You’ll believe a man can fly a jet with hair-raising daredevilry, and that seeing him will make grown men can cry from nostalgia, in Top Gun: Maverick — the fantastic, bar-raising sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, a film that made Tom Cruise the ‘maverick’ star he is today.

I see no reason to talk extensively about Top Gun — nor do the makers of the sequel for that matter. Chances are that you’ve probably seen the original, or if you haven’t, may see it before seeing Maverick, or will definitely see it afterwards.

The sequel, however, sets its feet firmly within the grounds of the original — how can it not? — and, in what is nothing short of a miracle, manages to carry the first films’ tone, gravity and nostalgia over without making it seem bogus or mawkish.

Scenes instantly take you back to familiar terrain: from opening shots of a jets take-off with Harold Faltermeyer’s epic title-track, to topless men and their sweaty-bodies playing footfall at the beach, to Maverick (Tom Cruise), giving his love interest in the film (Jennifer Connelly) a ride home on his bike, to the rendition of Great Balls of Fire on a piano in a bar — you’ll feel that you’re watching, and at the same time not watching, a remake.

Maverick the Top Gun sequel is not just for those who saw and grew up with the original film. It will inspire a new generation to believe that the sky’s the limit

The feeling you often get is that of a surreal, déjà vu-ish fever dream, that is recognisable yet new.

The whooshing shots of fighter planes banking through valleys, nose-diving, turning on their backs and defying g-forces in straight thrusts through the stratosphere, pull you out of that fantasy, one sequence at a time.

The aerial sequences are probably the best cinema has made till date. They elevate Maverick to new heights that will, probably, take another 36 years to out-do. The original’s mix of real footage and scaled, radio-controlled replica jets are still unbeatable, even in this age of photo-realistic visual effects.

Maverick smacks of Tom Cruise’s dedication to quality. Netflix, Amazon, or any OTT for that matter, cannot make a film of these visual and narrative attributes; the film tells you why there are cinemas in the first place — and that they aren’t going anywhere.

There are no compromises, because the audience is getting their money’s worth, right down to the last bloody cent that, in today’s economy, is excruciating to get a hold of, and hard to let go of.

Yet, let go of it you will, because Maverick is a dying breed, as a character tells Pete Mitchell (that’s Maverick’s real name), in a scene.

Even after 36 years, Pete is still a Captain, who is still living on the edge. He test flies new generation jet planes, pushing the machines to their theoretical limits — but not because he wants to push himself to his limits. No, Pete does it because he knows he can. There is nothing cocky about his self-assurance. He was born to do this. He does it. It’s that simple.

When Pete tests a newfangled experimental jet by pushing it past its 10-Mach limit, saving the programme from extinction (the exercise was to push it till nine that day, if it were possible to do so), he gets transferred to Top Gun — a training programme for the elite — to train a new breed of ‘the best of the best’ to complete a near-impossible mission.

In the selection of young pilots is Lt. Bradley Bradshaw aka ‘Rooster’ (Miles Teller), the son of his buddy Nick Bradshaw, aka ‘Goose’, who died in an accident in the first movie.

Bradley loathes Pete, because Pete, the closest thing he had for a father, wasn’t there when he grew up. Pete, however, has always been a solo flier (with exception to his relations with Goose). As Maverick spins out, we dig deep into Pete’s emotions without making the film a weepy family drama.

Connelly, beautiful as always, matching Cruise’s chemistry zing-for-zing, runs the very bar Pete and Nick used to frequent; she has just enough scenes to make her character and its inhibitions stand out.

Everyone else — be it Ed Harris, Jon Hamm, Bashir Salahuddin, or the young cadets played by Glenn Powell, Lewis Pullman, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Greg Tarzan Davis, and others — fit right in, as if they always belonged to that same universe.

Credit this to Jerry Bruckheimer’s production and the screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, from a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks. Joseph Kosinski, the director of Tron and Oblivion, takes on a very different, very controlled, almost reverential guise. The job, above all-else for everyone, I think, was to make sure everything appears as a natural extension of the first film.

Val Kilmer, who plays Pete’s one-time frenemy Ice Man, is now an Admiral — a post Pete should have easily achieved by now. The meeting between Cruise — a remarkable actor oft-dismissed because of his star-status — and Kilmer is a tearjerker; but then, so are the slowly ramping second and third acts of this film.

As I said in the beginning: grown men will cry, or at least stifle and hold back the overwhelming sense of wistful reminiscence Maverick evokes.

Maverick, however, is not just for those of us who saw and grew up with the first film. It inspires a new generation, who will believe that, if you have a natural knack for something, the sky’s the limit — and that seeing someone cross that limit is what movie magic is all about.

Top Gun: Maverick is rated PG-13 and is playing in cinemas worldwide. There should be nothing stopping you from watching it on the big screen

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 5th, 2022