Dto the Cannes Film Festival 2022 – complete with the official aerobatic team of the Armée de l’air flying over the city – to the cinema, where Top Gun: Maverick was a stratospheric success. And now, that is tonight at 9.20pm on Channel 5the sequel to legendary film by Tony Scott what yields Tom Cruise a star at just 24 years old, arrives on TV. Nominated for 5 Oscars, TGM it was successful for many reasons – certainly the main one is the nostalgia effect (it was a sequel that had been awaited for many years). Then also for the perfect mix of acrobatic scenes and introspection. And healthy simplicity, a story of heroism, love and going beyond the limit, not just of speed.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski, the film brings us back to the cinema Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise), courageous and reckless fighter pilotlover of danger and motorcycles.
Top Gun: Maverickthe plot of the movie
Maverick is among the best aviators in the Navybut after more than thirty years of service, due to insubordination and the desire to fly he remained Captain of the United States Navy. The position of Admiral does not interest him. Called to train a team of Top Gun academy students for a secret missionfound again after many years Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), Air Force Lieutenant and son of his old flying buddy, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, died more than 30 years earlier in a flying accident. A pain never truly processed.
Also meet Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer)commander of the United States Pacific Fleet and former rival, now almost terminally ill.
Grappling with an uncertain future, and the distrust of the new boss – the vice admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm) – who doesn’t believe in his qualities, Maverick throws himself into training these guys. With the aim of not putting Bradley, code name Rooster, at risk.
In the meantime, he reunites with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), his ex-girlfriend now owner of a bar near the pilot training school base. With which she rekindles the flame and races on her motorbike along the track with the sunset in the distance.
A practically perfect sequel
The idea of a sequel to Top Gun it begins way back in 2010when Paramount asks Jerry Bruckheimer (the historical producer) e Scott to test the waters on a possible second chapter.
The British director, however, he absolutely doesn’t want to do a remakemuch less a reboot, but a film that tells the story of the decline of the era of air combat and the role of drones in military campaigns. When in 2012 – with enormous shock – he takes his own life, the future of the sequel remains pending until the idea of Bruckheimer to speak directly with Tom Cruise, to convince him in the venture.
After a rather long and tortuous writing phase, filming finally begins in 2018 directed by Kosinski – but the film comes presented at Cannes only four years later (kept in the drawer due to the pandemic, waiting for a favorable moment).
Tom Cruise in a scene from “Top Gun: Maverick”. (Paramount)
Overcoming the skepticism of critics and professionals, Top Gun: Maverick it is immediately hailed as a successful, practically perfect sequel. Built on the foundations of the 1980s original, he cites and respects the cult with almost religious sacredness and, at the same time, winks at contemporary action cinema.
A miraculous balance that, along with the energy of the eternal boy Tom Cruiseis the strong point of a film that revisits and at the same time updates an almost vanished (cinematic) world. That of the actors who shoot the dangerous scenes in first person and where the special effects are reduced to a minimum in the name of spectacular action scenes.
In this earthquake-proof architecture, in addition to the recovery of familiar faces and places from the previous one, Top Gun: Maverick it does not limit itself to continuing the common thread of the origins but creates a new parallel narrative, closely linked to the original. As in the love dynamic between Maverick and the beautiful Penny played by Jennifer Connelly.
A cinema therefore that, while returning to the past, he does not give up looking forward. And, not surprisingly, they are the voices are increasingly insistenteven if for now unofficial, of another sequel of the adventures of Maverick and his companions.
Arriving Top Gun 3?
The site Puck he is certain: a third film still starring Tom Cruise will be made – and we won’t have to wait another 36 years. Even if the actor he is currently busy filming the eighth and final chapter of the franchise Mission: Impossible – due out in May 2025.
Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly on the Cannes red carpet in 2022. (Getty Images)
The well-informed American entertainment portal, however, last January 5th, has launched more than one indiscretiontelling that Paramount has already got a new sequel in the works in which Cruise will obviously return, together with his young co-star Miles Teller.
Joseph Kosinski once again directs while Ehren Kruger, co-writer of, took care of the screenplay Mavericks. All the creators of the stratospheric success of would therefore be confirmed Top Gun: Maverick That, cost “only” 170 million dollarsit has grossed over 1.5 billion all over the world. Thus resulting in the film of highest grossing at the global box office of Cruise’s entire career.
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