Top Gun

Actor Jay Ellis saw the movie Top Gun on a Texas Air Force base when he was a child, and it made him dream of becoming a fighter pilot.

“So I think that it’s really cool that we have the representation, not just of Black characters, but of many different men and women.” Military historian David Silbey told NBC News that the Navy was initially “resistant to having Black Americans in any position oriented toward combat and wanted to keep them in service positions like mess hall attendants.” The original Top Gun featured one Black pilot, Marcus “Sundown” Williams, played by Clarence Gilyard, but the sequel features more Black and minority actors.

Where was the original "Top Gun" filmed in San Diego -- and which spots can you visit today? Check out this list.

Tom Cruise – Pete “Maverick” Mitchell · Kelly McGillis – Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood · Val Kilmer – Tom “Ice Man” Kazansky · Anthony Edwards – Nick “Goose” ...

After Top Gun, Rossovich landed a big part in Roxanne, the Steve Martin-led adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. He would then go on to star in Navy SEALs alongside Charlie Sheen and his Terminator co-star Michael Biehn. While Edwards amassed a solid filmography on the big screen with the 1988 cult classic Miracle Mile and a memorable supporting role in David Fincher’s 2007 serial killer opus Zodiac, it was in TV where Edwards would shine with his multiple award-winning performances as Doctor Mark Greene in the medical drama ER. Tom Skerritt has long been a fixture on screens big and small with over 200 credits to his name. Cruise would go on to become a consistent force as a box-office king with movies such as Rain Man, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds, as well as scoring Oscar nominations for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, and Magnolia. It is with Charlie that Maverick opens up about the death of his father who was killed in action during the Vietnam War. Transitioning to a prolific character actor throughout the 2000s, Kilmer would face his toughest challenge when diagnosed with throat cancer which practically rendered him voiceless.

By Javier Romualdo. Los Angeles, May 25 (EFE).- A professionally trained architect with a passion for cinema, Joseph Kosinski is the guiding hand behind the ...

You need to keep the whole team moving in the same direction. “As the director, you need to enlist the help of hundreds, if not thousands, of people to help you make it. “I mean, I think the blueprint is definitely related to the script.

CBS 8's Carlo Cecchetto got the chance to talk to a fighter pilot at NAS North Island about the movie and about his unique job and responsibility to the ...

USA Volleyball's Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb help us out as we examine the best volleyball-in-jeans scene ever.

“Yeah, Tom Cruise probably the worst form.” Crabb added. “I see Tom Cruise wearing a pair of jeans on the beach.” “A little too intense.” “He’s kind of spastic,” Bourne said. “So far, the setting is very marginal,” Crabb adds in a more diplomatic tone. “Questionable outfits,” Crabb said as Kenny Loggins serenaded the duo from their screen.

Tom Cruise returns as Navy flyboy Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell, in a sequel that feels familiar and new in just the right proportions.

As a producer, he has wisely taken the nearly 40 years in between “Top Guns” to steward the property with care and intelligence, resulting in a movie that feels familiar and new in just the right proportions. In the film’s most affecting sequence, Pete goes to see his old frenemy Iceman (Val Kilmer), who may be physically diminished but is no less distinguished; it’s a get-out-your-mankerchiefs moment played with taste, restraint and sincerity that’s as disarming as it is quietly authentic. As a performer, he’s both commanding and generous, knowing exactly when to step back, when to throw in a self-deprecating joke and when to become Tom Freaking Cruise, in all his smiling, instinctively charismatic glory. Soon enough, Pete is called back to the Top Gun aviator school in San Diego, where he’s tasked with teaching a new class of elite pilots to fly a tactically impossible mission. For one thing, Pete himself has become a far more interesting protagonist, losing the cocky air of petulance and impunity and mellowing into a man with some miles on him. Like the hyper-competent aces at the story’s core, this is a movie that defines its lane early and sticks to it, with finesse, unfussy style and more than a few sneak attacks of emotion.

He returns to the role of U.S. Navy fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, whose cocky, risk-taking flyboy personality made him the standout superstar, almost ...

Can Maverick whip the young pilots into shape, make them a team and get them prepared for a daring, do-or-die mission (in this case, a blitz to destroy an enemy compound in an unnamed rouge nation)? Can he teach them to fly at a dangerously low altitude, through a twisty canyon, below radar level to avoid a stronghold defended by lethal batteries of surface-to-air missiles? And the movie almost fetishizes certain “icons” from the first film—like Maverick in his signature shades or leaning into the wind on his Kawasaki GPZ motorcycle, flashing his pearly whites in a blissful grin. The new Top Gun has plenty of throwbacks to its 1980s roots, from a reprise of Kenny Loggins’ original signature song, Danger Zone, to character reappearances and nods to previous events. Now, Maverick is called back to Top Gun to train a new batch of elite younger pilots for a seemingly impossible mission. He returns to the role of U.S. Navy fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, whose cocky, risk-taking flyboy personality made him the standout superstar, almost four decades ago, at the elite Navy training program known as Top Gun. Leaping from the top of one building to another?

The long-awaited sequel starring Tom Cruise is an upgrade from the 1986 original.

