Top Gun 2

Top Gun: Maverick has finally landed in theaters, so let's break down the intense ending. Who were Maverick and the gang fighting this time, and will there ...

With Top Gun: Maverick already tracking to have the best global opening weekend of any Tom Cruise movie to date, it stands to reason a sequel could be in the cards. Sure, Maverick and Rooster prove there's no substitute for human ingenuity, but their mission also would have been much simpler and less risky if the Navy had been able to dispatch a fleet of unmanned fighters that weren't subject to the limits of human endurance. Top Gun: Maverick deals with the clash between old-school fighter pilots and a new generation of advanced, unmanned drones, and that debate is never entirely settled by the end of the film. The studio has yet to confirm any plans for a Top Gun 3. Maverick and Rooster made peace, and now the former finally seems ready to move on and enjoy life on the ground for a change. So it only makes sense that Top Gun: Maverick ends with an added wrinkle to the mission that forces Maverick and Rooster to finally bury the hatchet and work together. There's no real-world country that matches "the enemy" as depicted in Top Gun: Maverick. Presumably, Paramount is wary of stirring up controversy by showing the US Navy carrying out a military strike on a hostile foreign power. The frozen terrain seen in the climax certainly evokes images of Russia. On the other hand, Russia and China are already established nuclear powers, whereas the stealthy strike on the uranium enrichment facility would seem to point to a smaller adversary like North Korea or Iran. One of the more curious elements of Top Gun: Maverick is that the film is never clear on who its villains are. Maverick is called on to train a new group of Top Gun recruits for a mission most would find physically impossible to complete. The movie leaves certain doors open for a possible sequel (and we'll cover that later in this article), but there's nothing during or after the credits that directly sets up a possible Top Gun 3. The Top Gun franchise might not be terribly complex in the story department, but the sequel still raises a few interesting questions worth addressing.

After betting against a 'Top Gun' sequel more than a decade ago, Matt Patches is making good on his promise—and tempting the movie fates once more.

Growing up reading industry news in the 2000s and in the 2010s, there was a certain type of story that felt like it was designed for the trades just to test the waters. What’s most interesting about the tweet is the news that prompted it was Tom Cruise and Tony Scott, the director of Top Gun, were gonna get together with Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of the original movie. “I would’ve felt like I could just tweet, ‘Eh, I don’t think Top Gun 2 will ever happen,’ because I’m clowning around with what I think is a small audience of like-minded people.” And now?

Entertainment writer Matt Patches makes good on his decade-old promise to eat his shoe if Top Gun 2 ever made it to movie screens.

In the end it’s enough that Patches went to the trouble of making an edible shoe, documenting the process in a video and even making a silly (and frankly somewhat annoying) "Danger Zone" parody to play in the background. And so it was arguably not entirely a surprise when, back in 2010, it was announced that a long-awaited Top Gun sequel was finally in development from Paramount Pictures with Cruise to return as Maverick. But despite Cruise’s apparent desire to play Maverick once again, many expressed skepticism that Top Gun 2 would ever actually make it to screens. But instead of starring in an immediate sequel, Cruise elected to leave behind Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and his need for speed.

Journalist and editor Matt Patches promised to eat a shoe if Top Gun 2 ever got released in theaters. Today, Top Gun: Maverick premieres and he is feasting ...

And yet Patches found a way to make and eat a usable shoe nonetheless. And Patches is eating a shoe on YouTube. You can’t die right now.” As someone who relies on Patches on a daily basis, I have to agree. Patches himself went through a journey during this decade and change. In 2010, then-culture-journalist Matt Patches wrote a benign tweet: “If Top Gun 2 happens, I will eat a shoe.” In hindsight, he should have considered that dumb things said on the internet will haunt you forever. For a while, Patches’ tummy appeared to be pardoned.

Top Gun Maverick Twitter: Tom Cruise's Top Gun Maverick also features Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Val Kilmer, Monica Barbaro, and Glen Powell ...

