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Top Gun: Maverick

Top Gun: Maverick is a much-needed dose of adrenaline-filled memberberry juice delivered directly to the veins.
86/10016657
Starring
Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller
Director
Joseph Kosinski
Rating
PG-13
Genre
Action, Adventure, Drama
Release date
May 27, 2022
Where to watch
Paramount+
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Story/Plot/Script
Visuals/Cinematography
Performance
Direction
Non-Wokeness
Rating Summary
Top Gun: Maverick is a slick and visually masterful piece of popcorn-munching fun. Sure, it's formulaic as h3!!, but who cares? There's so much high-octane charisma and jet fuel being burned on screen that it doesn't matter. Tom Cruise, et al. do what no one in Hollywood has been able to do for years. They made a movie instead of a soapbox speech or a computer-generated video game cut screen posing as a movie.

Top Gun: Maverick was nearly 40 years in the making, but Tom Cruise is back and just as Mavericky as ever. Pro Tip: blast Kenny Loggins while reading the rest of this review.

Top Gun: Maverick

Set 30+ years after the events of the original Top Gun, Maverick follows Captain Peter “Maverick” Mitchell, played once again by the redoubtable Tom Cruise. The same independent and rebellious spirit that has made Maverick a legendary fighter pilot has also hamstrung his advancement and kept him on the knife’s edge of forced retirement for years and, much like Puss in Boots, Maverick now finds himself on his last life. Mav’s only chance to keep doing what he’s best at is to train the next generation of Top Gun pilots so that they can complete a nearly impossible mission (see what I did there) of the utmost importance to America and its allies.

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It’s rare when you can tell that everyone in a particular movie is thrilled to be there, but that’s exactly what you get with Top Gun: Maverick and it’s infectious. What’s even rarer is a modern movie that’s neither a pretentious excuse for the filmmakers to put on a sandwich board and screech at passersby nor a soulless piece of AI-generated fluff. While Top Gun: Maverick isn’t going to win any awards for possessing exceptional depth, it is both unpretentious and thrilling. Its only ambition is to tell a fun and exciting story with some universal themes, a dose of heart, and a sprinkling of cheese, and it delivers and delivers and delivers.

It’s not a perfect movie, the love story between Mav and Jennifer Connelly’s character is completely superfluous. It was clearly originally intended to be between Mav and Kelly McGillis’s Charlie from the original film but McGillis was…let’s say no longer right for the role. However, the two veteran actors are great together, and it doesn’t detract from the film overall.

kelly mcgillis top gun maverick
Did someone hit the wall on the highway to the Danger Zone?

There are two outstanding performers in Top Gun: Maverick and they are Charisma and Action. Every actor has to take a moment to floss the scenery from their teeth, and every action scene will have you on the edge of your seat, hooting and hollering like a small child rooting for Rocky as he single-handedly wins the Cold War (not that I have any first-hand experience with such things).

If you’ve nearly forgotten what it was like to feel good after watching a summer blockbuster, or you’re a millennial or gen-z’er and have never experienced this, then you must watch Top Gun: Maverick.

Woke Report

WOKE REPORT

You're Only Getting Half the Picture.

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James Carrick

James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.

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  1. Dan January 19, 2024 at

    Yeah sorry bud. This movie is super woke. Sure there are top gun fenale pilots but they are only there because the navy wanted to diversify the pilots. Do some research. Woke junk

