Top Gun: Maverick spoiler-free review: A worthy return to the danger zone

A small part of my brain was looking for dents in the armor of the film as I walked out of the screening. Maybe it is the critic in me, but my thoughts didn't need long to come up with something from the original film.

I chewed on those thoughts for a second, but before I could finish cataloging them, a sensation came over me. It landed like a massive G-force blast, as if I were a jet fighter pilot attempting a seemingly impossible climb, one of great satisfaction with this sequel and admiration that this film pulled off the impossible feat of adhering to the old while doing something new.

The series has a savvy script and cutting-edge stunt work that make it more tolerable. The character development hits important notes for both Pete and Mitchell, and the film's focused supporting cast mostly hits the mark.

Tom Cruise never steps beyond his pay grade. The Top Gun star of roughly 35 years ago ruled movie theaters for different reasons than the man he is today, yet this film never sees his character betray his beloved traits or feel like an old man faking like a 20-something hotshot.

Lifetime fans of the film will notice that a few of the moving parts have been removed. Fighter-jet combat, enjoyable cheese, and the big-grin smile of Cruise have returned in arguably better form than the original.

“Don’t think, just do”

It is the best IMAX showcase of the past five years, and it has the added benefit of looking incredible on a large screen. If you have to rent a private room in a public movie theater in 2022, you should consider doing it, because Cruise and co. were eager to take cinematic air combat to the next level.

Every major flight scene includes per-cockpit camera rigs that emphasize the added height of IMAX, and in these moments, flying is choreographed to let this camera angle showcase. The F/A-18 Hornet is actually flying that low in real life, so you might see another plane in view, or a vapor trail, or a shadow of the jet against the Earth. In these moments, the actors don't hesitate to explode with emotion, whether splashing their palms on the cockpit glass that extends across the IMAX screen or shrinking back.

It is good to see the stunt teams strike a hot beach volleyball high-five over this collaboration because Top Gun: Maverick spends a lot of time in this perspective. Since the first film was made, the crew has been able to make up for lost time by using wide-angle shots to show how close stunt flyers are to each other, or by letting external cameras linger over death-defying flight scenes. The 1986 style of hard camera cuts is done. We get to watch full dogfights that lead up to each kaboom.

The lengths to which this film goes to favor real-life stunts over green-screen tricks is incredible. Everyone will have a different favorite on this front, but mine is a dramatic fly-by early in the film that was filmed with actors taking the real-life brunt of its buzz. You will feel it when you see it.

My only complaint about the air-combat content is from a few briefings. In each of these, commanding officers point at holograms and break down each step of a mission or exercise as if Cruise insisted that this film resemble the Mission: Impossible series in one way or another. These moments are enjoyable, but I felt they were too much explanation and took too long to get the cameras up into the sky.