Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

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This week, Kyle and Trevor review Joseph Kosinski's, Top Gun: Maverick (2022)!

A long gestating project originally pitched as “legacy sequel” from original Top Gun (1986) director, Tony Scott, Top Gun: Maverick (2022) is refreshingly sincere crowd pleaser from Joseph Kosinski.

In spite of the film losing Scott's participation due to his untimely passing, Kosinski, having previously directed the aesthetically wondrous (but emotionally overwrought) Tron: Legacy (2010), as well as the Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion (2013), was a natural fit to helm Top Gun: Maverick.

Bearing a structure more akin to an action heavy heist/caper rather than the original's sports drama format, Top Gun: Maverick is often blunt, and always straightforward with its storytelling, though in many ways, these attributes prove to be its greatest strengths.

Deliberately repetitious, both in terms of dialogue and in terms of structure, Top Gun: Maverick can be grating in its early sequences, however at a certain point it becomes apparent that the film is training you, much in the way its training its characters, to identify and anticipate the stakes of the drama in order to maximize the impact of its bombastic finale.

Beautifully shot, and possessed of a health dose of (rather than heaping pile of) symmetry and reverence to/for the original Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick is the rare “legacy sequel” that puts a premium on continuing the story of its protagonist e.g. “Maverick”, rather than exploiting him as an ambassador between audiences and the next generation of twee action figure heroes and heroines.

Beautifully elemental in the way it communicates with the viewer, Top Gun: Maverick's soul is made of equal parts heart and cheese, but make no mistake, it is top of the line crowd pleasing action cinema, and entirely worthy of its incredible success.

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