Maverick and Penny on a sailboat! There’s Maverick and Penny on a motorcycle! Remember that scene in the original where Maverick and his wingman, Goose (Anthony Edwards), are singing “Great Balls of Fire” at the bar? Behind all that machismo, you’ll find charming and vulnerable performances from both Cruise and Teller. The result is more emotional than any movie that opens with Kenny Loggins singing “Danger Zone” has any business being. “Top Gun: Maverick,” out Friday, is worth the wait, a nostalgia-filled, adrenalin rush full of high-flying action, stunning visuals and, surprisingly, heart. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- “Top Gun” fans who waited (checks notes) 36 years for a sequel can breathe a sigh of relief.

Tom Cruise returns as Maverick in "Top Gun: Maverick." The sequel to the 1986 "Top Gun" is great fun. Miles Teller, Jon Hamm and Ed Harris also star.

“Top Gun: Maverick” is a movie-star movie with great action pieces best seen on the biggest screen available. But there’s also a sense of melancholy, and not just because of the danger involved. He’s a good pilot, but he’s also the son of the late Goose (Anthony Edwards), whose death Maverick still mourns and can’t shake responsibility for. “Maverick: Top Gun” is kind of like “The Right Stuff” if Cruise played Chuck Yeager and all of the Mercury astronauts. But it’s Rooster (Miles Teller) who is the most problematic. Bob (Lewis Pullman) is the nerd with guts. Hangman (Glen Powell) is the Iceman stand-in, good and knows it. Maverick is not slated to actually fly the mission, just instruct his students on how to. Like every other detail in the film, it’s a calculated decision. Kosinski begins the film on a busy aircraft carrier, much like the original, complete with Kenny Loggins’ massive hit “Danger Zone.” But we’re in the present now. It’s never mentioned, the better to avoid boycotts of ticket sales in countries that might not appreciate the rah-rah military message being used at their expense. At one point Kilmer’s Iceman, now an admiral who serves as a kind of guardian angel for his former rival, tells Cruise’s Maverick it’s time to let go.

Tom Cruise had his breakthrough moment in 1983's “Risky Business” and planted his flag as an A-list headliner with “Top Gun” in 1986, and he's never NOT ...

And of course the airborne sequences are spectacular and especially impressive given we are watching practical effects as opposed to CGI. “Top Gun: Maverick” is a visceral good time and a worthy salute to the original. (The filmmakers miss an easy opportunity to show Maverick’s emotional growth at one point, and I’ll say no more about that.) Cruise and Connelly are wonderful together, and Cruise and Teller establish an involving father-estranged-son type dynamic—and there’s a genuinely touching scene in which Maverick and Iceman are reunited, with Val Kilmer’s real-life battle with throat cancer reflected in Iceman’s declining health. We’re not looking for some sort of introspective, existential, dark drama with psychological underpinnings, we’re anticipating a good old-fashioned summer movie experience and we’re expecting to feel our teeth rattle and feel our eyeballs pop as we enjoy the rollercoaster ride and revel in all the familiar beats and callbacks. Maverick’s job is to select the best team for a mission that involves bombing a uranium enrichment plan on enemy soil—a mission that will take at least two miracles, or so we’re told, and looks to be something straight out of a “Star Wars” movie. If it weren’t for the A-6s and F-14s being replaced by F-18s and F-35s, you might wonder if you’ve accidentally wandered into a revival screening of “Top Gun” instead of the sequel. Tom Cruise had his breakthrough moment in 1983’s “Risky Business” and planted his flag as an A-list headliner with “Top Gun” in 1986, and he’s never NOT been a major movie star (with a carefully cultivated image) ever since.

“Top Gun: Maverick”: Doubters be damned. Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski have done it, concocted a sequel that is a vast improvement over the film that ...

A dinner table sequence with the fam is hysterical and worth the rental alone. “Pleasure”: In the opening scene of director Ninja Thyberg’s sexually explicit Sundance provocateur, a young Swedish woman with aspirations of becoming the next big L.A. porn star deboards a plane and enters the U.S., where she is asked the standard question: “Are you here for business or pleasure.” The soon-to-be Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel) pauses and then replies “pleasure.” She discovers soon after that porn is a business and in order to ascend to the top, she needs to show she can handle extreme scenes. Joining him on his liberating journey are his new flatmate, the sex worker Denis (Eduardo Valdarnini), a charmer of a bakery shop owner Luca (Gianmarco Saurino) and his gal-pal Cristina (Michela Giraud). But when he meets that special someone, he finds himself at a pivotal crossroad. As one would expect, “Pleasure” goes behind the scenes of a lucrative industry, and it is in these uncensored, sometimes revealing and unsettling moments, that Thyberg’s debut feature surges with its feminist might. To create a sense of authenticity – which the film masters well – Thyberg populates it with adult-film talent for an unflinching, fascinating look at a profession from the inside and out. “Dinner in America”: Writer/director Adam Rehmeier’s feisty and unruly (in the best way imaginable) effort has been making the festival rounds since it debuted to accolades at 2020’s Sundance. It’s a joy ride through the awkward relationship between two Midwestern outcasts, a bullied teen (Emily Skeggs) and a punk rocker (Kyle Gallner) and recalls the feisty spirit of coming-age comedies such as “Heathers.” It’ll make you laugh and even wince at the same time. Akin to Paul Mazursky’s 1978 “An Unmarried Woman” with Jill Clayburgh, “Mascarpone” finds Antonio getting into tune with not just his desires and needs but his own fumbles. But the filmmaking duo that gave us “What Maisie Knew” and “The Deep End” offset the stormfront of despair with genuine if fleeting moments of self-discovery and reconciliation. Spacek and Simmons play a couple dealing with aging issues in a rural Illinois town where the sudden appearance of an enigmatic man (Chai Hansen) in their home sets off a chain reaction. Maverick’s reckoning with the doubts and actions of his past leads him to one of the sequel’s most poignant moments – a reunion with his friend and former rival, Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer). Add in a very strong female character — single mom/bar owner Penny (Jennifer Connelly), breathtaking, state-of-the-art aerial stunts and special effects and a lovely Lady Gaga theme song and “Top Gun: Maverick” nails the landing as one of the best summer blockbusters you’ll ever see. “Night Sky”: Amazon Prime’s latest sci-fi-tinged series comes with the high-caliber talents of Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons. And it gets off to a touching start only to wind up tangled in its own narrative weeds, straying into multiple storylines that takes us away from what was working so well — the relationship between the two leads. The scenario only sets the table for the main event: tension-filled encounters with wannabe Top Gun pilot Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), son of Maverick’s former partner “Goose,” who was killed in the first film.

