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Top Gun: Maverick First Reviews: The Most Thrilling Blockbuster We've Gotten in Years

Critics say the long-awaited sequel is a must-see on the big screen and not only potentially better than the original, but also one of the best tom cruise movies ever..

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Tom Cruise returns to the cockpit in Top Gun: Maverick , the long-awaited follow-up to the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun . And if you’re not already feeling the need for speed — again — then you might want to reconsider, because the first reviews for this legacy sequel are clear of the danger zone. In fact, many are even calling it a better movie than the original, and maybe even one of the best Tom Cruise movies of all time.

Here’s what critics are saying about Top Gun: Maverick :

Will Top Gun fans be happy?

On the whole, this is a thrilling sequel which is bound to delight fans of the first film. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

It’s a follow-up that will thrill every Top Gun fan. – Philip De Semlyen, Time Out

Mainstream audiences will be happily airborne, especially the countless dads who loved Top Gun and will eagerly want to share this fresh shot of adrenaline with their sons. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

This follow-up, directed by Joseph Kosinski, deals in the same unexpected-itch-scratching bliss: it’s crammed with images you didn’t know you were desperate to see until the second you see them. – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

In the opening moments… you don’t know if you’re watching the original 1986 Top Gun or a new one. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

Tony Scott’s admirers may miss that disreputable edge, the unrepentantly vulgar sensibility that made the original Top Gun a dreamy, voluptuous hoot. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

(Photo by Scott Garfield/©Paramount Pictures)

How does it compare to the original?

Top Gun: Maverick improves on the original. It’s deeper, it’s not corny, and it has thrilling effects. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The dogfights, chases, and mid-air sequences are truly remarkable — far clearer and far more intense than anything in the original Top Gun . – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

A superior sequel. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

If Top Gun was a fun film because it invented Tom Cruise, Maverick is a great film because it immortalizes him. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Maverick ideally would be less formulaic – and for the record, it doesn’t quite match the magic of the OG Top Gun . – Brian Truitt, USA Today

Is it a worthy legacy sequel?

Few Hollywood reboots can boast this blend of nostalgia, freshness and adrenaline. You will want to high five someone on the way out. – Philip De Semlyen, Time Out

The film is a true legacy sequel. In the tradition of Star Wars: The Force Awakens , it’s a carefully reconstructed clone of its predecessor, tooled not only to reflect changing tastes and attitudes but the ascendancy of its star Tom Cruise to a level of fame that borders on the mythological. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

The sequel follows the original beat for beat, to a degree that’s almost comical. And yet, as formulaic as it is, there’s no denying that it delivers in terms of both nostalgia and reinvention. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Tom Cruise remains deeply ambivalent with the notion of passing the torch to a new generation onscreen and so Top Gun: Maverick remains focused on Maverick and his story, sometimes to the detriment of the young cast. – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

(Photo by ©Paramount Pictures)

Is this one of the best blockbusters we’ve gotten in recent years?

Top Gun: Maverick is as thrilling as blockbusters get. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Top Gun: Maverick is the most fun I’ve had watching a big dumb Hollywood blockbuster for a while. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

Takes to the skies as no blockbuster has before. – Peter Debruge, Variety

The movie soars – a reminder of how good Hollywood can be at popcorn entertainment when it sets its mind to it (and Cruise is involved). – Philip De Semlyen, Time Out

It is unquestionably the best studio action film to have been released since 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road . – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

How does it rank against other Tom Cruise movies?

We have surely arrived at the Cruisiest film he’s yet made. – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

It’s not a Tom Cruise movie so much as it’s “ Tom Cruise: The Movie .” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

In terms of performance, this is one of Cruise’s best pictures. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

It fully surrenders to the grandiose fun that’s marked the best of Cruise’s recent star vehicles. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

Cruise finds new ways to add depth to his signature character (sorry, Ethan Hunt) without sacrificing any of his essential qualities. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

How is Val Kilmer’s return as Iceman?

Kilmer’s brief cameo, in what has the feel of a swan song, carries far more weight than anything directly related to the story. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The film’s most moving element comes during the brief screen time of Kilmer’s Iceman. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

If there’s one scene that really takes your breath away, it’s his. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

In one fictional moment, he gives us something unmistakably, irreducibly real, partly by puncturing the fantasy of human invincibility that his co-star has never stopped trying to sell. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Are there any other standouts in the cast?

Miles Teller [gives] an oddly alluring performance that really shouldn’t work as well as it does. – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

Teller, with his best turn since Whiplash, factors in as a worthy emotional foil. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

Jennifer Connelly brings a lot to a thankless role. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

Does Top Gun: Maverick deliver as an action movie?

It [has] what is surely one of the most impressive plane-based action scenes ever committed to film. – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

The real draw here is, of course, the action, and Kosinski asserts his gift for large-scale filmmaking across the film’s runtime. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The commitment to filming practically-everything practically feels like the cutting-edge equivalent of Howard Hughes’ history-making Hell’s Angels . – Peter Debruge, Variety

You have a series of character-driven, heart-in-your-throat dogfights more vivid than anything in the first previous film. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Breathtakingly balletic, and grounded in the increasingly rare pleasure of the tangible… it’s a true feat for director Joseph Kosinski to make something this ambitious look this effortless. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

The action scenes [have] a breathtaking beauty and urgency: the play of light and gravity on the actors’ faces, and the way the landscapes spin and drop away balletically through the canopy glass, puts other blockbusters’ green-screened swooping to shame. – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

The best thing this movie does is boost visceral analog action over the usual numbing bombardment of CG fakery. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Are there any major criticisms?

One would have appreciated a slightly more effective female-centric subplot. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

The film, unfortunately, doesn’t extend as much of a loving hand toward the women of Top Gun . – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Women are few and far between, and even the more prominent ones get mostly perfunctory treatment. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

It would’ve been nice to see Meg Ryan return as the widow/mom, but the rules are cruel when it comes to aging female actors. – Peter Debruge, Variety

Do we need to see this on the big screen?

This is definitely a film that benefits from the IMAX experience, and the big-ass soundscape that comes with it. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

This movie needs the big screen, preferably as big as you can find. I saw it in an IMAX theater, and now I have some idea of what it would feel like to take off in a fighter pilot from an aircraft carrier. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The result is the most immersive flight simulator audiences will have ever experienced, right down to the great Dolby roar of engines vibrating through their seats. – Peter Debruge, Variety

It’s the kind of edge-of-your-seat, fist-pumping spectacular that can unite an entire room full of strangers sitting in the dark and leave them with a wistful tear in their eye. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Will it leave us wanting more?

