My wife and I, together with family, saw it last night. There were ten in our group and we thought it was great! Unanimously so. A very enjoyable, fun film with good flying action scenes and a good plot that pulled the viewer into the story and characters. Most in the theater were applauding at the successful / victorious parts and laughing at the funny bits (it’s not a comedy). At the end there was applause.
If you saw it how did you like it?
One warning, not a spoiler — the sound was LOUD. It was an IMAX theater and maybe that’s why. The movie hadn’t even started yet and my wife was covering her ears. I fashioned field-expedient ear plugs from a napkin. We wore them for the entire movie and that worked well. The movie then became a comfortable experience for us. But why does it have to be so loud? We are not regular concert goers but my brother gave us tickets to see the Eagles last October in San Francisco and that too was VERY LOUD. Sheesh!
But yeah, Top Gun was great. There are several similarities to the original, including a few lines repeated from the 1986 movie, but not all the key lines were repeated. Alright I won’t go further because I don’t want to spoil it.
I highly recommend it and if you liked the original I’m confident most of not all will like this one too.
(There are some other threads related, indirectly not directly, to the experience of seeing the new movie.
Totally agree. This movie is a blast, whether you liked the first one or not. A total audience-pleaser that is impossible to resist. Cheers and applause at key moments, and a few scenes where you might find yourself legitimately choked up a bit. No kidding.
Say what you will about Tom Cruise, the man shows up for work and gives the audience what it wants.
I liked it, it really hit many of the same points as the first, in a good way. There are some clunky aspects, particularly the anonymization of the enemy, but it’s ok to avoid tightly defining a group of people as being bad.
One detail I missed was why they couldn’t use the F-35.
Perfectly fine aviation porn. Enough for multiple rewatches.
I did make a mistake of watching it with a former artilleryman, who started off in the AD side of Arty (my dad) who just wouldn’t shut up about the SAM deployment (only an idiot would leave the valley floor uncovered), so I guess I wouldn’t do that again.
Nice if unconvincing explanations as to why both Maverick and Goose jr are at low ranks for their ages, the kid was 5 years old in the original (set in 1985/86) so he should be a Sqdrn CDR in 2022.
That’s a good question; this link says that the bombs, missiles, and bullets (and explosions) were aided by CGI, but who cares as long as the jets are real?
All the flying sequences are real, with the actors actually in an aircraft flying and maneuvering (not actually piloting, though!), which is pretty cool. I just read somewhere recently that Cruise insisted on a minimum of CGI, he wouldn’t do the movie unless most of the visual effects were practical - actually done on-camera instead of by computer. I guess they came up with a system to have the lens assembly for the IMAX cameras in the cockpit, connected via fiber optic cable to the camera machinery in another part if the fuselage … I didn’t see it in IMAX, but it looks great on the big screen I saw it on.
It’s a fantastic film, far better as a movie and in storytelling than Top Gun was (and I enjoyed Top Gun as a fine popcorn movie in its own right). No, it’s not a documentary, but it’s a great, fun ride. Miles Teller looks like he is Anthony Edwards’ son, and he even gives us a “Talk to me, Dad” in homage to the original.
Also, I didn’t catch it until rewatching Top Gun after seeing Maverick, but Jennifer Connelly’s character was actually mentioned in the original (there’s a couple of remarks about Maverick and an admiral’s daughter, named Penny … and that’s who Connelly’s character is).
Except for the scenes with the Su57 and the TomCats. Since the Russians and Iranians wouldn’t cooperate and the US destroyed its F14 fleet after retirement.
Yes specifically in this scene starting at about 0:35
You know that CGI had to be used, but it was not very noticeable. The experimental aircraft that goes Mach 10 was definitely CGI’d. But even that, to the viewer’s eye, was not obviously CGI’d. In the credits there was a reference to Lockheed’s Skunk Works and I’m pretty sure they were connected to that aircraft.
Saw it, and while I enjoyed it a lot I have some weird mino quibbles.
Is there a reason why Maverick and Goose Jr were flying solo in their Super Hornets? Why wouldn’t they have people in the back to help with the bomb or missiles? I understand plot wise why they did it (4 people literally running around in the ending would slow things down immensely) but would you really send a two seater jet with just one pilot? I assumed the ending would have Maverick and Goose Jr doing the bomb drops.
Why is acclaimed Naval flier Maverick flying a P-51 at the end? In production terms, flying or reproduction Mustangs are so much easier to come by but it would make far more sense for him to be flying a Hellcat or Corsair, they’re both WW2 Navy carrier fighters and both have at least a dozen airworthy today.
Those Su-57’s are real enough, and other variants/models are planned, though I have not kept up with the journals evaluating how effective they are. Basically, you are talking about modern multi-role stealth fighters.
Fifth-Generation Fighter Plane is such a weird way to refer to them since they’re actually real life aircraft, the SU-57. I know in the original they had to make up a fake name for their F-5s standing in for Russian fighters (MiG-28) but why they just didn’t call them SU-57s or just “MiGs” again was confusing. What were they afraid of getting sued to copyright infringement?
