Top Gun: Maverick
[{'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': "I didn't like the first Top Gun as much as this one, mostly because this one gave Cruise just about every creative control, tech,etc he needed. It soars as his best blockbuster, yes even more so and better than the M:I movies simply because its not just an action flick, it has heart, tons of emotion, great acting from those young actors, and older ones (like the lovely Jennifer Connelly).......and of course Cruise.\n\nIf you want to be blown away, watch this on the biggest screen possible. Even if its just a standard movie theatre. 5/5 stars. Avatar 2, well, its gonna have it rough topping Cruise as the years best Blockbuster, and nothing else will come close. 2022 just got real!"}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Top Gun II is just as masterful as the original 1986 film. It has the same spectacular visual quality, with glorious shots of fighter aircraft in combat, the same sense of adventure and daring. While there are many nostalgic references to the original, the sequel presents a completely new story. The mission is to attack a uranium enrichment plant in an unspecified hostile country. The defenses are nearly impregnable, the terrain is challenging, and the mission may not be achievable. Just as in the original, Tom Cruise relies more on his instinct as a fighter pilot than on technology and must train a new generation to follow his lead, knowing that he is putting their lives at risk. There are some brief romantic interludes and some introspection having to do mainly with the events in the earlier film. But in the end, the Top Gun II is a straightforward celebration of professionalism, courage and dedication.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'You will never see a sequel like this again because no one else has the dedication of Tom Cruise. Almost four decades and $152 million later Maverick is back in our lives, better than ever. He’s still irritating the top brass, but is learning to be a role model and father figure. Val Kilmer (survivor of throat cancer) makes an incredible cameo thanks to a CGI voice. Charlie didn’t return; Jennifer Connolly tries to fill the space and they give off more of a mom and dad vibe than passion, but it’s fine. The casting of the new generation has two standouts, Hangman, who is as magnetic as Val was, and Rooster, who could not be a more perfect in the role of Goose’s son, to whom Mav is now a father figure. Major props to Tom for letting a tall guy play the role and not hiding the height difference- as a parent who has to look up to see her son I can relate and thought it was adorable. There are 6 jet fighters in the movie, including the F-14 which makes a hilarious comeback. I suggest seeing this in 260 degrees first so you can get a wide view of the flight scenes. Besides the incredible film experience, there are great real life lessons to be learned about creative perseverance, goals and focus, highlighted by Tom who makes a personal appearance at the beginning of the film which I won’t spoil. Happy viewing!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Awesome film! Terrific performances from entire cast, especially Tom Cruise, who looks phenomenal & fits right in during the beach football game with a bunch of shirtless 20/30-something dudes! Lots of action, all the emotions, and just the perfect amount of nostalgia! Miles Teller was perfect as the son of Goose! Jennifer Connelly also looks phenomenal & did a great job. This movie was TOTALLY worth the 36-year wait! Cinematic perfection! Oscar-worthy!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Great movie, seen movie 1st day that was released at movie theaters, a movie that you want to see many times. Amazing special effects.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'A true triumph in film making! This is one of those movies in which it is way better than the sum of it’s parts. The plot is simple complex, the characters relatively straight forward, and special effects are practical and not some over the top CGI insanity, yet the movie succeeds in every possible way. The movie pays a great deal of homage to the original, but it does it in just the right amount to give that perfect sense of nostalgia without being over the top.\n\nI cannot imagine a more perfect sequel. You run the full gamut if emotions watching this film. The aviation sequences are sheer insanity. You literally can FEEL what the characters are going through and it has you on the edge of your seat the whole final act. I musta held my breath more times than I can count. The sheer effort that went into taling the aviation scenes is immense and it shows.\n\nAnyone with a love for cinema should see this movie. It’s what movie making should be. Go see this movie!