Top Gun: Maverick 2022
The sequel opened to $282 million worldwide, the biggest Memorial Day weekend ever and the biggest of Cruise's and Paramount's careers, and the three of them walk through the movie roughly in order: the in-character Cruise PSA before the trailers, the Bruckheimer/Simpson logo, the Dark Star Mach 10 opening with Ed Harris's admiral trying and failing to ground Maverick, the Hard Deck bar rules, the returning-cast introductions (Jon Hamm's air boss, Charles Parnell's Warlock, Miles Teller's Rooster, Glenn Powell's Hangman, Monica Barbaro's Phoenix, Lewis Pullman's Bob), the deliberately apolitical mission setup, the mostly practical aerial photography, Val Kilmer's return as Iceman by way of a computer screen and one scene that visibly worked Cruise over, the funeral, the stolen-plane demonstration flight, the mission itself (a version of the Death Star trench run), Maverick's fake-out death and rescue by Rooster, the stolen-F-14 escape, Hangman's last-second save, and the runway hug that echoes the Iceman embrace from the original. They also dig into Penny (Jennifer Connelly) and how she affords her house and her vintage Porsche on a bar owner's income, whether Teller and Powell proved themselves as future leads, and whether the movie — or Cruise himself — has any real Oscar shot.