SAN MARCOS, Calif. — CBS 8 is celebrating 'Top Gun Week' in anticipation of the May 27 movie release of the Top Gun sequel: Maverick. In this Zevely Zone, ...

An early clue is when middle-aged Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is seen riding motorcycle without a helmet. Kind of acceptable in the 1980s. An absolute ...

And the fight sequences are genuinely thrilling, especially as they whiz between mountains and dip into valleys. The jets themselves are sleeker and cooler. Often, there are scenes where the hero triumphs and crowds cheer and the authority figure is forced to shake his head in grudging admiration. She and Maverick have a back story—they dated off and on, they were in love, he repeatedly broke her heart—that they treat as though we should already know about it. It is well known that Val Kilmer has been in poor health these last few years, but the film handles his appearance with generosity and grace. The film makes it clear that Maverick would be long out of the military for insubordination were it not for Iceman, now an admiral himself, having his back. (Hey, it’s the 21st century, after all!). We’ve got Hangman (Glen Powell), the overly cocky one. Maverick wouldn’t be Maverick without a humorless authority figure to rail against—and in this case that thankless role goes to Jon Hamm, as Admiral Simpson. A huge part of ’80s films—and I can’t emphasize this enough—is a renegade hero earning the respect of various authority figures. A cursory knowledge of the original film helps understand this one, although it’s not exactly Melville. Maverick’s best friend and wingman Goose died under his watch and he’s never forgiven himself, even though the military cleared him of any wrongdoing. The shirtless, vaguely homoerotic male bonding (although, alas, the tightie-whities of the ’80s are gone). The nose-thumbing of authority. Indeed, many elements of the original are intact. An early clue is when middle-aged Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is seen riding motorcycle without a helmet.

It's Top Gun: Maverick Week here at For The Win, where we've taken to the skies for five days' worth of content to celebrate the premiere of the sequel to ...

Celebrities and other athletes are regular attendees at the Indy 500, and some, like Chris Hemsworth, Matt Damon and Christian Bale, have also been the race’s honorary starter. But for the 2022 Indy 500, that sentiment will mean a little something extra. The 2022 Indy 500 is set for Sunday, and the green flag is scheduled to fly at 12:45 p.m. ET on NBC, but coverage begins at 11 a.m.

Miles Teller, who stars in "Top Gun: Maverick," will wave the green flag for the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday.

Scott Dixon smashed the Indianapolis 500 pole-winning record with a qualifying run of more than 234 mph. Teller will wave the green flag for "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing" at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday. INDIANAPOLIS -- Miles Teller feels the need, the need for speed -- and the "Top Gun: Maverick" actor will get it as the honorary starter for what should be the fastest Indianapolis 500 in history.

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 ...

Top Gun: Maverick spends a lot of time in this perspective, so it's good to see the stunt teams and cinematographers repeatedly strike a hot beach volleyball high-five over this collaboration. Everyone will have a different favorite on this front, but mine is a dramatic fly-by somewhat early in the film that I won't spoil for you, except to say that it was reportedly filmed with actors taking the real-life brunt of its buzz. were clearly eager to take cinematic air combat to the next level, and there's no getting around it: If you have to stitch three hospital-grade masks together or rent out a private room to feel comfortable in a public movie theater in 2022, you should consider doing so for this film. You might see another plane in view, or vapor trails, or dumped flares dancing and billowing smoke, or a glancing shadow of the jet against the Earth's surface because the F/A-18 Hornet is actually flying that freaking low in real life. As I walked out of my review screening of Top Gun: Maverick, coming down from its adrenaline-filled finale, a small part of my brain began looking for dents in the film's armor. But Top Gun's core tenets—incredible fighter-jet combat, enjoyable cheese, and the big-grin smile of Cruise—have returned in arguably finer form than the original.

It's not just a movie, it's an event! After nearly 4 decades, a sequel to the Tom Cruise blockbuster "Top Gun" will open Thursday around Columbus.

(The latest, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One,” will be released in July of 2023.) At various points, the movie was scheduled to come out in June 2020, December 2020 and November 2021. The team then embarks on a mission of international significance.

Who has the best technique? Are jeans the best for volleyball? USA Volleyball's Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb help us answer these questions and more.

“Yeah, Tom Cruise probably [has] the worst form.” Crabb added. “I see Tom Cruise wearing a pair of jeans on the beach.” “A little too intense.” “He’s kind of spastic,” Bourne said. “So far, the setting is very marginal,” Crabb adds in a more diplomatic tone. “Questionable outfits,” Crabb said as Kenny Loggins serenaded the duo from their screen.

