Top Gun Maverick streaming free online
Director: Joseph Kosinski | Scenario: Peter Craig | Cast: Tom Cruise (Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell), Jennifer Connelly (Penny Banjamin), Miles Teller (Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw), John Hamm (Beau 'Cyclone' Simpson), Charles Parnell (Solomon 'Warlock' Bates'), Val Kilmer (Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky), e.a. | Speelduur: 131 minuten | Jaar: 2022
When Pete "Maverick" Mitchell and his young wingman are dusting an F-14 Tomcat, the lad sighs that he doesn't know how to get such a museum piece to work. The fighter jet is equipped with hopelessly outdated technology. It's one of many fun nods to the original Top Gun in which the F-14 stole the show. Yet it is not the aircraft that counts, but the pilot.
Thirty-six years later, creating a sequel to what can safely be called a classic is a risky undertaking. Filmmakers rarely succeed in approaching the atmosphere and quality of the original. And then the production of Top Gun: Maverick was also considerably delayed due to the pandemic and various lockdowns. That usually guarantees failure. But as soon as the new director Joseph Kosinski treats us to a tribute to the images from the eighties accompanied by the sounds of 'Danger Zone', you get the feeling that this could well turn out to be a very pleasant two and a half hours.
It should come as no surprise that Tom Cruise was eager to take on the role of Maverick one more time and play the hero again at the age of sixty. The heroism certainly shines through in this sequel, but Cruise manages to deepen his somewhat clichéd role after all this time. The fact that Maverick is no longer the youngest is constantly being made fun of and must pass his baton to a new generation. And then there's the ominous future where jet pilots won't be needed at all.
Maverick is still a daredevil. In the startup of Maverick , he is a test pilot who wants to equal the speed of sound with a multimillion-dollar toy. It is precisely his former opponent and now good friend Iceman who manages to get Maverick back to Top Gun. Not to take a seat in the cockpit yourself, but to train a new crew of elite pilots for a secret but very risky mission in an unspecified hostile territory.
Despite the classic status of the original Top Gun , it can be safely said that the film by the late Tony Scott gained more value because it was more than the sum of its parts. The action Maverick and his colleagues experienced regularly lost out against the backdrop of a naughty affair with Maverick's instructor, mutual rivalry and the sentimental death of a bestie.
It was the combination of the spectacular images at the time and the special setting that Top Gun literally and figuratively lifted It also provided iconic images of aviator glasses and Cruise tearing up his motorcycle. All this comes back in full glory in this sequel and it doesn't even make for cringe-inducing scenes. Some scenes have even been copied one-on-one, such as the bar singing and Cruise bringing a lady home on his motorbike; others are a direct reference to the original.
What could easily have been an attempt at laziness has been turned into a pleasant homage here. Even a new sweetheart, in the form of Jennifer Connelly, is present but the romance is not too thick for once and is also no break from the spectacle and drama. The emphasis is very much on Maverick's efforts to teach his new pupils the near-impossible mission and ultimately make a roster of four pilots. Maverick is still a nuisance, but it's hard to get around him.
Visually, Top Gun: Maverick unparalleled. The crew mounted IMAX cameras in and on the F-18s and you feel like you're right in the middle of the action much more than thirty-six years ago. This leads to a nail-biting exciting double finale, in which everything is pulled out for unadulterated and unpretentious entertainment. That is ultimately what a new Top Gun should primarily focus on. The makers have estimated that correctly.
Moreover, the tightly edited action scenes compensate for the trite theme in which Cruise constantly plays the rebel and wants to overwrite his traumas out of guilt. It could have gone all wrong in so many imaginable ways with this sequel, but a superb Cruise and a tributary Kosinski have provided top-notch entertainment.