One can imagine future spinoffs involving any of these characters. – Peter Debruge, Variety

[It’s a] launching pad for a potential second or even third sequel with its young cast at the center of new adventures. – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

Top Gun: Maverick opens in theaters on May 27, 2022.

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Tom cruise in ‘top gun: maverick’: film review.

The ace fighter pilot returns 36 years after first feeling the need for speed in Joseph Kosinski’s sequel, also starring Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly and Jon Hamm.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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As inescapable a pop-cultural totem as 1986’s Top Gun became, Tony Scott’s testosterone-powered blockbuster has all the narrative complexity of a music video crossed with a military recruitment reel. It’s hard to think of many more emblematic products of the rah-rah patriotism of the Reagan years, with its vigorous salute to American exceptionalism and triumph over a Cold War enemy left purposely vague — hey, don’t want to shut out a lucrative foreign market.

All that has only continued to toxify in the post-Trump age, with patriotism curdling into white supremacy. So depending on where you sit on the political spectrum, your enjoyment of Top Gun: Maverick might depend on how much you’re willing to shut out the real world and surrender to movie-star magic.

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Venue : Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition) Release date : Friday, May 27 Cast : Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis Director : Joseph Kosinski Screenwriters : Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie

Which this superior sequel — directed with virtuoso technical skill, propulsive pacing and edge-of-your-seat flying sequences by Joseph Kosinski — has in abundance. Every frame of Tom Cruise ’s Maverick is here to remind you, soaking up the awestruck admiration of the young hot shots ready to dismiss him as a fossil and the initially begrudging respect of the military brass who try and fail to pull the cocky individualist into line. “He’s the fastest man alive,” one of the slack-jawed hero worshippers in the control room says early on. And that’s even before he does his signature robotic “Cruise Run.”

“It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot,” we hear more than once. And Cruise leaves no question that he’s the pilot, despite hiring a pro craft team and a solid ensemble cast who were put through extensive flight training. Even the relic F-14 Tomcat, Maverick’s tactical fighter plane of choice in the first movie, gets fired up for a glory lap, a salute to aged movie stars and old technology in one. Cruise’s character is somehow positioned by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay as simultaneously a rule-breaking rebel and a selfless saint. That makes this a work of breathtaking egomania outdone only by the fawning tone of Paramount’s press notes.

Starting when Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” accompanies footage of new-generation F-18 hornets slicing through the clouds and swooping down onto an aircraft carrier amid a sea of high-fives, fist-pumps and thumbs-up, the sequel follows the original beat for beat, to a degree that’s almost comical. And yet, as formulaic as it is, there’s no denying that it delivers in terms of both nostalgia and reinvention. Mainstream audiences will be happily airborne, especially the countless dads who loved Top Gun and will eagerly want to share this fresh shot of adrenaline with their sons.

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell lives alone in a Mojave Desert hangar with a photo shrine on the wall to his former radar intercept officer and best buddy Goose, who died during a training accident in the first film. (Anthony Edwards and Meg Ryan are seen in a helpful recap framed as Pete’s tortured memories.)

Maverick zooms into the Naval base on his Kawasaki each day and continues to get his kicks as a daredevil test pilot, resisting the advancement in rank from captain that would have grounded him by now. But when his aerial showboating pisses off Admiral Cain (Ed Harris), who’s pushing to transition to drone aircrafts and make stick jockeys obsolete, Maverick gets his wings clipped.

Despite having lasted just two months as an instructor almost 30 years ago, he’s reassigned to the elite Fighter Weapons School, aka Top Gun Academy, in San Diego, which was established in 1969 to train the top 1 percent of Naval aviators. Neither Cain nor the academy’s senior officer, call sign “Cyclone” ( Jon Hamm ), wanted him for the job. But Maverick’s former rival and eventual wingman Iceman (Val Kilmer), who went on to become an admiral and command the U.S. Pacific Fleet, convinced them he was the only man who could prepare pilots for a top-secret mission.

A uranium enrichment plant has been detected on enemy soil — once again, exactly which enemy is unclear — and two pairs of F-18s need to sneak in, bomb the bejesus out of it and then get out fast, overcoming a near-impossible quick climb over rocky peaks and then surviving the inevitable blast of enemy missiles and aerial dogfights.

The candidates for that mission are “the best of the best,” former star graduates who are pretty much a repeat of the 1986 bunch aside from being more culturally diverse. There’s even — gasp! — a woman, Phoenix (Monica Barbaro). The two that matter most, though, are swaggering blowhard Hangman (Glen Powell) and Goose’s son Rooster ( Miles Teller ), still carrying around the ghost of his father and hostile to Maverick for stalling his career by taking his name off the Naval Academy list.

The Hangman-Rooster dynamic more or less mirrors the Iceman-Maverick friction from Top Gun , just as the incongruously homoerotic shirtless volleyball scene is echoed here with a rowdy team-building football game on the beach.

The only notable place where the screenwriters don’t genuflect to the original model is with Kelly McGillis’ astrophysicist and civilian Top Gun instructor Charlie, who declined a plum Washington job to stick with her man but doesn’t even rate a mention here. Instead, Maverick sparks up an old romance with Penny ( Jennifer Connelly ), a single mom with fabulous highlights. She runs a local bar — its name, The Hard Deck, doubles as a tactical plot point — which apparently puts her in an income bracket to own a sleek sailboat and drive a Porsche. (Producer Jerry Bruckheimer never met a power vehicle he didn’t love.)

Maverick’s task during training is to test the limits of the super-competitive candidates, whittling them down from 12 to six and choosing a team leader. “It’s not what I am. It’s who I am,” he says of his aviator vocation during a rare moment of self-doubt. “How do I teach that?” Anyone failing to guess who’ll land the team leader spot and who’ll be their wingman isn’t paying attention.

The simmering conflict between Maverick and Rooster — who can’t see past his resentment to perceive the protective responsibility his dad’s friend feels toward him — provides an emotional core even if the role makes scant demands on Teller’s range. But that’s true also of Connelly, Hamm and everyone else in the cast; all of them get the job done while remaining satellites that merely orbit around Cruise’s glittering Planet Alpha, eventually having to acknowledge that Maverick’s a helluva guy no matter what stunts he pulls.

The film’s most moving element comes during the brief screen time of Kilmer’s Iceman, whose health issues reflect those suffered by the actor in real life, generating resonant pathos. There’s reciprocal warmth, even love, in a scene between Iceman and Maverick that acknowledges the characters’ hard-won bond as well as the rivalry that preceded it, with gentle humor.