If you loved "Top Gun" from 1986, will you like the sequel? If you didn't give a care about the first film, should you see the second? The answer is ...

"Top Gun: Maverick" was shot in 2019 but the release was delayed by the pandemic. But isn't that what some of the best action movies are meant to do? But the filmmaking of "Top Gun: Maverick" is light years beyond the first movie. Though Cruise said he was waiting for the right story, the 2012 death of "Top Gun" director Tony Scott was just one of many issues. The return of Tom Cruise as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell to TOPGUN, the elite Navy Fighter Weapons School, is as satisfying and delicious as a big juicy strawberry. You will feel the pilots' sweats and struggles.

In this rousing sequel to the 1986 blockbuster, directed by Joseph Kosinski, the first film's protagonist, a Navy fighter pilot (Tom Cruise), is ordered by his ...

The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Motion Picture Association rating, PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount) — Catholic News Service classification, A-III — adults. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Tom Cruise stars in a scene from the movie "Top Gun: Maverick." The Catholic News Service classification is A-III -- adults.

Goose? Iceman? Charlie? As "Top Gun: Maverick" hits theaters on May 27, here are the characters returning. (Plus, who the heck is Penny Benjamin?)

Which characters are back in 'Maverick'? And who's Penny Benjamin?11 PHOTOS

“Top Gun,” an action-drama film about fighter pilots training at the U.S. Navy's Fighter Weapons School, was a new kind of American war movie that started a ...

“The people who thrive under an adrenaline rush can see their performance enhance when accomplishing a task, especially if they’re an expert in that task,” Moffat said. It’s a slower response that also comes from the adrenal gland in the release of a hormone called cortisol. The first is the adrenaline hormone releasing from a particular part of the adrenal gland called the adrenal medulla. “I think the new movie is going to be a huge hit,” Williams said. Winnefeld’s latest project, “ The Adrenaline Zone,” is a podcast that interviews people who have taken physical, financial, emotional, or reputational risks. His blood would pump fast while landing his F-14 on a moving aircraft carrier in the complete darkness of a cloudy night. I enjoy the movie on these levels because of that then-surprising, gendered gaze in what could’ve be an uncritical moment of escapism.” Director Tony Scott came from an advertising background and brought a new commercial sensibility and style to the movie. Winnefeld would later become a naval commander, eventually serving as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until he retired in 2015. During the middle of Winnefeld’s tenure as a TOPGUN instructor, Paramount Pictures began production of “Top Gun.” Suddenly, people from Hollywood began visiting the air station for research. He said flying for the film was nowhere as intense as real combat training, therefore, his favorite part of being on set was watching scenes filmed on the ground. Upon completion, he returned to his squadron and shared the knowledge with his peers.

Actor Jay Ellis remembers watching the 1986 movie “Top Gun” at an Air Force base in Austin, Texas. He was only 8 or 9 years old, and the blockbuster made him ...

“I think that character was in the original ‘Top Gun,’ and he flew with that class. “My name, Warlock, to me means I managed to disappear out of all of the pictures in the old film. “I think it’s a reasonably fair portrayal, but we need to recognize that there’s still a long way to go for the armed services and American society as a whole.” “I really just learned commitment and responsibility from them in a way that I hadn’t thought about it before,” Parnell said. In “Top Gun: Maverick,” he returns to the naval flight academy to train a new class of pilots. “So I think that it’s really cool that we have the representation, not just of Black characters, but of many different men and women.” He wasn’t supposed to be in a combat position,” Silbey said. He said he thinks the first “Top Gun” was a worldwide success because few people knew about Navy pilots. He said showing a Black Navy pilot with other diverse pilots on the big screen is an important milestone. But we didn’t know the ways in which they get chosen and how they trained to do it.” “I think seeing yourself on-screen always is something that people lean into,” he said. And we understand the responsibility to be amazing on-screen for these folks.”

Michael Bonner was in flight school when the movie came out. He said the film inspired him to further chase his dreams of becoming a fighter pilot. (credit: CBS).

I think the flying scenes, for me, are what I am looking forward to seeing,” Percival said. Both Bonner and Percival successfully chased their dreams, eventually being accepted and graduating from the Navy’s Top Gun program. Paramount Pictures is owned and operated under the same parent company as CBS Denver. “You’re always trying to have the perfect flight. The movie topped box offices and inspired countless young women and men to pursue a career in aviation. DENVER (CBS4) – As Paramount Pictures prepares for the release of their new movie, Top Gun Maverick, some local Top Gun graduates are reflecting on how the original movie influenced their career paths.

The air-to-air footage is top notch. Cruise does all the flying in the warbirds, while Corden does an admirable job of holding onto his lunch. As ...

Cruise arrives in a HondaJet, then spirits Corden away to a desert airfield where the British talk show host reprises the role of “Goose” from the back seats of, first, Cruise’s P-51 Mustang and then an Aero L-39 Albatros jet. As for what to expect from the actual 2:17-long movie, National Public Radio reviewer Justin Chang’s headline warns, “‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is ridiculous. As a sidebar teaser to the release, Cruise teamed up with Late Late Show host James Corden for a legitimately funny and very well-filmed 15-minute video that opens on the ramp of Burbank Airport at 4:56 am.

Franchise newcomer Jennifer Connelly gets a wink at the earliest days of her own 1980s career in "Top Gun: Maverick."