And if the $125 million figure is true, then Top Gun Maverick could be Cruise’s biggest opener in his over four-decade long career. Meanwhile, The Indian Express’ film critic Shalini Langer gave it four stars in her review and wrote, “The film is riding on Tom Cruise’s still nimble shoulders, that sparkly grin, and his charm burnished with years of stardom. Tom Cruise-starrer Top Gun Maverick is all set to have a smashing opening at the box office, according to a Collider report.

Following Top Gun 2's May 27 theatrical premiere, viewers will have to wait a while until the action-packed sequel arrives on streaming services.

If Tom Cruise's Top Gun 2 follows this same release strategy, viewers can expect the sequel to be available for streaming via Paramount+ on or around July 11, 2022 at the earliest – though July 15 seems more likely for a Friday streaming release. As Top Gun 2 is being distributed by Paramount, the high-profile release is likely to follow the studio's previous trend for streaming drops. Top Gun 2 will receive an exclusive theatrical release before it drops on streaming services.

It's been 36 years since Top Gun came out. Can you watch Tom Cruise's long-awaited sequel without seeing the first one?

So if you’re worried that you missed something from the first movie, you didn’t (we’ve seen the original—just recently, too—and actually wondered where the hell the Penny subplot in Maverick came from). On the other hand, Penny Benjamin is referenced in the original movie as an “admiral’s daughter” that Maverick got in trouble with, but that’s about it. Maverick’s major romance in the first movie was with flight instructor Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), whose image is glimpsed in the sequel but whose name is not brought up once. Top Gun: Maverick is awash in nostalgia, to the point of recreating signature moments from the first movie like the opening montage of jets taking off (set again to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”) and the shirtless beach sports scene (although here volleyball is replaced by football, and the homoeroticism is turned way down). For instance, Maverick’s main motivating factor—the guilt that still haunts him over the death of Goose, his best friend and Radar Intercept Officer, in the original movie—is quite clearly explained and signaled. When Maverick also visits his old friend Iceman, now commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (and the only other returning cast member), it’s also made quite evident that they are very dear friends.

Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer co-star. At 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, it is Hollywood's best ...

His most recent film Mission: Impossible – Fallout was the highest grossing film of his career worldwide with $791 million, and the previous two M:I films rank second and third, both with cumes approaching $700 million. Either way, though, it could still lift off in a big way if people see it as a corollary to the Mission: Impossible series, with Cruise continuing to push the envelope stuntwise as he flies fighter jets with IMAX cameras in his face. Finally, Paramount is releasing it this week in 4,732 domestic locations (one of the widest releases ever) as well as in much of the world, though it hasn’t gotten a release date in China, a major market for Cruise ( Mission: Impossible - Falloutgrossed $181 million there). Either way, though, it could still lift off in a big way if people see it as a corollary to the Mission: Impossible series, with Cruise continuing to push the envelope stuntwise as he flies fighter jets with IMAX cameras in his face. It could also benefit from stronger legs than the average blockbuster as we saw with the last two Mission: Impossible films which had multipliers of 3.5-3.6, with great reviews and word of mouth propelling them beyond the opening. In the new installment, Cruise gets to play both fighter pilot and teacher as Maverick is tasked with training the next generation of Top Gun grads for a secret mission.

What we're looking at here is the perfect storm to give Tom Cruise the biggest opening weekend of his career. I'll be honest with you when I say that this was ...

I’m thinking the holiday weekend will allow the film to not drop off more than half of its opening audience so I’m going with a prediction of $8 million for its second weekend. Top Gun: Maverick is going to be huge on a level for an action film that has old-school sensibilities and is looking to prove that these kinds of films still work in the marketplace. I’m calling a $15 million fourth weekend for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. There is another film opening in the wake of Top Gun: Maverick and it’s sure to appeal to its fanbase but where it goes beyond that, is yet to be determined. I’m calling a $13 million opening for The Bob’s Burgers Movie, landing it in third behind the fourth weekend of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Fourth and fifth place should see Downton Abbey: A New Era and The Bad Guys. Downton had a little of a fanbase rush last weekend and, despite underperforming a tad by some standards, the $16 million opening weekend still showed that the older female fanbase will come out for the right project. Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness will get a hit from Top Gun: Maverick and will settle for second place after an impressive three-week run at number one. This is a sequel that is 36 years in the making and fans feeling nostalgic for the first film will certainly have their butts in the seats this weekend but stellar reviews and a thirst for action and spectacle that doesn’t have the Marvel label attached to it will also entice other moviegoers. The response to Top Gun: Maverick is going to be HUGE but before we get carried away, it’s not going to be on the level of a heavily hyped Marvel release. The groundswell for Top Gun: Maverick has been building for the last month. What we’re looking at here is the perfect storm to give Tom Cruise the biggest opening weekend of his career. After several delays due to the pandemic, Top Gun: Maverick is ready to take flight over the long Memorial Day weekend.

