Paramount Pictures has released the second trailer for Top Gun: Maverick. The sequel to the 1986 hit film sees the return of Tom Cruise who reprises his role as Maverick, a young but reckless attitude who is constantly at odds with other students and superiors. Over 30 years later, things haven’t changed as Maverick continues to be a lowly captain so that he can continue his dream of flying and refuses to take a ranking change that would force him to be grounded. Now he finds himself teaching a new group of pilots, with one of them being the son of a late friend.
A sequel to Top Gun had been constantly in the works but didn’t start to get off the ground until due to production budgets, scripts, and logistical issues surrounding some of the bigger action moments.
But now that is all past us, the film is getting ready to go back into the danger zone, with Cruise in a somewhat different role but still very much the same cocky pilot. One has to wonder what kind of sequel Top Gun: Maverick would have been had it been released soon after the success of the first Top Gun.
The new trailer does offer a sample of what to expect from the upcoming film, as there are a few callbacks to the original – beach volleyball scene, that classic Steve Stevens’s instrumental rock Top Gun theme from the original -, and some familiar characters and fresh faces that are entering the franchise. These new characters include Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”.
Here’s the official plot synopsis for Top Gun: Maverick:
After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”.
Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.
Unlike the first Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick sees Cruise performing most of his own stunts, which means the actor is pretty much doing his own flying. This should come as no surprise to anyone considering that he’s been doing his own stunts – of which they have been gradually getting more death-defying in every new Mission: Impossible film.
Top Gun: Maverick also stars Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, and Greg Tarzan Davis with Ed Harris.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy, Oblivion), Top Gun: Maverick opens in theaters on June 26, 2019.
