor from his only friend left in the Navy, “Iceman” (Val Kilmer, in a rare-these-days appearance due to throat cancer), Maverick gets a final job training the Navy’s best pilots in a mission to destroy some unnamed rogue nation’s uranium enrichment plant.

Minor spoiler that will make you say “of course”: Maverick isn’t just going to teach — he’s going to fly that mission with them.

And therein lies perhaps the only issue with the movie: Tom Cruise flies so close to the sun he blots out anything that might illuminate a hypothetically talented cast of characters. And that’s OK — it’s a Tom Cruise movie, and Tom Cruise isn’t really an ensemble actor.

But it means none of the other characters has much or any character development, so when the plot requires them to glisten or rise to the moment or even save the day, there’s no wind under their wings.

It makes for a soaring movie if not a particularly self-aware one. But is that what you were expecting from a sequel to “Top Gun”?

With Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. 137 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some sequences of intense action and some strong language. Opens May 27 at multiple theaters.

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The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

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Common sense media reviewers.

'90s Western offers a few laughs and so-so adventure.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Most bad behavior is punished. The movie makes fun

The leading female character is portrayed as indep

Mostly light-hearted jeopardy and action including

A few passionate kisses culminating in a scene pla

Infrequent, mild profanity, including "piss,&

Occasional background drinking in bar. Suggested d

Parents need to know that this movie's sole purpose is to be entertaining. It's filled with old-time Western action, but it's played for fun here. There are lots of fistfights, shootings, steely-eyed bad guys, coiled hissing snakes, and even a literal "cliffhanger" (one character hangs over a…

Positive Messages

Most bad behavior is punished. The movie makes fun of the usual caricatures and heavy-handed treatment of Native Americans in other Westerns. Cleverness and smarts are shown to defeat brute strength, greed, and destructive behavior. Some con artists are treated as jovial and benign, conning only those who are looking for an edge and not always honest themselves.

Positive Role Models

The leading female character is portrayed as independent, capable, and smart, though often dishonest. The heroes are con artists, bluffers, and rogues, though good men, honest, and loyal at heart.

Violence & Scariness

Mostly light-hearted jeopardy and action including extended sequence on runaway stagecoach; barroom brawls; man prepped for hanging with snakes hissing at his feet; explosion during a bank robbery; fight on the edge of a cliff; casino shoot-out. Some deaths occur during gunplay, but there's no blood and none of the scenes focus on bodies or injuries.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A few passionate kisses culminating in a scene played for humor in which there's suggested off-camera sexual activity; we see a bare male chest along with bare female shoulders. Some sexual innuendo, including one reference to penis size that should go over the heads of most kids.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent, mild profanity, including "piss," "s--t," "bastards," "whorehouse," "asshole,""son of a bitch,""damn," "jackass," "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Occasional background drinking in bar. Suggested drunkenness in one scene. Some cigar smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this movie's sole purpose is to be entertaining. It's filled with old-time Western action, but it's played for fun here. There are lots of fistfights, shootings, steely-eyed bad guys, coiled hissing snakes, and even a literal "cliffhanger" (one character hangs over a steep gorge for what seems like forever). Occasionally someone dies, but the object here is to keep real violence to a minimum and overstate the battles for humorous effect. There are sexual innuendos, some passionate kissing, a bare chest (male) and a bare shoulder (female), and some cigar smoking. The Native Americans wear war paint, howl, and shake their fists at the sky, but it's delivered to parody the stereotypes that show up in other Westerns. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (5)

Based on 5 parent reviews

This movie is absolutely brilliant, all families will love and enjoy! Innuendos are little to none.

Fun, but not harmless., what's the story.

Bret Maverick, a very popular television character from the 1950s and 1960s, is brought to life again by Mel Gibson in this comic adventure made decades later. Maverick is a consummate gambler, a world-class romantic hero, and a natural born master of the one-liner. He's on his way to a high-stakes poker tournament where he hopes to win the big money and cement his reputation as the best poker player on the continent. Still $3000 short of the entrance fee, he's hoping to collect some outstanding debts and enjoy the journey. Instead, he encounters two rivals for the poker title (including the elegant and unscrupulous Annabelle Bransford, played by Jodie Foster ), a mysterious lawman ( James Garner , who was the original TV Maverick ), and various baddies (including Alfred Molina and James Coburn ) who seem hell-bent on his not finishing the trip. After a series of hair-raising adventures and near-death experiences, Maverick arrives on the paddle-steamer where the tournament is to be held, only to be met by even more danger and duplicity.

Is It Any Good?

An amusing script by William Goldman, slick direction, and charming (if not to be taken seriously) performances by the principals provide some fun, thrills, and clever plot twists. The filmmakers pay homage to the Western genre by using a number of classic Western character actors to good advantage in some of the smaller roles. And the scenes with Graham Greene and his band of Native American warriors are the funniest and most thought-provoking. At over two hours, however, there aren't quite enough laughs, inspired adventures, or mind-bending story elements to put it in a class with the great caper films.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how this movie is a different type of Western. What are some of the things that show us that this isn't an actual portrayal of the Old West, but a humorous and fond look backwards?