Kosinski (who directed Cruise in Oblivion ), the writers and editor Eddie Hamilton keep a close eye on the balance between interpersonal drama and flight maneuvers; scenes intercut between field practice and classroom discussions during which Maverick points out fatal errors on a computer simulator are particularly sharp. This is all nuts-and-bolts buildup, however, to the mission itself, in which hair-raising action, seemingly insurmountable setbacks and miraculous saves keep the tension pumped.

This is definitely a film that benefits from the Imax experience and the big-ass soundscape that comes with it. The muscular score by Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga and Hans Zimmer also pulls its weight, with Gaga’s song, “Hold My Hand,” getting prime romantic placement. Musical choices elsewhere tend to lean into a retro vibe — Bowie, T. Rex, Foghat, The Who — while Teller gets to hammer the piano keys and lead a Jerry Lee Lewis sing-along that pays direct homage to his screen dad.

The most memorable part of Top Gun: Maverick — and the scenes that will make new generations swell with pride and adulation for good old American heroism — are the dogfights and tactical maneuvers of the pilots. Just as they should be. The best thing this movie does is boost visceral analog action over the usual numbing bombardment of CG fakery, a choice fortified by having the actors in the airborne cockpits during shooting.

Cinematographer Claudio Miranda’s work benefits from the technological advances of the past three decades, with camera rigs allowing for you-are-there verisimilitude. Cruise’s insistence on doing his own flying is undeniably impressive, even if the headgear’s breathing apparatus gets in the way of his trademark clenched-jaw intensity. No one is going to dispute that he works hard in this movie, justifying the labor of love. But no one is going to come out of it concerned for his self-esteem, either.

Full credits

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition) Distribution: Paramount Production companies: Skydance, Jerry Bruckheimer Films Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer Director: Joseph Kosinski Screenwriters: Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie Story: Peter Craig, Justin Marks, based on characters created by Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr. Producers: Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison Executive producers: Tommy Harper, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Chad Oman, Mike Stenson Director of photography: Claudio Miranda Production designer: Jeremy Hindle Costume designer: Marlene Stewart Music: Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga, Hans Zimmer Editor: Eddie Hamilton Visual effects supervisor: Ryan Tudhope Aerial coordinator: Kevin LaRosa II Casting: Denise Chamian

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In “Top Gun: Maverick,” the breathless, gravity and logic-defying “ Top Gun ” sequel that somehow makes all the sense in the world despite landing more than three decades after the late Tony Scott ’s original, an admiral refers to Tom Cruise ’s navy aviator Pete Mitchell—call sign “ Maverick ”—as “the fastest man alive.” It’s a chuckle-inducing scene that recalls one in “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” when Alec Baldwin ’s high-ranking Alan Hunley deems Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, “the living manifestation of destiny.” In neither of these instances are Cruise’s co-stars exclusively referring to his make-believe screen personas. They are also (or rather, primarily) talking about the ongoing legacy of Cruise the actor himself. 

Truth be told, our fearless and ever-handsome action hero earns both appraisals with a generous side of applause, being one of the precious remnants of bona-fide movie superstardoms of yore, a slowly dwindling they-don’t-make-'em-like-they-used-to notion of immortality these days. Indeed, Cruise’s consistent commitment to Hollywood showmanship—along with the insane levels of physical craft he unfailingly puts on the table by insisting to do his own stunts—I would argue, deserves the same level of high-brow respect usually reserved for the fully-method sorts such as Daniel Day-Lewis . Even if you somehow overlook the fact that Cruise is one of our most gifted and versatile dramatic and comedic actors with the likes of “ Born on the Fourth of July ,” “ Magnolia ,” “ Tropic Thunder ,” and “ Collateral ” under his belt, you will never forget why you show up to a Tom Cruise movie, thanks in large part to his aforesaid enduring dedication. How many other household names and faces can claim to guarantee “a singular movie event” these days and deliver each time, without exceptions?

In that regard, you will be right at home with “Top Gun: Maverick,” director Joseph Kosinski ’s witty adrenaline booster that allows its leading producer to be exactly what he is—a star—while upping the emotional and dramatic stakes of its predecessor with a healthy (but not overdone) dose of nostalgia. After a title card that explains what “Top Gun” is—the identical one that introduced us to the world of crème-de-la-crème Navy pilots in 1986—we find Maverick in a role on the fringes of the US Navy, working as an undaunted test pilot against the familiar backdrop of Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.” You won’t be surprised that soon enough, he gets called on a one-last-job type of mission as a teacher to a group of recent Top Gun graduates. Their assignment is just as obscure and politically cuckoo as it was in the first movie. There is an unnamed enemy—let’s called it Russia because it’s probably Russia—some targets that need to be destroyed, a flight plan that sounds nuts, and a scheme that will require all successful Top Gun recruits to fly at dangerously low altitudes. But can it be done?

It’s a long shot, if the details of the operation—explained to the aviator hopefuls in a rather “It can’t be done” style reminiscent of “ Mission: Impossible ”—are any indication. But you will be surprised that more appealing than the prospect of the bonkers mission here is the human drama that co-scribes Ehren Kruger , Eric Warren Singer , and Christopher McQuarrie spin from a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks . For starters, the group of potential recruits include Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw ( Miles Teller , terrific), the son of the dearly departed “Goose,” whose accidental death still haunts Maverick as much as it does the rest of us. And if Rooster’s understandable distaste of him wasn’t enough (despite Maverick’s protective instincts towards him), there are skeptics of Maverick’s credentials— Jon Hamm ’s Cyclone, for instance, can’t understand why Maverick’s foe-turned-friend Iceman ( Val Kilmer , returning with a tearjerker of a part) insists on him as the teacher of the mission. Further complicating the matters is Maverick’s on-and-off romance with Penny Benjamin (a bewitching Jennifer Connelly ), a new character that was prominently name-checked in the original movie, as some will recall. What an entanglement through which one is tasked to defend their nation and celebrate a certain brand of American pride ...

In a different package, all the brouhaha jingoism and proud fist-shaking seen in “Top Gun: Maverick” could have been borderline insufferable. But fortunately Kosinski—whose underseen and underrated “Only The Brave” will hopefully find a second life now—seems to understand exactly what kind of movie he is asked to navigate. In his hands, the tone of “Maverick” strikes a fine balance between good-humored vanity and half-serious self-deprecation, complete with plenty of quotable zingers and emotional moments that catch one off-guard.