As revealed in the trailer, "Top Gun: Maverick" marks the arrival of Jennifer Connelly as the new but seemingly old love interest of our heroic hotshot (Tom Cruise) in the new sequel, Penelope "Penny" Benjamin. Penny arrives on the scene from behind a bar that's a regular spot for Navy types. It's a song that has absolutely no connection to the Tony Scott-directed classic "Top Gun" from, but for fans of one of Connelly's career-defining roles and those that know how to dance the magic dance, it'll likely ring a few bells. Franchise newcomer Jennifer Connelly gets a wink at the earliest days of her own career, and it's just as fun.

Miles Teller, one of the stars of “Top Gun: Maverick”, will serve as honorary starter for this Sunday's 106th running of the Indianapolis 500.

Teller plays Rooster, the son of Goose who perished in the original movie. This summer, Teller will also appear in the science-fiction thriller “Spiderhead,” an adaptation of a George Saunders short story that first was published in The New Yorker and was later included in the author’s book “Tenth of December.” In 2014, Teller starred opposite JK Simmons in the Sony Pictures Classics critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated drama, Whiplash. The hit film received the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance and the Deauville Film Festival, and landed Teller a Best Actor nomination at the 2014 Gotham Awards.

Awareness around the globe is sky-high, and though tracking stateside shows older men being dominant, the hope here is that Top Gun 2 is a 'five-quad' movie as ...

The one holdout territory is Korea, which is another mega Cruise market; that territory still recouping from Covid. It’s not a big piracy market, so when Top Gun 2 lands there, look for it to do well. Directed by Loren Bouchard & Bernard Derriman, the pic follows the Belchers, who try to save their restaurant from closing as a sinkhole forms in front of it. The foreign box office is in a healthy place. Cruise’s previous biggest 3-day at the domestic box office was 2005’s War of the Worlds, which earned $64.8M in what was an extended July 4 launch that began on Wednesday June 29 that year. Then there was the London Royal premiere, followed by a Tokyo premiere; that latter country a big one for Cruise where M:I – Fallout grossed over $42M unadjusted for inflation. This was followed by a San Diego naval base world premiere where the red carpet was rolled out on the USS Midway aircraft carrier.

Tom Cruise, in the role that made him an action star, drips with charisma as the unbearably cocky Navy fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a character that ...

He and the rest of the cast "pilots" trained for months in different aircraft, advancing to the F-18 Super Hornet and even getting launched from an aircraft ...

Jay says it was Maverick -- aka Tom -- who cooked up the training program. Or, in 'Top Gun' speak ... Jay feels the need for speed! Tom is, famously, a licensed pilot himself, and Jay -- who plays "Payback" in the blockbuster -- wants to follow suit, and since he already has a head start on training ... he wants to go the distance.

"Top Gun: Maverick" is the sequel that everyone has been waiting for. But could there be a third film on the horizon?

By the end of "Top Gun: Maverick," the likes of Phoenix (Monica Barbaro), Hangman (Glen Powell), and Bob (Lewis Pullman) are all characters you'd be happy to see take off again, and Maverick doesn't necessarily need to be front and center. Whereas some legacyquels have attempted to reignite a property under the same name, but with an all-new cast, the "Rocky" franchise followed a different approach by bringing back its titular character but allowing a new challenger to step forward and usher in a fresh era. There was a time when the idea of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell ( Tom Cruise) climbing back into the cockpit was little more than a retro-nostalgia pipe dream.

Too much time had passed, and the world had changed too much for a movie about Navy aviators to match up with the superhero pictures that now dominate popular ...

Paramount took some heat when it decided to wait out the pandemic to give theaters a chance to recover before releasing "Top Gun: Maverick." Both the "Fast & Furious" sequel "F9" and the James Bond film "No Time to Die" were relative disappointments when they finally came to theaters, but "Maverick" is a far better movie in every way. "Maverick" is one of those rare movies that understands and fully takes advantage of the latest theater upgrades. The second is a kickass war movie with a team of arrogant aviators who must learn to come together to complete a nearly impossible mission under the guidance of an arrogant aviator who must learn how to teach them what he knows. The team behind "Top Gun: Maverick" defied all expectations to deliver one of the best popcorn movie experiences in years. Movie fans had every reason to expect that a sequel to "Top Gun" more than three decades after the release of the original movie would be one of those legendary disasters. First is a moving story for adult people about the cost of pursuing a career at the expense of personal relationships and whether it's still possible to change enough to repair the damage.

What does a man like Tom Cruise's Lt. Pete Mitchell, aka ace Navy pilot “Maverick,” look like in his old age? What would it be like for such a man to retire?

In this way, Top Gun: Maverick is openly inviting audiences to recognize Cruise’s own real-life biography in the fictional character. Now raised to the rank of merely captain—three ranks above where we met him in the first Top Gun (which amounts to one promotion per decade)—Maverick is where he belongs, pushing the envelope and in the case of the movie’s first scene, testing experimental jets in the same daring Right Stuff fashion as Chuck Yeager, the Air Force pilot who in 1947 made worldwide headlines as the test pilot to first break the sound barrier. That tells you where Maverick is in his life.