What does the movie say about appearance versus reality? Which people pretend to be one thing but are really something else? Which people have surprising secrets?

What do you think the filmmakers are hoping you'll understand about movie stereotyping?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 20, 1994
• On DVD or streaming : June 1, 2004
• Cast : James Garner , Jodie Foster , Mel Gibson
• Director : Richard Donner
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Warner Home Video
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 127 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : mild sensuality, language, and some western action
• Last updated : June 21, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Prime Video movie of the day: Top Gun Maverick is an infinitely rewatchable thrill ride

If only all sequels were as good as this one

Sequels to iconic movies don't come much better than this: Top Gun: Maverick , the sequel to the 1986 Tom Cruise blockbuster, is just as much fun as the original – and it comes garlanded with rave reviews too. It's currently sitting with a well deserved 96% rating from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and an even more impressive 99% from viewers, and it's available on Prime Video .

Tom Cruise returns as Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell, the test pilot who can't be tamed. And this time around he's training a new squad of Top Gun graduates for a terrifyingly dangerous mission, a mission that'll make him confront his own deepest fears and risk everything. You know, standard Cruise stuff.

• Watch Top Gun: Maverick on Prime Video

What's so great about Top Gun: Maverick?

Top Gun: Maverick is proof that sometimes they still do make 'em like they used to: this is a spiritual as well as literal successor to the bombastic, jingoistic, over-the-top and faintly ridiculous original, a sequel that some reviewers felt was even better than the first: Edge Media Network certainly thought so, calling it "an astonishing and glorious film that far surpassing its mediocre predecessor with a good story, amazing tech credits and some fab performances beginning with Cruise himself".

The Ringer said that while the story isn't exactly ground-breaking "It helps that the filmmaking is pretty much impeccable, with director Joseph Kosinski providing the kind of clear, streamlined action sequences that make blockbuster spectacle feel fun instead of mandatory." And The AV Club praised Cruise: "Cruise commands the screen in a performance that leverages his multimillion-dollar star wattage to brighten the entire film."

It's nostalgic for sure, but not lazily so: Maverick isn't just a lazy retread of the first movie but a new story told with exceptional stunt work and special effects, leading the Chicago Reader to predict that "Cruise's foray back into the danger zone will be remembered more than the original, setting a new standard in the era of reboots." As The Financial Times happily admitted, the story was "hokum" – but "the storytelling too reminds you of the best version of old Hollywood, broad strokes rendered with watchmaker care."

As we said in our Top Gun: Maverick review , "In a little over two hours, Cruise, Bruckheimer and Kosinski manage to deliver a film that both pays homage to Top Gun ’s legacy and breaks new ground for modern filmmaking." It's that good, and absolutely ranks among the best Prime Video movies .

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Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall ( Twitter ) has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man , is on sale now. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR .

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Review: In ‘Wildcat,’ director Ethan Hawke — and daughter Maya — bring a literary life to screen

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Flannery O’Connor’s thrillingly hard-edged tales about the unreconstructed South and its redemption-deficient malcontents will never lose their power to scratch us awake with their violence, humor and ugly truth.

Such great, complicated artists don’t deserve the shallow cradle-to-grave treatment common to so many biopics, and thankfully, Ethan Hawke’s new film, “Wildcat,” isn’t that. Rather, it’s a soulful, pointed and unconventional grappling with the mysteries of the deeply Catholic, norm-shattering Georgia native’s life and work. Concentrated on a pivotal time of promise and disappointment during O’Connor’s 20s, when her writing was getting noticed (as was the lupus that would eventually consume her), it’s anchored with aching intelligence by Hawke’s daughter Maya (“Stranger Things”), unrecognizably severe in cat’s-eye glasses and a frail countenance.

The Hawkes deliver a portrait of O’Connor in all her fiercely self-aware outsiderdom, whether standing firm against a patronizing New York editor ( Alessandro Nivola ) who believes she wants to “pick a fight” with her readers or sternly defending her faith against glib comments at an Iowa Writers’ Workshop party. But we also see this O’Connor in weaker moments, shrinking in the presence of her protective mother, Regina ( Laura Linney ), when forced back home because of her illness, and almost crumbling in the presence of a priest (a wonderful Liam Neeson). Ethan Hawke’s screenplay, co-written with Shelby Gaines, was inspired by the letters to God that O’Connor wrote at the time, published posthumously as “A Prayer Journal” in 2013.

