4 Things You Should Know about Top Gun: Maverick

Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is a talented Navy pilot with more than 30 years of experience. He has combat medals. He has high marks from his superiors. He’s also the only pilot in recent memory to have shot down three enemy planes.

Even so, he hasn’t received any promotions. In fact, he doesn’t want one. He only wants to fly.

But that is about to change.

The Navy is leading a top-secret U.S. military mission to take out a uranium plant in a hostile nation. And Adm. Tom “Iceman” Kazansky – Maverick’s former pilot rival – wants his old friend to help lead the project.

Maverick, though, won’t be flying a fighter plane on the mission. Instead, he will be training 12 new pilots about the ins-and-outs of combat.

“With all due respect, sir,” Maverick tells his superior, “I am not a teacher.”

He is now. And with the mission taking place in three weeks, he has no time to waste.

The new movie Top Gun: Maverick (PG-13) tells the story of Maverick and his group of young fighter pilots who are preparing for what many consider a suicide mission. It stars Tom Cruise as Maverick, Val Kilmer as Iceman and Jennifer Connelly as Penny Benjamin.

Here are four things you should know:

Photo courtesy: ©Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures Corporation 

1. It's a Sequel to a 1986 Blockbuster

Maverick is a follow-up to a 1986 classic that told the story of two brash young pilots (Maverick and Iceman) who competed for the top spot in the Naval flight school nicknamed “Top Gun.” Maverick also competed for something else: the attention of his flight instructor, Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis). It was the top-grossing film in 1986 and was nominated for four Oscars, winning one (Best Music).

In Top Gun: Maverick, our hero is still cocky when Iceman drafts him to train the 12 best pilots in the program for the top-secret mission. One of those trainees is a pilot named “Rooster,” who is the son of Nick “Goose” Bradshaw – a pilot who died in the original Top Gun. (In real life, a stunt pilot also died while filming that 1986 blockbuster.)

If you’re curious, “Top Gun” indeed is the nickname for a real-life elite pilot school. Launched in 1969, it is known by the Navy as the Fighter Weapons School.

Photo courtesy: ©Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures Corporation

2. It's Exhilarating

Top Gun: Maverick has a solid plot, but don’t feel bad if you only want to enjoy the flying. As Cruise says during a pre-movie message for the audience, the film has “real F-18s, real Gs, real speed.” In other words, we’re watching real fighter planes battle in the air – not CGI ones.

Cruise – as he always does – performed his own stunts. 

“Every time you see him in a jet, that’s him flying in that jet,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer told the Hollywood Reporter.

If the scenes of Maverick and his co-pilots look incredibly real – cheek muscles contorting and eye muscles flinching – it’s because they really were flying. (Or, more accurately, riding along while a real-world pilot flew them.)

“It was a lot of work,” director Joseph Kosinski told Entertainment Weekly. “It was very tedious and difficult at times, but the footage speaks for itself.”

In one of the film’s opening scenes, Maverick defies his superior by hopping in a high-tech jet over the Mojave Desert in order to reach Mach 10 – that is, a supersonic speed 10 times the speed of sound. Not satisfied with that threshold, though, he pushes the limit to 10.2, 10.3 and then 10.4, only to crash the plane and parachute back to safety.

We watch Maverick and his young group conduct dogfight training (he wins every time). We see them race through a canyon – mere feet away from death. We also experience the everyday risks of high-speed air flights, including being struck by birds (it takes out an aircraft) and the most threatening one: passing out during a flight due to a sudden drop in blood flow to the brain.

Photo courtesy: ©Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures Corporation

3. It's about Growing Old

The 1986 film spotlighted youth. In Maverick, we watch as our hero confronts the realities of old age. Much like an all-star professional athlete reaching the end of his career, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is coming to the realization that he won’t be a pilot forever.

“It’s time to let go,” Iceman tells him.

Maverick is about the frailty of life (he attends a funeral). It’s about the seasons of life (the animated film Cars 3 had a similar theme). Once a star pilot, Maverick is now being told he needs to teach. Its plot echoes the words of James 4:14: “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” 

Still, the film tosses a bone – that is, a large bone – to middle-aged moviegoers who want to re-experience their youth. Maverick remains the best pilot in the group. He’s also in exquisite physical shape. (Cruise is 59.)

The movie reminds us that growing old doesn’t mean we put people “out to pasture.” It urges us to embrace the wisdom of those who are older. It also includes solid messages about selflessness, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Photo courtesy: ©Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures Corporation

4. It's One of the Best Sequels Ever

If every movie sequel was this good, we wouldn’t complain about them so much. It opens with Kenny Loggins’ 1986 hit Danger Zone and closes with Lady Gaga’s 2022 soundtrack tune Hold My Hand. It has the well-known characters that we love – Maverick and Iceman, among them – with new characters we want to cheer (“Rooster” Bradshaw, having lost his father, is easy to embrace). It has edge-of-your-seat fight scenes. It has death-defying stunts. It has romance, too, but perhaps not the one you expect (Maverick falls for Penny, a bar owner who is played by Jennifer Connelly and who wasn’t in the 1986 film). It even has a new rivalry (Rooster vs. Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin).

It’s a perfect mixture of new and old, with plenty of flashbacks to the first film but lots of hat tips to the modern age (the pilots are told they’ll soon be replaced by drone-type aircraft). Its ending is stellar.

For families, Top Gun: Maverick stays in PG-13 territory, even if we hear salty language and one unnecessary F-bomb (see language details below) and see one implied physical encounter (we see Maverick enter Penny’s house; moments later, they lay down and briefly kiss; her clothes stay on during the scenes, and he is forced to sneak out a bedroom window when her teenage daughter returns home early).

Top Gun: Maverick has a few speed bumps for families. Still, it’s one of the best sequels ever made.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and some strong language. Language details: s--t (17), GD (1), b-lls (1), a-- (2), h-ll (9), d--n (4), SOB (2), misuse of “Jesus” (2), d--k (1), OMG (2), f-word (1).

Entertainment rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Family-friendly rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Photo courtesy: ©Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures Corporation 

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.