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For a sequel to a film built around the need for speed, Top Gun: Maverick has been a long time coming. Recent additional delays caused by the pandemic mean that this sequel is finally touching down 36 years after the original landed.
That’s a long wait for fans who’ve been clamouring for more since Tony Scott’s fighter-pilot drama took their breath away in 1986. But, Maverick, true to his call sign, has never played by the rules.
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The long-anticipated sequel sees Tom Cruise’s titular aviator, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, back in the cockpit once more. When we pick up with Mav in Top Gun: Maverick, he’s still taking to the skies as a test pilot, having avoided the promotions that would chain him to a desk.
A highly specialised mission requires him to train a detachment of graduates from Top Gun (the United States Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, to give it its more formal name). So we’re talking the best of the best *of the best* young Naval Aviators. Of course, among their number is Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Mav’s former Radar Intercept Officer, Nick Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), better known as Goose. Goose died in the first film during an ejection gone wrong, sending Maverick into a guilt-ridden crisis.
Top Gun: Maverick opens in UK cinemas on May 25, and US cinemas on May 27. For much more from Cruise, Teller, the new cast and the filmmaking team of director Joseph Kosinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, check out the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves on Thursday 31 March.
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