In some sense, what this movie takes most seriously are concepts like friendship, loyalty, romance, and okay, bromance. Everything else that surrounds those notions—like patriotic egotism—feels like playful winks and embellishments towards fashioning an old-school action movie. And because this mode is clearly shared by the entirety of the cast—from a memorable Ed Harris that begs for more screen time to the always great Glen Powell as the alluringly overconfident “ Hangman ,” Greg Tarzan Davis as “Coyote,” Jay Ellis as “ Payback ,” Danny Ramirez as “Fanboy,” Monica Barbaro as “ Phoenix ,” and Lewis Pullman as “Bob”—“Top Gun: Maverick” runs fully on its enthralling on-screen harmony at times. For evidence, look no further than the intense, fiery chemistry between Connelly and Cruise throughout—it’s genuinely sexy stuff—and (in a nostalgic nod to the original), a rather sensual beach football sequence, shot with crimson hues and suggestive shadows by Claudio Miranda . 

Still, the action sequences—all the low-altitude flights, airborne dogfights as well as Cruise on a motorcycle donned in his original Top Gun leather jacket—are likewise the breathtaking stars of “Maverick,” often accompanied by Harold Faltermeyer ’s celebratory original score (aided by cues from Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe ). Reportedly, all the flying scenes—a pair of which are pure hell-yes moments for Cruise—were shot in actual U.S. Navy F/A-18s, for which the cast had to be trained for during a mind-boggling process. The authentic work that went into every frame generously shows. As the jets cut through the atmosphere and brush their target soils in close-shave movements—all coherently edited by Eddie Hamilton —the sensation they generate feels miraculous and worthy of the biggest screen one can possibly find. Equally worthy of that big screen is the emotional strokes of “Maverick” that pack an unexpected punch. Sure, you might be prepared for a second sky-dance with “Maverick,” but perhaps not one that might require a tissue or two in its final stretch.

Available in theaters May 27th. 

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action, and some strong language.

131 minutes

Tom Cruise as Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell

Miles Teller as Lt. Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw

Jennifer Connelly as Penny Benjamin

Jon Hamm as Vice Admiral Cyclone

Glen Powell as Hangman

Lewis Pullman as Bob

Charles Parnell as Warlock

Bashir Salahuddin as Coleman

Monica Barbaro as Phoenix

Jay Ellis as Payback

Danny Ramirez as Fanboy

Greg Tarzan Davis as Coyote

Ed Harris as Rear Admiral

Val Kilmer as Admiral Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky

Manny Jacinto as Fritz

• Joseph Kosinski

Writer (based on characters created by)

• Jack Epps Jr.

Writer (story by)

• Peter Craig
• Justin Marks
• Ehren Kruger
• Eric Warren Singer
• Christopher McQuarrie

Cinematographer

• Claudio Miranda
• Chris Lebenzon
• Eddie Hamilton
• Lorne Balfe
• Harold Faltermeyer
• Hans Zimmer

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The world is not the same place it was in 1986, when “Top Gun” ruled the box office. In Ronald Reagan, America had a movie star for a president, and producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson as its honorary ministers of propaganda. The same year that “Platoon” challenged the United States’ militaristic track record, “Top Gun” sold a thrilling if narrow-minded fantasy of American exceptionalism — of boys and their toys, of macho-man bromance and what it means to be the best. Three years after Tom Cruise flipped the bird to a Russian MiG fighter plane, the Berlin Wall fell. Two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed.

One could argue that our new, post-Cold War world didn’t need a “Top Gun” sequel. (Tom Cruise himself once insisted as much.) But one would be wrong to do so. Building on the three-parts-steel-to-one-part-corn equation that director Tony Scott so effectively set 36 years earlier, the new film more than merits its existence, mirroring Cruise’s character, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, in pushing the limits of what the machine could do — the machine in this case being cinema, which takes to the skies as no blockbuster has before.

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Hardly anything in “ Top Gun: Maverick ” will surprise you, except how well it does nearly all the things audiences want and expect it to do. Orchestrated by Joseph Kosinski — the dynamo who collaborated with Cruise on “Oblivion” and first worked with Miles Teller on 2017’s terrific, underseen firefighter drama “Only the Brave” — to appeal to veterans and neophytes alike, this high-performance follow-up sends Maverick back to the Topgun program, where he won the heart of Charlie (Kelly McGillis) and lost best friend Goose (Anthony Edwards).

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Flashbacks notwithstanding, neither of those actors is in this movie, though the screenplay — a tag-team effort between Christopher McQuarrie (Cruise’s guy), Eric Warren Singer (Kosinski’s guy) and Ehren Kruger (yikes) — just about resurrects Goose via his now-adult son, Bradley Bradshaw (Teller), call sign “Rooster.” (“Phoenix” would be more apt, but that tag goes to Monica Barbaro, playing the lone woman in this testosterone pool.) The resemblance between Rooster and his late dad is uncanny, courtesy of a goofy moustache, some hair gel and a scene in which the young pilot pounds out “Great Balls of Fire” on the Hard Deck piano, the way Goose once did.

The Hard Deck is now operated by a character from Maverick’s past, Penny Benjamin ( Jennifer Connelly ), although she was only referenced in passing before: In “Top Gun,” Maverick is chewed out by his superior officer for having “a history of high-speed passes over five air control towers — and one admiral’s daughter!” Penny is that daughter: strong, independent and responsible for a daughter of her own (not Maverick’s, and too young to be his love interest). Cruise’s character has matured on the womanizing front, and the movie provides a shallow yet satisfying romantic subplot between him and Penny, which gives him something to come home for, since his daredevil tendencies otherwise give off strong kamikaze vibes.

In theory, Maverick should have graduated Topgun and gone back to teach what he’d learned to other Navy pilots. But after losing his flying partner, the character wound up being more of a loner — or so we learn, catching up with him all these years later, working as a test pilot and stuck at the rank of captain. Following a nostalgia-baiting aircraft carrier landing montage, wherein “Top Gun” theme “Danger Zone” blazes once again, Kosinski tracks Maverick to the Mojave Desert, still living up to his nickname when he takes a multimillion-dollar piece of government equipment — a supersonic, SR-71 Blackbird-style (fictional) Darkstar jet — out for a speed test.

Showing up as none-too-amused Navy brass, Ed Harris arrives just in time to eat a face full of sand as Maverick takes off at rocket speed, gently pushing the plane to Mach 10. (As a point of reference, the F-14s seen in “Top Gun” top out around Mach 2.) It’s a glorious scene, and one that melds everything Maverick once represented with Cruise’s own off-screen personality — which also explains all the self-driven motorcycle rides. The stunt nearly gets Maverick kicked out of the Navy. His only option: Go back to the training academy, where Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) is now filling Tom Skerritt/Viper’s shoes.