It's a move as carefully calibrated as any of the top-line fighter jets Tom Cruise pilots throughout the movie. And there's a fist-pumping joy to watching an ...

"Maverick" takes its cues from a heist movie as much as an action one, carefully and repeatedly laying out the steps of a low-altitude mission in and around a snowy mountain pass in enemy territory. While the practical stunts in "Top Gun: Maverick" aren’t a million miles off from the work Cruise does in the "Mission: Impossible" films, "Maverick" sets itself apart with a knowingly corny earnestness. A titan of the genre, "Die Hard" is the little black dress of action movies: It works for every occasion. About the writer: Caroline Siede is a film and TV critic in Chicago, where the cold never bothers her anyway. The platform gives fans of entertainment, news and sports an easy way to discover new content that is available completely free. Though Teller fits seamlessly into the "Top Gun" universe (as do Jennifer Connelly, Glen Powell and a host of new Top Gun pilots), Maverick is the only character the movie really cares about. (The cast completed a three-month flight training course to be able to shoot the film largely in real jets.) But the biggest key to the film’s success is the refreshingly coherent staging of its action. Yet the best thing about "Top Gun: Maverick" is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously either. Not only is Pete ordered back to Top Gun to serve as a flight instructor, one of his students is Lieutenant Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw ( Miles Teller) — Goose’s grown-up son (disappointedly not nicknamed "Gosling") who’s got a grudge against his dad’s old friend. As "Top Gun: Maverick" opens, we learn Pete has spent the past 30-some years doing more of the same — refusing to climb the military ranks because he prefers to continue testing his limits as an active pilot. For as much as "Top Gun" is steeped in Cold War-era jingoism and 1980s masculinity, it also feels like the kind of earnest military spectacle that could’ve come out of the old Hollywood studio system. It’s a move as carefully calibrated as any of the top-line fighter jets Tom Cruise pilots throughout the movie.

Tom Cruise takes to the air once more in a long-awaited sequel to a much-loved '80s action blockbuster.

Which only confirms the sense that “Top Gun: Maverick” has nothing to say about geopolitics and everything to do with the defense of old-fashioned movie values in the face of streaming-era nihilism. At times Kosinski seems to be reaching for an updated version of the sun-kissed, high-style ’80s aesthetic that “Top Gun” so effortlessly and elegantly typified. Apart from the 2021 documentary “Val,” he hasn’t been onscreen much since losing his voice to throat cancer, and seeing him and Cruise in a quiet scene together is as sad and stirring as something from the Epic of Gilgamesh. There was a formidable — if mostly offscreen — real-world adversary (the Soviet Union, in case you forgot) and the hovering possibility of nuclear apocalypse. We never see the faces of the enemy pilots once the mission is underway. In the presence of a superior officer he is apt to salute, smirk and push his career into the middle of the table like a stack of poker chips. The first “Top Gun” unfolded against a backdrop of superpower conflict. The frat-house atmosphere of the ’80s has been toned down, and the pilots are a more diverse, less obnoxious bunch. In the last few decades, Pete has seen plenty of combat — Bosnia and Iraq are both mentioned — and pursued an on-and-off romance with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly). Now he finds her working at a bar near the base and an old spark rekindles. Pete is the instructor now, called back to the Miramar naval base to train a squad of eager young fliers for an urgent, dangerous mission. “Top Gun: Maverick,” directed by Joseph Kosinski ( “Tron: Legacy”), answers in the affirmative with a confident, aggressive swagger that might look like overcompensation. He’s one of the best fighter pilots ever to take wing, but the U.S. military hierarchy can be a treacherous political business, and Maverick is anything but a politician.

