Top Gun: Maverick lives up to the hype surrounding its release and maintains the iconic reputation of the classic first movie, Top Gun. 

Coming from the “Golden Age” of movies in the 1980s, Top Gun, with well known actors like Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, is a movie that is difficult to one-up. The producers of the second movie, however, have come close to doing that. 

In this new movie, Cruise must teach his students, who are the best pilots in their Top Gun class, a near impossible mission to destroy enemy supplies. All of his supervisors discourage him through the process, but he has to maintain hope and keep going so the mission will succeed.

Top Gun: Maverick features new and old actors with many aspects and jokes from the first movie, making it a good watch for newer audiences and old fans. Cruise maintains his funny, youthful character as well, while also portraying a very real emotional struggle with conflicts from the previous movie.

The new actors and actresses are great at honing in on the same tone as the first movie.

Miles Teller, who plays Rooster, Goose’s son, works well in this movie with Cruise and portrays realistic emotions for his character. Teller also looks like his on-screen father, Anthony Edwards, from the original Top Gun which allows audiences to feel a much greater connection to the character. 

Another new actress, Monica Barbaro, adds modernity to Top Gun: Maverick as she is a female pilot, since female pilots were not featured in the original movie. Although it is not the main idea of the movie, her character shows that women can make it as far as men and even beat them to the higher position.

The new movie evokes many emotions and revives an aspect of the iconic movie from the ’80s that the world has been looking for.