Top Gun: Maverick 2022
This movie has been delayed for a long time waiting for audiences to return to theaters from Covid. While audiences are still a little shy, they will come out for a blockbuster, so they are flocking to this sequel to the 1986 original. Still, I waited until the day after Memorial Day for an afternoon showing and there were only two other people in the theater. The previews give away a lot of things in the movie and the plot is pretty predicatable and straightforward as Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick, is shunned, but still respected as a capable dinosaur. He has to train an all-star group of cocky young pilots to carry off a nearly impossible mission and one of those pilots is the son of Maverick’s friend, Goose, who was killed in the first movie. They've dispensed with any of the women in the first movie and now have Jennifer Connelly, who looks great at her age, but was only 15 when the original movie came out. The movie has a lot of great aerial sequences and Cruise gets to do a little more serious acting as his character faces retirement, but also responsibility for the new pilots he is sending into danger. Plus the romance with Connelly, plus some returning old characters make this a fun trip packed with stuff that makes you not care that the plot is kind of thin. It is a fun summer movie with a little bit of a dark side to it though I don’t want to give anything away. I can’t be overly concerned whether any of it makes any sense.
Written: 31 May 2022
Owned on: UHD, Digital