First reactions for Top Gun: Maverick suggest Paramount Pictures' upcoming legacy sequel will be the film to beat this summer at the box office.
Paramount held an exclusive screening of Maverick, the long-awaited sequel to 1986's Top Gun, for those in attendance at its CinemaCon presentation. Critics who were able to catch the film shared their thoughts online with fervent enthusiasm. One critic called it "a profound cinematic experience," and another said it "might be the best movie in 10 years." The film is described as an "intimate, heart-stopping and heartbreaking" epic that will have audiences on "the edge of [their] seat[s]."
The early reactions throw plenty of praise towards Maverick's cast and crew but specifically mention that director Joseph Kosinski and star Tom Cruise should be proud of the film they helped create. The finished film sits at a digestible 2 hours and 11 minutes, which the production worked hard to cut down from an immense amount of available footage. Kosinski previously revealed that they "shot as much footage as the three Lord Of The Rings movies combined," totaling 800 hours. The director described the feat as "hard-earned," since "...Out of a 12- or 14-hour day, you might get 30 seconds of good footage."
Cruise also had a direct hand in the flying sequences seen in Maverick -- the actor trained his co-stars to fly the F/A 18 Super Hornet jets. "I developed a whole program for the actors, and how we could get them in the [F/A-18s]," Cruise said. "It was every step of the way. I had to teach them how to fly. I had to teach them how to handle Gs. I had to get them confident in the airplane."
Miles Teller, who plays Rooster, the son of Top Gun's Goose, joked that the cast "were all mini Toms making this movie." Teller continued, saying, "He put us through... I’ll just call it a 'Tom Cruise boot camp.'" The actor described "getting in killer shape" with a "very specific type of training" to take on the kind of stunts Cruise is famous for. "You're not just going into the gym and lifting some weights," Teller said. "We did flight training for three months before we started filming... We got put through the wringer."
Cruise returns after more than 30 years as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, one of the Navy's top aviators who is tasked with training a new group of TOPGUN graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen. Along with Teller, the film stars Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell and Lewis Pullman. Val Kilmer is also set to reprise his role as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky from the first film.
Top Gun: Maverick flies into theaters on May 27.
Source: Twitter