So, to give some early context to this review, I am a young Black woman who loves Tom Cruise movies and yet never had an interest in watching the original Top Gun film. I knew it was one of his most iconic movies, I knew it had a major following, I knew that it became one of the iconic films of the 80s’, and yet there was always something that made me not want to watch it. Even as I prepared to watch its highly-anticipated sequel, even as I noticed that it was available to watch on Netflix, I could never get the urge to watch the film. That being said…the sequel is a phenomenal movie.
Thankfully the writers understood that there were plenty of people who, like me, hadn’t seen the first film…and yet the movie never leaves you in the dark. The storyline, heavily based on the occurrences of the original film, paints an emotional picture that had my chin wobbling and my eyes filling with tears multiple times. And sometimes my eyes were watering just because the sheer spectacle of the film was literally stunning.
Top Gun: Maverick is everything you’d want a sequel to be…and a little bit more. The story is well-written and emotional, the action scenes are stirring, heart-pounding, intense, and utterly incredible in IMAX, and the music is subtle and at times really powerful.
I’ve seen plenty of sequels, and I’ve also seen plenty of action movies, but Top Gun: Maverick is truly special. Tom Cruise continues to prove he’s at the top of his acting career by delivering a performance that was not only fun to watch but boy did he make me believe he’s one of the greatest pilots of all time.
Is the movie corny in some areas? Of course, it is. It’s a Top Gun movie! But it is also one of the most thrilling movie theater experiences you will ever have. This film will undoubtedly be one of my favorite films of the year and there’s no doubt about that.
This is why the theater experience still exists. For movies like Top Gun: Maverick.
I thank you for reading and I hope you have a fantastic day.
Annlyel Online 
It was a great, crowd-pleasing movie. It was like a hybrid between the original Top Gun and a Mission: Impossible film. I think it really hits its stride in the third act that the whole movie was building up to, which benefits greatly from the fact that you can’t be sure who is going to live or die. It must’ve been difficult to shoot so much real footage and make it work as drama, rather than just as a documentary reel. They kept the story moving and never slowed down just to show off their photography.
Overall, this was a throwback to “cartoon war” movies like The Dam Busters from 1955, which also inspired the climax of Star Wars. I think that’s refreshing, because almost all modern war movies focus on tragedy or some kind of negative, “war is hell” message. This movie treats war like a Batman movie treats crime, as just a device to tell an archetypal story about heroes and villains. Which was something audiences loved to see in war stories until seeing the actual military portrayed as simple heroes became almost non-existent in the post-Vietnam era.
For fans of the original, I think the movie does a nice job of homaging the first movie while finding just barely enough of its own identity. The relationship between Maverick and Rooster is the heart of the movie, and that works very well. The father/son vibes were reminiscent of Indiana and Henry Jones in the third Indiana Jones movie (not his real son, I know). They work out their personal issues while they’re catching a breath from blasting the bad guys.
The love story between Maverick and Penny, though, felt like it was just written in to satisfy people who wanted to see another romance like the first movie had. But Penny is essentially disconnected from the rest of the movie, so it seems unnecessary. I also wondered if some of Hangman’s scenes had been cut. He didn’t seem to have quite the intensity as the bully that he was intended to have.
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