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'For those of you who have recently exited a monastery or woken from a coma, Ton Cruise has returned in a "Top Gun" sequel, apparently a decade in the making, which is basically a very non-woke blast that\'s currently soaring at the box office. If you\'re a fan of the original, the opening scene\'s Kenny Loggins\' "Danger Zone," will get your head bobbing like Will Ferrell\'s in "Night at the Roxbury."\n\nIn the movie, Tom "The Reincarnation of Dorian Gray" Cruise plays Navy Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell who quickly winds up in the doghouse with the top brass fifteen minutes into the movie when he succeeds in his airborne mission but performs some Cruise high jinks; luckily his old pal, Val "Iceman" Kilmer is very ill but still exerts enough influence that Tom is assigned to mentor the elite one percent of pilots because there is an upcoming hazardous mission to be executed involving the destruction of a uranium-storing base (I think). and not banished forever. So he returns where he meets old flame Jennifer Connolly, now the single mom of a teenage daughter, as well as an assortment of bright young things, one of whom, played by Miles Teller, is the son of Cruise\'s former nemesis and so, instant conflict. Naturally, there are ups and downs, but by the end, the handpicked four students are prepared to give the mission their best shot.\n\nCruise does all his eighties signature Cruise stuff: flashes those pepsodent choppers, takes off his shirt, rocks a pair of aviator sunglasses, etc. Kilmer is affecting in his role, too, and the rest of the cast does a great job. No politics here, just a good time. This is a sequel that was definitely worth the wait.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-4 review-rating', 'review_body': 'In full disclosure I want to admit that my expectations and excitement for this movie were (pardon the pun) flying very, very high so I was a little surprised that though I thoroughly enjoyed it I wasn\'t stunned (in a good way) by the theatrical experience. "Top Gun: Maverick" is aptly named as its focus is firmly on Tom Cruise\'s character Pete Maverick, still only a Captain in the Navy nearly 30 years on. He\'s still flying solo and doing it his way. The movie begins by demonstrating his codename\'s claim as an aviation test he\'s been tasked to is being shut down and he\'s not going to let that happen. In this way we see the first of many callbacks to the original "Top Gun", including some of that movie\'s iconic music that this film\'s score can\'t compete with, and the callbacks are mostly narrative threads with none looming larger or being more pronounced than Maverick\'s ongoing feelings of guilt over the loss of his former wingman, Goose. As Cruise takes the post of mission strategist/ analyst that was formerly occupied by "Top Gun" love interest Kelly McGillis (and older moviegoers familiar with the original will be glad to note that "Maverick" does not try to have one of his students romance him) he also takes on far more as trainer and teacher of a class of recent Top Gun graduates; his goal is to train them how to accomplish a nearly impossible mission and maybe, just maybe, get out alive. Along the way he meets a former love interest (this time around played by Jennifer Connelly playing Penny) but the movie doesn\'t dwell on their relationship.\n\nThe movie really hits its stride in the third/ final act and does not end where one might suppose it to end based on how much it follows the original\'s formula. This is, and the emotional heart of the movie (which I\'ve tried to be careful not spoil for anyone who might not know), are what make this movie a real crowd pleaser. There are big, requisite, punctuated moments where you can guess what is about to happen and cheer when it does (and if they hadn\'t happened you\'d be severely disappointed). There are "Woah!" moments. There are tearful moments. There are a few chuckles. But none of them beat the fist-pumping "YES!!!" moments of the film. But, still, manage your expectations so you\'re not flying above the ceiling before the movie gets going...right into the danger zone, baby!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Apparently, I don’t do well with reviews given how this has been received in comparison to others who drop a paragraph. So, disregard everything I say below and just take into consideration I’ve now watched this film ten times in the theater...so far. Highest possible recommendation!!\n\nWe live in an age where Hollywoodland believes it’s a good idea to create endless sequels to long dead franchises, or single movies that were never intended to continue a story. Almost every time, these exercises crash and burn, making fans and audiences alike cringe on their way out of the theater, rightly so. When these projects get announced, we stare wide-eyed at the probable disaster we know lay ahead of us, like the lookout onboard The Titanic, watching his ship cruise straight for the iceberg he knows in his heart will end in ruin. We ask why. We dread it’s coming and fear the manifestation of its reality. “Here we go again...”