The script incorporates Kilmer’s throat cancer, such that Iceman has just one scene, communicating mostly by keyboard — but it’s a smart one, paying off the way the dynamic between these two ex-rivals has evolved. Considering the importance Goose and Rooster play in this next mission, which involves a near-impossible airstrike on a uranium plant, it would’ve been nice to see Meg Ryan return as the widow/mom, but the rules are cruel when it comes to aging female actors. Meanwhile, we can talk about all the cosmetic ways Cruise and Kilmer’s faces have evolved, although there’s only one change that matters: Cruise has perfected that little jaw-clenching trick that signifies “This is a really tough call.”

He won’t get an Oscar for pantomiming such swallow-your-pride stoicism, though Cruise deserves one for everything else the role demanded of him: If the flying scenes here blow your mind, it’s because a great many of them are the real deal, putting audiences right there in the cockpit alongside a cast who learned to pilot for their parts. The idea here is that Maverick has been grounded, relegated to coaching a dozen top-of-their-class hotshots, though he takes to the skies right away, trumping all of these aces in a series of adrenaline-fueled drills. Not a one of these students is convincing as a Navy pilot, though their personalities win us over all the same (even Glen Powell’s alpha-male “Hangman,” who serves as this movie’s Iceman equivalent), and once can imagine future spinoffs involving any of these characters.

“Top Gun” has always been “The Tom Cruise Show,” and no one believes for a second that Maverick won’t maneuver his way into flying the climactic mission. But he can’t do it alone: The operation calls for perfectly coordinated teamwork among six pilots, recalling the group air battle that bonded Iceman and Maverick in the original movie.

These days, videogame-styled blockbusters rely so heavily on CGI that it’s thrilling to see the impact of gravity on actual human beings, pancaked to their chairs by multiple G-forces. Sophisticated movie magic makes their performances seamless with the exterior airborne shots, while the commitment to filming practically everything practically feels like the cutting-edge equivalent of Howard Hughes’ history-making “Hell’s Angels.” The result is the most immersive flight simulator audiences will have ever experienced, right down to the great Dolby roar of engines vibrating through their seats (while the score teases cues for Lady Gaga’s end-credits anthem “Hold My Hand”).

Early on, Ed Harris’ character warns Maverick and his team that “one day, they won’t need pilots at all,” by which he means, drone technology is not far from allowing the Navy to do all of its flying by remote control. Cinema seems to be moving in that same direction, replacing actors with digital puppets and real locations with greenscreen plates — but not if Tom Cruise has anything to do with it. Engineered to hit so many of the same pleasure points as the original, “Top Gun: Maverick” fulfills our desire to go really fast, really far above ground — what the earlier film unforgettably referred to as “the need for speed.”

Still, this buckle-up follow-up also demonstrates why we feel the need for movie stars. It goes well beyond Cruise’s rah-rah involvement in what amounts to a glorified U.S. military recruitment commercial (the 1986 film might have been as perfectly calibrated as a Swiss watch, but it wasn’t subtle about its GI Joe agenda). It’s the way we identify with the guy when he’s doing what most of us thought impossible. Turns out we need Maverick now more than ever.

Reviewed at AMC Century City 15 (Imax), May 10, 2022. In Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition). MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 130 MIN.

• Production: A Paramount Pictures release of a Paramount Pictures, Skydance, Jerry Bruckheimer Films presentation of a Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production. Producers: Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison. Executive producers: Tommy Harper, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Chad Oman, Mike Stenson.
• Crew: Director: Joseph Kosinski. Screenplay: Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie; story: Peter Craig, Justin Marks, based on characters created by Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr. Camera: Claudio Miranda. Editor: Eddie Hamilton. Music: Lorne Balfe, Harold Faltermeyer, Hans Zimmer.
• With: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer.

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• The New <i>Top Gun</i> Is So Much Better Than the First One

The New Top Gun Is So Much Better Than the First One

I t no longer matters whether you like or dislike Tom Cruise : no matter how good he looks in his ultra-moisturized, deal-with-the-devil skin, his ship has sailed not just into the waters of middle age, but beyond them. Always a performer desperate to be liked, Cruise has entered a new era, one of potential irrelevance, which could be the best thing that’s ever happened to him. In a world where we’re all either captivated or annoyed by TikTok , freaked out about global warming and the loss of a woman’s right to choose , and trying to coax recalcitrant relatives into getting vaccinated, it’s not even worth the effort to dislike him. And that, if you’re a person who has never liked Tom Cruise, frees you to enjoy the myriad over-the-top pleasures of Top Gun: Maverick.

Top Gun: Maverick , directed by Joseph Kosinski, is a much better film than its predecessor was, and much better than it needs to be overall. Tony Scott’s 1986 jockstrap of a movie about hotshot Naval pilots—produced by fast-lane Hollywood players Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, who perhaps bear more responsibility for its numbnuts machismo than Scott does—is a caveman relic that has achieved enduring popularity, a high-fiving fantasy populated with dude bros before we even had a name for them. In the ’80s, we went to Jim Jarmusch movies to get away from these guys.

Yet it’s easy to make peace with the 2022 version of these men, Cruise included. Top Gun: Maverick takes place in a world where no one seems to be all that worried about the threat to modern masculinity. One of the pilots in the current gang happens to be a woman (she’s played by Monica Barbaro), but even if that’s a significant departure from the 1986 movie, made at a time when women weren’t allowed to fly in combat, it’s still beside the point. Without ridiculing or diminishing them, Top Gun: Maverick allows its male characters to have doubts and insecurities, to fear that maybe they can’t be the best, to worry about being too old to matter. At one point Ed Harris, playing a crusty admiral in a cameo role that nods to The Right Stuff, one of the truly great movies of the ’80s, practically snarls at Cruise, playing aging whippersnapper Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, for disobeying orders: “The future is coming, and you’re not in it.” Even if this is cartoon anxiety about being sent out to pasture, it still counts. Every generation gets the feeling of creeping obsolescence it deserves.

And Maverick is feeling it. Never having achieved a rank higher than Captain, knowing that climbing the ranks would only ground him, he’s been working as a test pilot for the Navy: in an early sequence, he gets his Chuck Yeager moment, climbing into a plane that’s like a space bird and pushing both it and himself to the limit. What has he got to lose? But it turns out that that proverbial one last job is waiting for him: His old friend and rival Iceman ( Val Kilmer , whose inability to speak has been deftly written into the role), who is now officially a big gun, has called him in to train a group of youngsters for an almost impossible mission. They’ll have to guide their planes through—not above—a twisty canyon, flying at dangerously low altitudes, with the goal of taking out an enemy airstrip and bunker. Jealous Navy dude and uptight authority figure Cyclone (Jon Hamm) doesn’t think Maverick is up to the task, which of course means he can’t turn it down.

