New Generation of Actors and "Top Gun" Pilots Carry the Classic's Sequel.

Top Gun: Maverick, perhaps the most sensationalized release this year, attempts the most daring revisitation to a beloved classic. Maverick has been hotly anticipated for years, even more so after its 2020 release was delayed, and for a good reason. Most audiences will never experience the skies like a fighter pilot, but thanks to technological innovations, cinema audiences will be able to see and feel the skies like never before.

No matter one’s feelings and opinions about star Tom Cruise, no one can deny that the original Top Gun (1986) set a precedent for summer blockbusters and aviation films. Ali Plumb, the beloved entertainment reporter at BBC 1, recently pointed out to Cruise a myriad of examples of how the original Top Gun has influenced a generation of filmmaking and popular culture. For instance, Marvel’s Captain Marvel, an aviation film about pilot Carol Danvers, features a token Air Force cat named Goose.

The new school of Top Gun pilots carry this film. Sure, it’s about Tom Cruise’s Maverick, but the newcomers such as Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, and Jay Ellis drive this film and hold it together as a team. The actors deserve lots of kudos, as they not only pulled off great performances but took the experience in stride with so much asked of them.

First, they endured months of grueling, practical training, including extracting themselves from being strapped into a chair underwater in preparation for the possibility of ejecting from the cockpit above water. In addition to practical flight training, the actors were also required to log and maintain filmmaking equipment and records within the cockpit. Essentially, the shoot conditions made the actors become a hybrid of cast and crew.

The new Top Gun class effectively delivers their performances in and out of the cockpit. Those close quarters, and multiple cameras mounted in front of them, focused on their faces, are a challenging set of conditions for actors, who are taught to use their whole body and environment in their performance. The transition to smaller-scale acting for the camera is conducive to the conditions of Maverick, where the actors must deliver performances through emoting and minimal physicality in the cockpit.

This cast took everything in stride. In a recent interview, the actors revealed that thanks to their flight training, when it came time to film the scenes where they pull a lot of gravitational force, the actors had become used to the sensation and were directed to dramatize their performances. Actor Glen Powell even took the initiative to complete a few extra hours of in-flight training to earn his pilot’s license, earning him a congratulatory note and certificate for stunt driving courses from Cruise.

One actor that needs to be singled out is Miles Teller. Teller’s success over the last decade is well-known with films like the Oscar-nominated Whiplash and the Divergent films, among other projects. Despite those successes, Maverick feels like Teller has finally landed a role and performance that will define (at least part of) his career.

In Maverick, Teller plays Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, the Top-Gun-pilot-son of Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, an inevitable but risky character and storyline for the sequel. Teller’s performance, nuanced and simmering with energy, assures the “son of the dead friend” trope isn’t cliché. Finding the right actor to pair with the right screenplay was undoubtedly a concern of Cruise’s when deciding how to proceed with a sequel. Thankfully, the inclusion of Teller’s “Rooster” is nostalgic but not dull.

Rising stakes, well-cast characters, and innovations in cinema technology, including cameras and sound, make Top Gun: Maverick an entertaining summer flick that furthers the genre of the aviation film. Stunning visuals and balanced storytelling deliver a satisfying revisitation of one of Hollywood’s most iconic films. If only American conservatives weren’t trying to use the film as a vessel for furthering their rhetorical fallacies. If only the studio, filmmakers, and cast (*cough, cough* Cruise) would speak out against conservatives’ giddiness at the absence of LGBTQIA+, POC, and feminist rhetoric in the film.