Inside the music of "Top Gun: Maverick": Lady Gaga, Hans Zimmer and Harold Faltemeyer shared score credit and song selection was a mess.

“He is the vision and the custodian of the franchise. As the singer-rapper told KROQ’s “Klein and Ally Show” earlier this month: “I was working with the music placement person for the new ‘Top Gun’ on writing a new song for them. “Let’s keep the spirit of the first one,” Faltermeyer quotes the star-producer as saying. Faltermeyer’s original theme “was the first thing we started delving into,” Balfe adds. In her post, Gaga called the song “a love letter to the world during and after a very hard time.” Spendlove explains that Lady Gaga had “written the love theme, which is the heartbeat of the movie.

Who is the enemy in Top Gun: Maverick? Although no enemy is named in the Tom Cruise film, we have a guess — and no, it isn't Russia.

Schwartzel writes that the patch doesn’t appear in Maverick because the film doesn’t want to anger Chinese officials who consider Taiwan a renegade province, not its own separate country. It has the right topography, in places. Which leads us to think that the enemy in Top Gun: Maverick might be… In the original Top Gun, Maverick and co. So the reasons that rule out Russia would seem to rule out China, as well. The U.S. is well aware that shooting down a Russian plane — even one dropping bombs on Ukraine — would be seen as a declaration of war. Maverick has been training his young pilots in the desert, which has implanted in viewers minds the notion that the big mission might take place in the desert, too. And because the Top Gun films aim for realism, we have to assume the five credited writers on Top Gun: Maverick imagined an opposing fighting force that could theoretically exist. These will be used to make nuclear weapons, and for this reason the U.S. and its NATO allies stand unified in opposition. So we in the audience are expected to think of them that way, too. Like the first Top Gun, it leaves the audience to conclude for ourselves who Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and his cohorts are training to dogfight. They’ve been trained to think of their enemies as the bad guys.

Chicago - Even in 1986, the original "Top Gun" felt like a bit of a retro throwback. Its fighter-pilot training school setting was such a holdover from a ...

"Maverick" takes its cues from a heist movie as much as an action one, carefully and repeatedly laying out the steps of a low-altitude mission in and around a snowy mountain pass in enemy territory. While the practical stunts in "Top Gun: Maverick" aren’t a million miles off from the work Cruise does in the "Mission: Impossible" films, "Maverick" sets itself apart with a knowingly corny earnestness. A titan of the genre, "Die Hard" is the little black dress of action movies: It works for every occasion. About the writer: Caroline Siede is a film and TV critic in Chicago, where the cold never bothers her anyway. The platform gives fans of entertainment, news and sports an easy way to discover new content that is available completely free. Though Teller fits seamlessly into the "Top Gun" universe (as do Jennifer Connelly, Glen Powell and a host of new Top Gun pilots), Maverick is the only character the movie really cares about. (The cast completed a three-month flight training course to be able to shoot the film largely in real jets.) But the biggest key to the film’s success is the refreshingly coherent staging of its action. Yet the best thing about "Top Gun: Maverick" is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously either. Not only is Pete ordered back to Top Gun to serve as a flight instructor, one of his students is Lieutenant Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw ( Miles Teller) — Goose’s grown-up son (disappointedly not nicknamed "Gosling") who’s got a grudge against his dad’s old friend. As "Top Gun: Maverick" opens, we learn Pete has spent the past 30-some years doing more of the same — refusing to climb the military ranks because he prefers to continue testing his limits as an active pilot. For as much as "Top Gun" is steeped in Cold War-era jingoism and 1980s masculinity, it also feels like the kind of earnest military spectacle that could’ve come out of the old Hollywood studio system. It’s a move as carefully calibrated as any of the top-line fighter jets Tom Cruise pilots throughout the movie.

Three Decades after the original Top Gun, Tom Cruise returns to lead a fresh squadron of Navy fighter pilots in Top Gun: Maverick.

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