So Maverick returns to the place where it all started, the Top Gun training site known as Miramar, a.k.a. Fightertown U.S.A. He makes the move, apparently, on his motorcycle, with nothing more than his trademark patch-adorned leather jacket on his back. Who needs a U-Haul full of sofas, toaster ovens, and pants and T-shirts when you can just jump, unhelmeted, on your bike and go? Even before his first day on the job, he encounters his 12 recruits as they whoop it up at the local watering hole, which happens to be run by an old flame, Penny (Jennifer Connelly), mentioned in passing in the first movie but now a woman, and a character, with a life of her own. She has a daughter; she loves to sail. In one scene, she gets Maverick out on her boat, where she navigates staunchly at the tiller while Maverick clings tentatively to a railing behind her. Isn’t he supposed to be in the Navy, she asks him? “I don’t sail boats, Penny,” he informs her. “I land on them.”

Thar she blows—wit! Or what passes for it when Cruise is doing the talking. But Maverick is dead-serious when he’s training his pilots, a group he must narrow down to six for the mission. The crew of eager aspirants include Phoenix (Barbaro), whose presence the guys accept, correctly, as no big deal; arrogant Hangman (Glen Powell), toothpick hanging from his mouth with the devil-may-care insouciance of a guy who saw a movie once; and, most significantly, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s old flight partner and best friend Goose (played in the earlier movie by Anthony Edwards), who died during a training maneuver—a loss Maverick has never gotten over, and one he still feels responsible for, even though the Navy has absolved him.

There’s understandable tension between Maverick and Rooster. Rooster wants to charge forward at life; Maverick, though he can barely admit it, would prefer to hold him back just to protect him. This is the central conflict of Top Gun: Maverick, one that’s resolved in the movie’s multilayered and, typically for Cruise, over-the-top climax.

Read more reviews by Stephanie Zacharek

If you haven’t already read a million things about how Top Gun: Maverick was made, and how solemnly Cruise accepted this mission, don’t start now. It’s not really worth it, and it could dull your joy in the fact that this is, at the very least, a feat of old-fashioned action moviemaking, light on CGI, and favoring human beings actually moving and planes actually flying. (Bruckheimer is, incidentally, one of the film’s producers. Simpson died in 1996.) The flying sequences are divine, sometimes tense and sometimes rapturously freeing, and they feel realistic because they’re minimally touched by CGI. (Cruise is an experienced pilot, and got extra training from the Navy on top of that; his fellow actors learned to fly as well.) But even its more casual sequences show definitive flair: at one point Cruise and the younger pilots, all in beachwear, cavort in the surf during a rowdy game of dogfight football. The sun glints off the men’s water-dappled pecs; their aviator sunglasses hide their inevitable squinting. Bruce Weber could have done it better, but Kosinsky—who has made two previous features, the 2010 Tron: Legacy and the 2012 sci-fi drama Oblivion, also starring Cruise—pulls it off even so.

It may be damning Cruise with faint praise to call him tolerable in Top Gun: Maverick. But even if he’s just playing at the indignity of aging rather than truly feeling it, he’s at least attempting to be less of a hologram and more a facsimile of a human. Early in Top Gun: Maverick, he sits at Penny’s bar by himself, looking on as the younger pilots swig their beers, taunt one another, argue with good or ill humor about who’s the best pilot. His gaze—affectionate, a little wistful—signals that he knows what’s coming for him, sooner rather than later. But first, to show these kids he’s still got it. Love Tom Cruise or hate him, he’s the only one we’ve got; his particular set of qualities have no equal. The day he stops needing to prove himself will be like the day a lion loses the will to roar. And only a cruel person would rejoice in that.

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“Top Gun: Maverick,” Reviewed: Tom Cruise Takes Empty Thrills to New Heights

When Ronald Reagan was elected President, in 1980, it seemed only slightly more absurd than if Ronald McDonald had won. Both were entertainers, but the burger clown knew it, whereas Reagan believed the nostalgic and noxious verities of the movies that he had appeared in—and as a politician he attempted to force modern American life to conform to them. Thus “Top Gun,” which I saw when it came out, in 1986, felt like the cultural nadir of a time that was itself something of a nadir. As a film of cheaply rousing drama and jingoistic nonsense, “Top Gun” played like feedback—a shrill distillation of the very world view that it reproduced. Little did we know that there was another, less accomplished yet more bilious entertainer waiting in the wings to wreak even more grievous damage, more than three decades later, on the polity and the national psyche.

No less than the original “Top Gun,” its new sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” directed by Joseph Kosinski, is an emblem of its benighted political times. That’s why, in comparison with the sequel, the original comes off as a work of warmhearted humanism. Yet, paradoxically, and disturbingly, “Maverick” is also a more satisfying drama, a more accomplished action film—I enjoyed it more, yet its dosed-out, juiced-up pleasures reveal something terrifying about the implications and the effects of its narrative efficiency.

“Maverick” is less a sequel to “Top Gun” than a renovation of it. The framework of the story is borrowed from the original, nearly scene for scene; drastic changes, while updating it for the present time, leave it recognizable still. In the new film, Tom Cruise returns as Lieutenant Pete Mitchell, whose call sign is Maverick. Now he’s a test pilot at an isolated post in the Mojave Desert, where the project he’s working on—the development of a new airplane—is about to be cancelled in favor of drones, on the pretext of a performance standard that can’t be met. So Maverick, defying an admiral’s order, takes the plane airborne and, against all odds and at grave personal danger, pushes it past Mach 10 (which, for the record, is more than seven thousand miles per hour), thus temporarily saving the project but also risking court martial. Instead, Maverick is sent back to Fighter Weapons School, a.k.a., Top Gun—of which he is, of course, a graduate—in San Diego, summoned by the academy’s commanding officer, Admiral Tom (Iceman) Kazansky, his classmate and respected rival in the first film (again played by Val Kilmer). Maverick’s assignment is to train a dozen young ace pilots for a top-secret and crucial mission, to fly into a mountainous region in an unnamed “rogue” state and destroy a subterranean uranium-enrichment plant.

