“Top Gun: Maverick,” January 17, 2023 (2022), DVD. No need to yell at me for seeing or not liking this sequel to “Top Gun” of 36 years ago. Wonderful photography in this redux of the propaganda machine about people flying big, fast, amazingly expensive, sleek, sexy and destructive machines.
Tom Cruise is back as Capt. Pete Mitchell, naval warier and test pilot extraordinaire. He’s called again to the Top Gun training academy for the best of the best naval fighter pilots. Thirty-six years ago he battled Libyan pilots flying Russian MIGs. Now he’s there to train pilots for a (likely) suicide mission to take out an installation of a nameless state that’s processing uranium to build a bomb. (Can’t they spell Iran?)
Maverick/Cruise is who he is, and that’s not going to change. It’s all personal, including the personnel, given the appearance of the son of his late friend and co-pilot, Goose.
Some things have changed, though; this is a vastly different demographic group of pilots. It is more racially and gender diverse, as most of the military is, although the Navy lags a bit, especially at the rank of admiral. No surprise there. And of course, no covert racism or gender abuse issues. But I digress, or don’t I?
It was good and poignant to see Val Kilmer reprise his Iceman role given his medical issues, although it, like so many things in this film, wallows in sentimentality.
See this in the theater, preferably in IMAX, for the visuals, if you can. It’s certainly not for the plot, script, or acting.