Why it's impossible to have a "rehearsed moment in a jet going 700 to 1000 miles an hour"

And they do it so my daughter can go to school and their kid can go to school and your kid can go to school. How many G’s did you pull today?” And you’d write in all of these answers and we did it on a computer, and it would get sent to Tom to read. And then once you get in the air, you get a little bit lower to the ground, a little bit lower to the ground. We all wrapped our arms around it and we protected it because we realized there is a responsibility there. And I think every single one of us sat a little bit taller because of that, because somebody who you idolize and you think is such an amazing actor and person believes in you in that same way. Like yes, we rehearsed a ton and yes, we built up the endurance to take G’s and we knew the maneuvers we would be doing. And if you want to take it all, cool. And you take with you what you want. And we were fortunate enough to be at a time where we could actually go make a movie in the back of F-18s and do this for real. I mean, I’m sure that it gives you a visceral sense of the experience, but ultimately you are an actor. Ellis recently spoke to The A.V. Club about the work he did to feel comfortable in the cockpit of an F-18 and why, with or without Cruise as a spiritual co-pilot, actually performing scenes in the planes was fully necessary. In Top Gun: Maverick, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell returns to the iconic flight school to shepherd a new generation of pilots through the maneuvers he perfected almost 40 years ago.

Tom Cruise's long-awaited sequel 'Top Gun: Maverick' begins opening overseas midweek before landing everywhere in the U.S. on Friday.

Overseas, Maverick opens in 62 markets, although it has yet to secure a China release date and won’t open in South Korea for two more weeks. There’s also a special fan event on May 24 in select Dolby Cinema, Imax and other premium-format theaters. The rest of his films have opened to less than $60 million. Part of the problem in this instance: there’s no way of knowing whether older consumers will set aside their caution and rush out to see the $170 million-plus movie on the first weekend. And that’s a conservative estimate. Many pundits believe the critically acclaimed sequel could soar well north of $100 million domestically, but tracking — one of Hollywood’s favorite pastimes — has become fraught in the pandemic era.

Mitchell is reunited with an old flame, whose name die-hard fans may remember from the first film: Penny Benjamin. Jennifer Connelly was cast to play the ...

Tom Cruise could secure the first $100 million opening weekend of his career with "Top Gun: Maverick."

When it comes to the hijinks of the Belcher family, she says that’s a good thing, writing “‘The Bob’s Burgers Movie’ knows its recipe and sticks to it.” If ticket sales reach the higher end of that range, “Top Gun: Maverick” will rank among the highest-grossing movies of the year in a matter of days. Joseph Kosinski directed the PG-13 “Top Gun: Maverick,” which picks up decades after the original. The film’s positive word of mouth should be helpful in reaching younger audiences, who were not alive when “Top Gun” opened 36 years ago. In today’s moviegoing landscape, it’s rare that Earth-bound adventures like “Top Gun” (though Cruise’s Maverick does, technically, flirt with sky-high altitudes) would be able to rake in that kind of cash in a single weekend. “Maverick” is playing in 4,732 North American cinemas, the widest theater count in history.

Who had the right stuff to star in Tom Cruise's "Top Gun: Maverick"? The new class of elite pilots is significantly more diverse and includes a woman.

"That was all me, I showed up with it at the camera test," Teller says. I can be cocky in the air." Pitching the "Top Gun" sequel to Cruise after three decades seemed like a long shot to the film's director. "It's like texting in the back seat of a car, but you're moving at 500 knots," Ramirez says. "I was like, 'What have I got myself into?' " "I signed the rider that said I wasn't afraid of flying. "I was having so much fun. "Every flight from there on, I peed and I got it down to a science," Ellis says. With only one Black pilot in the original film, the casting message of "Maverick" is clear. "I like that it doesn't have an explanation," Pullman says. "My phone was blowing up," Barbaro says. When the first "Maverick" trailer arrived, she posted on

“Top Gun,” an action-drama film about fighter pilots training at the U.S. Navy's Fighter Weapons School, was a new kind of American war movie that started a ...

A film studies professor discusses that rebirth of military movies, as well as a memorable soundtrack, and a psychology professor explains adrenaline rush. How did “Top Gun” change movie making, and why does it continue to be relevant 36 years later? On May 16, 1986, America was introduced to a film that looked and sounded very different than anything before.

This review of the film Top Gun: Maverick does not contain spoilers. We currently live in a time perceived to have more villains than men or women we want.

Top Gun: Maverick is a full-throttle, action-packed nostalgia machine that delivers the supersonic thrills we all have been clamoring for. The scene with Cruise is a moment that will put a lump in your throat. One of the best action movies in years that has just the right amount of sentimentality to go along with its Hollywood trappings. Top Gun: Maverick is a full-throttle, action-packed nostalgia machine that delivers the supersonic thrills we all have been clamoring for. In a world that desperately needs heroes, Hollywood returned to the one man who can deliver – Tom Cruise! Stand up and cheer, ladies and gentlemen. Cruise is having a lot of fun revisiting a role that made him a worldwide megastar whose wattage has lasted for decades. While the romanticizing piano scene with Miles Teller hits home, it evokes the memory of the beloved character. (The country is left to be ambiguous, but according to reports like Screenrant, the speculation is Iran because of the F-14s flying in the film). However, Mav now has a reprieve from his friend, Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer). How? He is currently an Admiral. Kazansky assigns Maverick to train Top Gun graduates, the Navy’s top aviators, on an impossible mission (sound familiar?). He needs to prepare and pick six pilots to help bomb a site producing nuclear weapons. They revisit the film and fold in Maverick’s backstory. While fighting his demons, Maverick must make believers out of his new boss, Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm), and his star recruits. This was no different in the 80s, an era reflected in movies with big villains, big action, and the intended consequences of creating victors that produced megastars.