This stretch of ambition and setback from an all-too-short life is not all that’s served up in “Wildcat.” Maya Hawke’s acting duties also involve playing an assortment of O’Connor’s characters in abridged dramatizations of short stories — “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “Parker’s Back” and a few other classic pieces. In the ones where bold, brash men bring thunder and change to unsuspecting young women (all Maya), scene partners Steve Zahn, Rafael Casal and Cooper Hoffman do memorable work.

Ethan and Maya Hawke and Laura Linney on their maverick Flannery O’Connor biopic ‘Wildcat’

Telluride: Ethan and Maya Hawke and Laura Linney chat about their new Flannery O’Connor biopic ‘Wildcat’ and the complexities of the author’s life.

Sept. 3, 2023

These segments diverge in tone, color and movement from the muted palette and fixed compositions with which cinematographer Steve Cosens girds the biographical narrative. But they’re expertly threaded in, suggesting how a creative loner can experience flare-ups of imagination when the world reveals itself. Movies often struggle with conveying writerly inspiration, but these swatches earnestly make good on a potent quote of O’Connor’s that Hawke opens with: “I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”

Linney, meanwhile, at the top of her game, is another constant in multiple roles, vividly rendering a handful of O’Connor’s fictional mothers (including the self-righteous women from “Revelation” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge”). Before she even shows up as poised, old-fashioned Regina, picking up her suffering daughter at the train station, we’ve seen her in a couple of these adaptation bursts (including a clever rendering of “The Comforts of Home” as a trailer for a lurid ’60s B movie).

And yet, surprisingly, Linney’s and Hawke’s doubling duty never comes off as cheap psychologizing of the writer’s relationship with a parent who didn’t get her. It feels broader than that. (At the same time, O’Connor’s own views on race, the source of much reputational reassessment, aren’t exactly laid bare here, but neither are they ignored.) The symbolic payoff in Ethan Hawke’s brilliant use of his daughter and Linney is that we grasp both the intense narrowness of O’Connor’s subject matter as well as the rich versatility within her gothic archetypes.

Coming on the heels of director Ethan Hawke’s excellent docuseries “The Last Movie Stars,” about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, “Wildcat” shows that his gifts in front of the camera are being complemented behind it too, especially when the subject is a life woven through with art, passion and pain.

'Wildcat'

Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes Playing: AMC Century City

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New Lord of the Rings Movie Set for 2026, Peter Jackson Will Produce

Director Peter Jackson will produce a new Lord of the Rings movie, which Warner Bros. Pictures is now aiming to release in 2026.

• New Lord of the Rings movie confirmed for 2026, with Peter Jackson on board as producer.
• The film will explore new storylines beyond the original novels, promising a fresh take on the beloved franchise.
• Warner Bros. aiming to turn Lord of the Rings into a Star Wars -like franchise, with a focus on familiar IP.

A new Lord of the Rings movie is now confirmed to be in development, with Warner Bros. Pictures aiming to release the next foray into the world of J.R.R. Tolkien in 2026 . According to Variety , the filmmaker behind the beloved The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson , is on board as a producer . As per the report, Jackson will reunite with his writing partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who will also produce the project, with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav revealing that they “will be involved every step of the way.”

While details of this new Lord of the Rings movie remain largely unknown, Zaslav did go on to reveal that it will “explore storylines yet to be told,” which seemingly confirms that it will not be another adaptation of the original novels.

“‘Lord of the Rings’ is one of the most successful and revered franchises in history and presents a significant opportunity for theatrical business.”

Warner Bros. Wants to Turn Lord of the Rings Into Star Wars

The lord of the rings: the return of the king.

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The news that new Lord of the Rings were in development first dropped back in February 2023 , with Peter Jackson saying, “Warner Brothers and Embracer have kept us in the loop every step of the way. We look forward to speaking with them further to hear their vision for the franchise moving forward.” Evidently, he liked what the studio had to say.

This latest update comes following the revelation that Warner Bros. Discovery and CEO David Zaslav are hoping to transform the saga of Middle-earth into a Star Wars -style franchise. Revealed in previous reports, Warner Bros. Discovery will follow in the modern cinematic footsteps of several major studios and “circling its wagons ever tighter around familiar IP” with focus being put on brands such as DC and the “hopes to turn LOTR into a Star Wars -like franchise.”

11 Biggest Mistakes in Peter Jackson’s LotR Movies

Based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, Jackson helmed the lauded trilogy beginning with The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, followed by The Two Towers in 2002, and The Return of the King in 2003. Starring an ensemble cast that includes Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, and Andy Serkis all three installments in the trilogy were major cinematic events.

The films all received critical acclaim, winning 17 Academy Awards out of 30 total nominations, and are now deemed to be one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time . Can a new movie exploring untold stories set in Middle-earth ever live up to such a legacy?

The Lord of the Rings franchise has since expanded, with The Hobbit trilogy lighting up the big screen from 2012 to 2014. The stories have now moved onto the small screen, with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power gearing up to debut its second season on Prime Video later this year. An animated movie, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim , will bring the IP back to theaters on December 13, 2024.