Yet soon another admiral, Beau (Cyclone) Simpson, played by Jon Hamm, sidelines Maverick and changes the mission’s parameters. In response, Maverick steals another plane and undertakes another unauthorized and dangerous flight, thereby justifying his own set of parameters to Cyclone—who orders him back to lead the younger flyers. Yet Maverick has history with one of those flyers, Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign Rooster, whose late father, Nick (Goose) Bradshaw, played by Anthony Edwards, was Maverick’s wingman in the original “Top Gun” and died saving Maverick’s life. There’s more to that history (spoiler), but the dramatic point is that Maverick has to overcome both the distrust and the enmity of one of the best pilots he’s training—for the sake of the mission, the unit’s esprit de corps, Rooster’s peace of mind, and his own sense of responsibility for a fatherless young man for whom he assumed paternal responsibilities.

There’s also a romance, perhaps the most perfunctory one this side of a children’s movie. Like the one in the original “Top Gun,” it is centered on a bar. This time, Maverick re-meets cute a former lover named Penny (Jennifer Connelly), the owner of the bar where the pilots all hang out. (In the original “Top Gun,” there’s mention of a woman named Penny as one of Maverick’s romantic partners, but the hint goes undeveloped.) What it takes for them to get back together is a kind of barroom hazing that costs Maverick money and dignity, plus a jaunt on her sailboat where she literally teaches him the ropes. (As to what happened between him and Charlie, his instructor and lover in the first film, played by Kelly McGillis, the new film says not a word.) Their relationship is the hollow core around which the movie is modelled, and its emptiness comes off not as accidental or oblivious but as the self-conscious dramatic strategy of the director and the film’s group of screenwriters.

The first ten minutes of “Top Gun”—showing the midair freakout of a pilot called Cougar (John Stockwell)—contain more real emotion than the entire running time of the sequel, and therein lie the key differences between the two films. The powerful feelings, troubled circumstances, and unsettling ambiguities in the original posed dramatic challenges that its director, Tony Scott, and its screenwriters never met. Their film thrusted a handful of significant complexities onto the screen but never explored or resolved them. It wasn’t only Cougar who fell apart in “Top Gun.” Maverick himself, racked with guilt over Goose’s death, first attempted to quit the Navy and then, returning to combat duty, froze up in midair. Of course, Maverick quickly got over it (thanks to Goose’s dog tags), and his suddenly resurgent heroic skills saved the day, brought the movie to a quick triumph, and aroused three decades of impatience for a sequel—but his vulnerability and fallibility at least made a daunting appearance.

By contrast, “Maverick” allows for no such doubts or hesitations. There’s certainly danger in the film, including a pilot who passes out midair and needs to be rescued. Maverick himself ends up in some perilous straits. But none of these situations suggests any weakness or failure of will, any questioning of the mission or of the pilots’ own abilities. The challenges are visceral rather than psychological, technical rather than dramatic, and the script offers them not resolutions but merely solutions—ones that are as impersonal as putting a key in a lock and as gratifying as hearing it click open. “Maverick” feels less written and directed than engineered. It is a work that achieves a certain sort of perfection, a perfect substancelessness—which is a deft way of making its forceful, and wildly political, implicit subject matter pass unnoticed.

Again, comparison with the original is telling. Whatever else the original “Top Gun” is, it’s a movie of procedure. The astounding upside-down maneuver with which Maverick flaunts his daring and prowess early on isn’t a violation of rules, just a departure from textbook methods. On another flight, he does break the rules, in relatively minor ways—he goes briefly below the “hard deck” (the lower limit) to win a competition and then playfully buzzes officers in a tower—and gets seriously called on the carpet for it. By contrast, in the sequel Maverick openly defies the orders of his superior officers, and not merely for a quick maneuver or a playful twit—he steals two planes, and destroys one of them. (For that matter, the destruction is kept offscreen and is merely played for laughs.) The essence of “Maverick” is that a naval officer breaks the law but gets away with it, because he and he alone can save the country from imminent danger.

The lawbreaker-as-hero model rings differently in an age of Trumpian politics and practices, of open insurrection and a near-coup. “Maverick” is evidence, as strong as any in the political arena, that the Overton window of authoritarianism has shifted. This is apparent in the movie’s cavalier attitude toward the rule of law, even in the seemingly sacrosanct domain of military discipline. In the original “Top Gun,” Maverick and the other pilots are told, by the instructor Viper (Tom Skerritt), “Now, we don’t make policy here, gentlemen. Elected officials, civilians do that. We are the instruments of that policy.” (Yes, “gentlemen”—all the fliers in the original are men.) In “Maverick,” there is no parallel line of dialogue, and the military is hermetically sealed off from any reference to politics—perhaps because such sentiments would likely now, in many parts of the country, be booed.

In “Top Gun,” Maverick is a warrior who needs to master his emotions in order to serve his country and to protect his colleagues. In the new film, Maverick, nearing sixty, succeeds solely by giving in to his emotions, by expressly not controlling them—and this, above all, is the doctrine that he imparts to young pilots: “Don’t think, just do.” That mantra, which his best students repeat back to him and follow, is a strange perversion of a key phrase that the young Maverick, explaining himself in class, blurts out in “Top Gun”: “You don’t have time to think up there; if you think, you’re dead.” There’s a world of difference between the young Maverick’s nearly apologetic instrumentalizing of instinct and the elder Maverick’s exaltation of unthinking action. This key line—which, following the quotability of the original film, seems devised to become a catchphrase—isn’t limited to flying and fighting but is delivered as a dictum that could as easily be echoed by anyone with anything to do anywhere.

Thinking means reflecting on consequences and contexts, going past immediate desires and appearances to consider causes and implications. Not thinking is easy for the characters in “Maverick,” because they have no individual attributes at all. The pilots and the officers are played by a diverse group of actors, but the screenwriters give them identities outside of their military actions and no backstories beside the ones that issue from the original “Top Gun.” In the entire film, not a single event or idea or experience is discussed that doesn’t specifically relate to the plot. As a result, the stars and the supporting cast alike have little to do and are reduced to flattened emblems of themselves. Yet the reduction of the characters to cipher-like mechanical functions is part of the charm of “Maverick,” thrusting into the foreground the many extended sequences of high-risk flight, and rendering them more dramatically characterized than anything that takes place on the ground. Also, these airborne scenes far outshine the ones in “Top Gun,” because they are filmed largely from the point of view of the pilots, looking out through the front of the cockpit into the onrush of other planes and in the face of looming and menacing obstacles. They are some of the most impressive and exciting—and strikingly simple—action sequences that I’ve seen in a while.