\n\n“Reboot.” Many people take this word and look at the definition of it as it applies to computers. To reboot something is so often considered to be nothing more than a reset, in essence. There is a more obscure definition of the word which means “to revitalize or breathe new life into.” Top Gun: Maverick is a sequel. It is also a reboot.\n\nRocky Balboa. Rambo. Creed. Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Cobra Kai. Reboots all.\n\nOnce in a great while, as in the case of the examples I list above, a reboot/sequel to something long considered dead and gone, emerges as something inexplicable. One of these projects emerges out of the sea of improbability as a shining star, a jet plane rising into the heavens to behold, defying every odd, expectation and precedent. Top Gun: Maverick is one such project.\n\nNot unlike many others, I suspect, I knew this was coming long ago. When it became official, I scoffed. With the timing of it being made, I foresaw a shallow film like all those other sequels that never should have been, I saw the political landscape being infused, and I saw legacy characters being destroyed to prop up other, inferior, identity agenda-driven personalities that could never stand on their own.\n\nThe initial teaser trailer made me pay attention. What a shock that was! The first actual trailer captured my curiosity, in spite of myself. I did not expect that. A decision had to be made.\n\nIn anyone else’s hands, a post-2016 Top Gun sequel likely would have been the story of failed pilot Maverick, learning how to better himself by stepping aside, allowing a feminist transgender Liberal ethnic minority pilot to bring down the patriarchy through the art of flying, full of every “orange man bad” cliché message the ladies over at The View could praise.\n\nWell, Tom Cruise has a message all right. His message is very clear: I make good quality, entertaining movies in spite of politics (his next film appears to directly counter them).\n\nThank you, Mr. Cruise! You understand your profession and you understand your audience. You respect and appreciate them and they, in turn, you. You (and your crew) have given us a story full of action, heart, loyalty, tension, drama and just the right amount of nostalgia that you didn’t need to beat us over the head with as memberberry bats. I have seen this film twice so far. There will be others. You can count on it. I look forward to adding this film to my collection when the one comes.\n\nFor me, this will likely be my favorite film of 2022, for which I must now apologize to The Northman and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Great films, but will never maintain this level of entertainment *and* rewatchability.\n\nIf I were to have one complaint, it’s really a nitpick, and I can’t even say much without it being a spoiler. One particular scene lacked what I consider a very necessary cameo for what it was, and that is all I can say.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': 'My review of the original Top Gun also applies to this one: it needed more flying and less "plot."\n\nAnd, for this one, fewer shots of actors flopping back and forth in the back seat of an F-18 that is demonstrating its 180 degree roll rate.\n\nTony Scott would have worked marvels with the level of hardware support the sequel got. The current director apparently has no idea how to photograph aircraft in flight. I mean, how do you mess up a P-51 like that with quick cuts, rapidly changing viewpoints, and zooming in on the actors instead of the real star of the scene? Top Gun wasn\'t perfect, but it contains some wonderful aerial photography. Artistic.\n\nNot so for Top Gun 2. The initial "dogfight" scenes are incomprehensible quick cuts, and without the benefit of the punch of the original soundtrack.\n\nAnd then there is the videogame plot - although that description would be an insult to the better flightsim software out there, so I am talking 80\'s Scramble-level videogame here. A certain series of story elements and corny lines had me expecting to hear someone on screen say "use the Force." A setup that worked for a sci-fi fantasy simply destroyed my suspension of disbelief when it was dropped into a modern military action flick.\n\nTop Gun 2 will make for a fine drinking game, based on imbibing a beverage every time they recycle some of the dumbest lines from the first movie. And I have to admit, the audiences sure seem to be drinking that up.\n\nOverall, Top Gun 2 makes the original look like a documentary!\n\nThis sequel struck me as a big-budget tribute to movies Airplane and Hot Shots - except the joke is on moviegoers this time. Remember Macho Grande?\n\nThat is all, aviators.'}]