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Handle all top-level share buttons here first. document.addEventListener('click', async function(e){ var targetEl = e.target && e.target.nodeType === 1 ? e.target : (e.target && e.target.parentElement ? e.target.parentElement : null); var btn = targetEl && targetEl.closest ? targetEl.closest('.wiow-share-btn') : null; if (!btn) return; // Ignore the Audience modal "Rate" button (it also has wiow-share-btn class in your CSS usage) if (btn.hasAttribute('data-wiow-audience-open')) return; var row = btn.closest('[data-wiow-share="1"], .wiow-share-row'); if (!row) return; var platform = btn.getAttribute('data-platform'); // Public top-level controls must work even when AJAX generation or membership-gated data is unavailable. // Options still uses the full image-builder path below. if (platform === 'x' || platform === 'link') { e.preventDefault(); e.stopPropagation(); var quickStatus = row.querySelector('.wiow-share-status'); var quickUrl = btn.getAttribute('data-copy-url') || row.getAttribute('data-share-page') || row.getAttribute('data-post-url') || wiowShareFallbackUrl(row); if (!quickUrl) { if (quickStatus) quickStatus.textContent = 'No share URL available.'; return; } if (platform === 'x') { openPopup(btn.getAttribute('href') || btn.getAttribute('data-wiow-x-intent') || wiowShareXIntentUrl(row)); if (quickStatus) quickStatus.textContent = ''; return; } if (quickStatus) quickStatus.textContent = 'Copying link…'; var copiedQuick = await wiowCopyShareText(quickUrl); var quickLabel = btn.querySelector('.wiow-share-btn__label'); var quickOriginal = quickLabel ? quickLabel.textContent : 'Copy link'; if (copiedQuick) { if (quickStatus) quickStatus.textContent = 'Link copied.'; if (quickLabel) { quickLabel.textContent = 'Copied!'; window.setTimeout(function(){ quickLabel.textContent = quickOriginal || 'Copy link'; }, 1500); } } else { if (quickStatus) quickStatus.textContent = 'Could not copy link.'; } return; } e.preventDefault(); var previewWin = null; if (platform === 'copy') { previewWin = openShareOptionsWindow(); var preloadKind = (row.getAttribute('data-share-kind') || 'critics').trim().toLowerCase(); var preloadHeading = (preloadKind === 'audience' || preloadKind === 'audience-teaser' || preloadKind === 'audience-question') ? 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This prevents two square // outputs or mismatched gallery states in the Share Options window. built = await buildShareImage(row, { force:true }); builtSquare = await buildShareSquareImage(row, built.cycle_image_url || '', built.poster_url || '', { force:true }); if (!built || !built.image_url) { throw new Error('Landscape share build failed.'); } if (!builtSquare || !builtSquare.image_url) { throw new Error('Square share build failed.'); } } else { built = await buildShareImage(row); } var shareUrl = built.share_url; var postUrl = (row.getAttribute('data-post-url') || '').trim() || shareUrl; var postTitle = (row.getAttribute('data-post-title') || '').trim(); if (!postTitle) postTitle = 'this'; var shareKind = (row.getAttribute('data-share-kind') || 'critics').trim().toLowerCase(); var upperTitle = postTitle.toUpperCase(); var lineTwo = (shareKind === 'audience' || shareKind === 'audience-teaser' || shareKind === 'audience-question') ? 'See what the audience is saying.' : ((shareKind === 'ratings' || shareKind === 'ratings-admin' || shareKind === 'ratings-question') ? 'See the Worth it or Woke score.' : 'See what sane critics say.'); var baseText = 'Is ' + upperTitle + ' Worth it or Woke?\n\n' + lineTwo + '\n\nFollow @worthitorwoke for more.'; var textWithUrl = baseText + '\n\n' + shareUrl; var postTextWithUrl = baseText + '\n\n' + postUrl; var encodedUrl = encodeURIComponent(shareUrl); var encodedBaseText = encodeURIComponent(baseText); var encodedTextWithUrl = encodeURIComponent(textWithUrl); if (platform === 'link') { var copiedLink = await wiowCopyShareText(shareUrl); var label = btn.querySelector('.wiow-share-btn__label'); var originalLabel = label ? label.textContent : ''; if (copiedLink) { if (statusEl) statusEl.textContent = 'Link copied.'; if (label) { label.textContent = 'Copied!'; window.setTimeout(function(){ label.textContent = originalLabel || 'Copy link'; }, 1500); } } else { if (statusEl) statusEl.textContent = 'Could not copy link.'; } return; } if (platform === 'x'){ // X gets the URL through the intent URL parameter, so do not also duplicate it in the tweet text. openPopup('https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=' + encodedBaseText + '&url=' + encodedUrl); } else if (platform === 'facebook'){ // Facebook sharing has been intentionally removed from this plugin flow. if (statusEl) statusEl.textContent = 'Facebook sharing is currently disabled.'; } else if (platform === 'copy'){ var heading = (shareKind === 'audience' || shareKind === 'audience-teaser' || shareKind === 'audience-question') ? 'Audience share options' : ((shareKind === 'ratings' || shareKind === 'ratings-admin' || shareKind === 'ratings-question') ? 'Ratings share options' : 'Critic share options'); window.__wiowLastShareOptionsContext = { row: row, heading: heading, win: previewWin }; var shown = renderShareOptionsWindow(previewWin, built.image_url, (builtSquare ? builtSquare.image_url : ''), shareUrl, heading); if (!shown) { var copied = false; if (navigator.clipboard && window.isSecureContext && navigator.clipboard.writeText){ try { await navigator.clipboard.writeText(shareUrl); copied = true; } catch (copyErr) {} } if (!copied) { var ta = document.createElement('textarea'); ta.value = shareUrl; ta.setAttribute('readonly', 'readonly'); ta.style.position = 'fixed'; ta.style.opacity = '0'; document.body.appendChild(ta); ta.focus(); ta.select(); ta.setSelectionRange(0, ta.value.length); copied = !!document.execCommand('copy'); ta.remove(); } } } if (statusEl) statusEl.textContent = (platform === 'copy') ? 'Ready.' : ''; } catch(err){ if (previewWin && !previewWin.closed) { previewWin.close(); } if (statusEl) statusEl.textContent = (err && err.message) ? err.message : 'Could not share.'; } }, true); })();