Before the release of 'Top Gun: Maverick,' it's worth looking back on the inane glory of the quintessential '80s movie that started it all.

Over and over again, Iceman states his problems with Maverick, but the almost self-parodic intensity of Kilmer’s acting—his sneering, lascivious contempt for Cruise—seems to come from somewhere deep inside, and may be a response to his irritation with the movie itself. If the great appeal of Top Gun lies in its assembly as a bright, vibrating pleasure-delivery machine, “Take My Breath Away” is the pièce de résistance of high-end, consumer-friendly passivity, making even the love scenes between Cruise and Kelly McGillis halfway convincing. Or maybe screenwriters Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. just hadn’t met a human female before: If the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally is the most triumphant moment of Meg Ryan’s career, successfully delivering the sub-porno come-on “take me to bed or lose me forever” as Goose’s wife Carole surely takes the silver. The commercial that got Scott hired on Top Gun was a Saab spot featuring a car and a jet fighter photographed side by side—a juxtaposition that made it into the movie in the sequence when Cruise rides his motorcycle parallel to a runway strip and pumps his fist as a fighter jet takes off in the background. A couple of years earlier in Top Secret!, the actor had perfectly burlesqued Elvis Presley and commanded the camera with an authority comparable to Cruise, but he was also eccentric and adventurous enough to experiment with weirdo villain energy. But either way, Top Gun marks the moment when its star went from another young male ingenue—defined by his charmingly sub–Gene Kelly dancing in Risky Business—to a grinning icon of Hollywood power and fantasy; the face that launched a thousand F-14s. In a 2021 interview with Variety, Bruckheimer denied the rumors that Modine had been the first choice to play Maverick, insisting that “Tom was the only actor we talked to.” Watching the movie again, what’s most remarkable about Cruise’s performance—which was routinely slammed by critics as part of their overall campaign against the film’s style-as-substance—is how it renders his character’s armored, chrome-plated cockiness as endearing rather than off-putting. The same year, as a talented young pool hustler in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money, Cruise played with the ratio of charisma and callowness and ended up with a thorny characterization; his narcissistic vamp to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” is colored by the way we see it through Paul Newman’s wary, judgmental eyes. … The only enemy in the movie, really, [is] any comment that might scratch or dent the immaculate confidence of its pilots, creating holes in the fragile ego-sphere.” The same strutting, alpha bravado that made Top Gun a hit is also what makes it such a ripe target for critique and satire; that it was Platoon’s star, Charlie Sheen, who impersonated Cruise so adroitly in 1991’s Hot Shots! is simply the cherry on top. Imagine a world where the lead role in Top Gun was actually given to Matthew Modine instead of Tom Cruise, and the movie was directed by David Cronenberg. ( Who, for the record, has no regrets.) Both of these possibilities were on the table in 1985, when the film was still just a gleam in producer Don Simpson’s bleary, red-rimmed eyes. The same disembodied, push-of-a-button bombardment skewered by Stanley Kubrick in Dr. Strangelove was reconfigured by Scott as a video-game-style kick, while the earlier film’s snarky eroticism—that indelible opening vision of two bombers symbolically copulating to the strains of “Try a Little Tenderness”—was made both more humorless and explicit. In March 1987—almost a year after it opened atop the box office charts and stayed there—it became the first VHS cassette priced to own at under $26.95, effectively rewriting the rules of the then-developing sell-through market while also staking out new terrain in the field of product placement.

This weekend Tom Cruise has a chance to do something he's never done before — have a film open to more than $100 million at the domestic box office.

Additionally, $100 million box-office debuts have only become commonplace in the last decade, as ticket prices have risen significantly and fan-driven franchises such as Marvel and DC have enticed moviegoers to show up on opening weekend in droves. "Mission: Impossible – Fallout," which was released in 2018, is Cruise's highest-grossing film, making $220 million domestically and $791.1 million globally. Even if the film does not reach $100 million, it is still expected to become Cruise's highest opening weekend domestically. The exception being the Mission: Impossible franchise and a second Jack Reacher film in 2016. Box-office analysts currently foresee a domestic opening of between $98 million and $125 million for the film. - Box-office analysts currently foresee a domestic opening of between $98 million and $125 million for the film.

Let me be clear: I don't like 1986's “Top Gun.” I think it's macho-military propaganda with a schmaltzy script and a semi-good beach volleyball scene.

But is that what you were expecting from a sequel to “Top Gun”? And therein lies perhaps the only issue with the movie: Tom Cruise flies so close to the sun he blots out anything that might illuminate a hypothetically talented cast of characters. First, the basics: Tom Cruise’s Pete Mitchell, aka “Maverick,” is a weather-beaten test pilot with a stalled career. So when I tell you the sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” is worth seeing in a theater, you know I mean it. In an era of Disney franchise pictures where the stakes rarely feel real and any deaths are a business calculation, this movie flies in guns blazing like a relic aircraft from a bygone age. A whole other article could be written about how both of these movies are wholly uninterested in women but almost homoerotically fixated on sweaty men, their egos and their airplanes.)

Do you feel the need for speed? Tom Cruise's eagerly anticipated sequel 'Top Gun: Maverick' finally touches down in local theaters.

