I really enjoyed this, I left the cinema buzzing which is always a sign of a good movie. If you saw the original Top Gun I'd recommend giving this one the time of day.
I'm going to say this is a 8/10, it's the ultimate dudes rock movie of 2022 and you can just tell the people who made this love Top Gun.
SPOILERS TURN YA PLANE UPSIDE DOWN IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS
So I made a lot of fun of the original Top Gun in my review of it, mainly because it's old. Top Gun (2022) feels the same way as me, and spends the beginning of the film just roasting Maverick. It's like man you suck and you're old and you killed a goose and you have no money for everyone's beers GET OUT!
Here to really drive the guilt train is Miles Teller as Gooses son, he's utterly fantastic. Really such a great actor, I have so much time for him.
That being said, he looks like such a Muppet in the bar wearing his aviator sunglasses indoors, singing a song that no way all those people knew the words too, wearing a dad Hawaii shirt and that outrageous mustache. What a Muppet.
The movie follows a similar structure to the original Top Gun with tons of nostalgia bait thrown in there, but what really got me was the new mission.
The new mission is just so fucking cool. Some baddies have uranium, go blow it up. They do this absolutely awesome explanation of the flight path, showing exactly all the challenges that'll face our aviators. It's so awesome and I still remember it now, 5 hours after seeing the movie. I feel like I could fly it, that's how ingrained into my mind that is. That's so impressive.
The flying in general is just so amazing, I know it's not fair to compare to the 80s but my goodness it's so real now. They explain everything in a totally natural way, you get the stakes of every moment and the challenges facing the pilots.
I'm not sure how much of it is real and how much is movie horseshit but it feels real and makes logical sense.
So the only reason it's an 8/10 and not more is because whilst the visuals, characters and sounds are all awesome, I simply did not care about any emotional beats at all. I like the little side characters but I don't care about them, I don't care about Maverick hooking up with his ex, I honestly don't care tons about Gooses son being mad at Maverick, it feels a bit contrived and like everyone just needed to have a chat.
I will say Val Kilmer as Iceman got me. That's honestly due to the real world stuff but man, seeing someone struggling like that toward the end of their life is so hard. They use digital magic to create his voice and it's wobbly and unconvincing but what can you do. His character has throat cancer same as him which is really sad, it's all so sad. I really feel for the guy.
Oh they do a really good joke at the start that o just remembered, when he ejects out that place that's going Mach 10 and goes to the diner, downs a big water and asks where he's at and the kid says "earth" , love that. Is it intentional that he looks like Buzz Lightyear in this scene? I hope so.
Speaking of jokes, in the final mission we get some jokes that don't land for me when Rooster and Maverick save each others lives then have a snow scrap, it feels way too unrealistic and undoes a lot of dramatic tension that I felt the film had really earned.
I was going to say why bother with that whole bit but the payoff of them being in a plane together is so awesome. The movie sucks itself off a bit much by having it be the same plane from the 80s version but there's a lot of that in this.
The movie finishes sucking itself off by having the Hangman character save them, which is kinda like an Iceman thing, I guess it works I dunno I wasn't huge on the ending.
One thing that annoyed me- NO HIGHWAY TO THE DANGER ZONE?! FUCK YOU MAN!
I love that song.
Oh this movie is a lot less horny than the original, the only horny is the beach American football season, which isn't anywhere near as horny as the volleyball scene in the 80s version. I wonder who has changed in the writing/directing department for the horny to be turned so far down?
Not that I'm complaining, and there's still some horny here, just not as much as last time round.
On that note I think we are done here, give it a go and honestly just have a fun time in the cinema. I know I certainly did!
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