Maverick is back riding the clouds to glory, with millions of eager fans longing to be his wingman. Maverick might be the “old-timer,” but he often takes his students to school, earning their respect with highly skilled aerial acts of daring. Wisecracks are uttered about Cruise’s age, but his 59-year-old abs are indistinguishable from the six-packs of the young hotshots, as evidenced in a shirtless beach football scene, the new film’s update on the original’s volleyball sequence. “Top Gun: Maverick” has the look and feel of its 36-year-old predecessor, but the stakes are loftier, the emotions even higher. Rooster sports the same mustache, charm and singing ability as his dad, ripping out a terrific barroom rendition of “Great Balls of Fire” at The Half Deck. Unlike his dad, Rooster pretty much hates Maverick, who looks at his pal’s son and sees a ghost. The added years render him more vulnerable, but also more interesting, a middle-aged man dealing with three decades of baggage. He rides the same motorcycle, sports the same Aviator shades, still buzzes the tower like the young daredevil of old. Only the tried-and-true F-18s of Maverick’s day are stealth enough to fly beneath the detection of anti-aircraft systems. The program is being phased out in favor of drones and robotic pilots. It soars from the get-go, with the familiar voice of Kenny Loggins leading us on another flight into the “Danger Zone.” It’s a seat-rumbling adrenaline rush, as the camera alights on a busy aircraft carrier. The sense of deja vu is palpable, the opening lifted straight from the original. Tom Cruise knows about impossible missions, but “Top Gun: Maverick” is among the easier ones.

That means you'll be seeing a lot of new faces in the cast, including Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, and Ed Harris.

Instead, Jackass Forever came to VOD about a week after it was released on Paramount+. Therefore, if you want to be able to watch Top Gun: Maverick on streaming as soon as it’s available, your best bet is to sign up for Paramount+. No. Top Gun: Maverick is a Paramount movie, not a Warner Bros. movie, and therefore will not be streaming on HBO Max when it opens in theaters. Top Gun: Maverick will open in theaters in the U.S on May 27, 2022. For now, the only way to watch Top Gun: Maverick is to go to a movie theater. The wingmen may look a little different, but if the rave reviews from critics are anything to go by, the spirit of Top Gun remains the same. It’s been 36 years since the first Top Gun movie flew into theaters, and yet somehow, Tom Cruise has barely aged a day.

Getting into the zone. By 1986, Loggins was one of the — if not the — most sought after rock stars when it came to recording hit songs for movies. He'd already ...

It never hit No. 1 but stayed in the top ten for six weeks, peaking at No. 2 behind Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.” Still, Loggins is happy with the chart performance of the single, his second-best-selling song after “Footloose.” “It’s always an exciting moment when your song is reaching up to No. 1,” he says. “After I recorded it, I didn’t really hear it until I saw it in the movie,” he says. At that point, Loggins didn’t know what he was in store for with either the song or the movie, but he had some inkling it was going to be big. Now Loggins is ready for another surge in the popularity of “Danger Zone” with the release of Top Gun: Maverick. “I think it’s going to be a huge hit,” he says of the sequel. “Danger Zone” naturally became a staple of Loggins’s live sets, usually appearing in the encore slot. In retrospect, I may have been a bit too clever (or obvious) with all of the allusions but it was fun nevertheless.” (Moroder, in a 2020 interview with The Guardian, simply said, “The imagery was perfect.”) “I think it was either Toto or Mickey Thomas and Jefferson Starship. I met Kevin Cronin from REO Speedwagon a year ago, and he told me that they asked him if he was available, but he said the notes were too high.” With only Loggins and Moroder in the studio, the recording session was all business. Let’s make that happen.’ I knew that the main thing was to get in on the album, get a strong cut somewhere where they wouldn’t have a lot of choices.” Still, given that Loggins didn’t write the majority of the song, he had to get in a different headspace to emotionally deliver Whitlock’s high-octane words. “The producers and the Music Supervisor (Michael Dilbeck) came to the studio with over 300 songs to audition against various scenes,” Whitlock said, according to a 2018 interview with him by Rediscover the ’80s. “There was a Sony TV in the studio and they would run footage and play bits of songs against various scenes. By 1986, Loggins was one of the — if not the — most sought after rock stars when it came to recording hit songs for movies.

Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of countless blockbuster action movies from The Rock to Pirates of the Caribbean, talks about making a Top Gun sequel more ...

And we put them in an aerobatic prop, which they got to feel some of the G-forces. And then we put them in a jet, and the jet — they could really feel some G-forces. And then we put them in the F-18 — and the jump from the previous jets to the F-18s was huge, because they’re so much faster and agile. I don’t know if you saw [Maverick] with a big audience, but when they screened it for the exhibitors — who are the toughest audience you could ever find — there was laughter, there was applause, there was tears. They make an enormous commitment to be able to get one of those jets, and you can just imagine what they have to go through, the physical rigors, just like the guys do. And [some of them] joined the Navy because they saw Top Gun. We kept hearing that over and over again. They had to remember everything — their lines, and to turn the camera on and off. The Navy was so helpful in giving us their best pilots, and best engineers and crew members to keep these planes up in the air, all the mechanics. I want to take my son and my daughter to see [Maverick]. It was a great experience for me when I was a kid, and for my dad. And it took 15 months to do that, because you have to go through the engineers and lawyers, because [what if] the camera came loose with the actors? He was the only one that really could keep it together up there, because he was in such good physical shape. It has Tom Cruise. This is why you go to a theater. A lot of men have come up to me and said, Look, my dad took me to see Top Gun when I was 10. Simpson died in 1996, but this month, his name appears on screen alongside Bruckheimer’s in Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to one of their definitive 1980s hits.