Apparently, the flight scenes in “Maverick” were realized in actual planes in flight, and the cameras in the cockpits were wielded by the actors themselves. Cruise, who famously enjoys doing his own stunts, supposedly trained his castmates in the requisite skills of aerial cinematography. I wouldn’t have guessed any of this, though, if I hadn’t read the publicity materials in which Cruise and others say so. The scenes of pilots in flight are cut into rapid fragments that reduce aerial views to mere moments of excitement. They are interspersed with aggrandizing grunt-and-sweat closeups of the actors, especially Cruise. This amounts to a kind of malpractice in the editing room, transforming the actors’ brave and devoted exertions into a seeming cheat, an ersatz experience that might as well have been created with C.G.I.

What’s most impressive about “Top Gun: Maverick” is its speed—not the speed of the planes in flight but the speed with which the movie dashes in a straight line from its opening act to its conclusion. The flights at the center of the film are vertiginously twisty, but the drama is a bullet train on a rigid track. Both midair and on the ground, Kosinski is an approximator. He doesn’t let his eye get distracted by the piquant detail, and he doesn’t turn his head to overhear a stray confidence or an incidental remark. He’s narrowly focussed on the relentless course of the action, and incurious about its byways, its implications, its material or emotional realities. He keeps the drama as abstract as the military software and as inhuman as the military hardware that are the movie’s true protagonists. I repeat: I enjoyed it, and you might, too—if you don’t think, just watch.

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Review: The Most Satisfying Summer Action Movie Since ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’

David ehrlich.

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In December 2020, a leaked audio snippet from the set of the next “Mission: Impossible” movie revealed star/producer/most intense man alive Tom Cruise absolutely losing his mind at some unnamed crew members who had, he felt, violated the COVID protocols that were allowing the massive studio production to roll cameras during the height of the pandemic. “We are the gold standard,” you might remember him shouting. “They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us… We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherfuckers!”

Cruise went on to note that he wasn’t interested in apologies: “You can tell it to the people who are losing their fucking homes because the industry is shut down. It’s not going to put food on their table or pay for their college education. That’s what I sleep with every night — the future of this fucking industry!”

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In hindsight, that furious speech was an uncanny echo of several things that Cruise had said “in character” the previous year — months before the first documented COVID-19 case — while shooting “ Top Gun: Maverick .”

In one scene, legendary Navy fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell fires back at a class of arrogant young hotshots after they fail a high-stakes training exercise, the aging veteran telling his students to save their sorries for the families of the wingmen they might leave for dead if they don’t learn to fly right. In another, Captain Pete screams above the American West at the controls of an experimental Navy fighter jet as it strains to hit Mach10 in defiance of the hard-ass admiral (obviously Ed Harris) who wants to shut the whole program down. Ordered to return to base, our hero grits his teeth, reflects on all the people who will lose their jobs if the government diverts funding towards drones at the expense of human pilots, and pushes the aircraft so fast that it breaks apart at the seams. “The future is coming,” the admiral growls when he finally confronts Pete face-to-face. “And you’re not in it.”

It’s become an increasingly self-evident truth that Cruise is the last Hollywood movie star of his kind — short as ever but still larger-than-life in an age where most famous actors are only as big as their action figures — and the new “Top Gun” isn’t exactly subtle about the self-commentary it offers on that situation. From new recruits to grizzled vets, every character in this film regards Maverick as both a relic and a god (sometimes in the same breath). Even the guy’s on-again off-again love interest, a thinly written bar owner who Jennifer Connelly wills into a flesh-and-blood woman, thinks of him as an old flame whose light has never gone out.

Watching Cruise pilot a fighter jet 200 feet above the floor of Death Valley, corkscrew another one through Washington’s Cascade Mountains, and give one of the most vulnerable performances of his career while sustaining so many G-forces that you can practically see him going Clear in real-time, you realize — more lucidly than ever before — that this wild-eyed lunatic makes movies like his life depends on it. Because it does, and not for the first time.

But if “Maverick” can’t quite match “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” for sheer kineticism and well-orchestrated awe, this long-delayed sequel does more to clarify what that means than anything Cruise has ever made. And the reason for that is simple: Tom Cruise is Maverick, and Maverick is Tom Cruise.

And while that may have been true since the moment Tony Scott’s “Top Gun” first hit theaters in 1986, the movie that minted the baby-faced kid from “Risky Business” as a bonafide icon rings so hollow for the same reason: Back then, being Tom Cruise didn’t mean anything. Joseph Kosinski ’s “Maverick,” on the other hand, is such a confidently rapturous, emotionally involving, take-your-breath away great time at the movies because it shares its star’s bone-deep awareness that being Tom Cruise now means everything . If “Top Gun” was a fun film because it invented Tom Cruise, “Maverick” is a great film because it immortalizes him. It’s not a Tom Cruise movie so much as it’s “Tom Cruise: The Movie,” and by the time it’s over, even his fiercest critics might have to admit that they’ll miss him when he’s gone.

Of course, “Top Gun” was more than just a watershed moment for the toothy mogul-in-the-making who piloted it to box office success (effectively cementing it as one of modern history’s greatest military recruitment campaigns along the way). Crystallizing a vibe that was already fading into the afterburner-orange sunset behind it, the Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer mega-hit was and remains a veritable coke orgy of Reagan-era expansionism, comically unexamined homoeroticism (courtesy of Hollywood’s sweatiest rising stars), and synth-driven needle drops that target your brain’s pleasure centers with the frightening power of a MiG-28.

Composed like a symphony and plotted like a ham sandwich, “Top Gun” is a surface-to-air missile of Hollywood spectacle that balances the thrust of high-flying aerial footage with the drag of low-stakes storytelling. It endures, despite its general soullessness, because of how vividly it captures a moment in time when American men felt like they would live forever — which is why the film’s most indelible moment comes when one of them dies.

“Maverick” flips the script on “Top Gun” in almost every way that matters, despite — or perhaps because — it remains so faithful to its structure and “nothing to see here!” political outlook. Stainless where the original was musty, neutered where the original was soft-core (there isn’t a single gratuitous shower scene in this sequel, let alone three of them), and structured like an immaculate pop song where the original moved like freeform jazz, “Maverick” sounds like a major regression from an age where summer movies didn’t always play safe.

But let’s not forget that Cruise is the only guy whose summer movies still vehemently refuse to do that. In most cases, that unwillingness to play it safe translates into Cruise performing some insane stunt that could get him killed. In “Maverick,” a movie in which the actor launches an F/A-18 off the flight-deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt as a mere appetizer for the holy shit, they did this all for real aerial theatrics to come, Cruise’s usual “what if I made a $200 million snuff film?” routine is textured and deepened by an unusually palpable obsession with death. Where “Top Gun” was fueled by a feeling of invincibility, this sequel draws its strength from an awareness of inevitability.

“Time is your greatest adversary,” Maverick barks at the cocky pilots he’s been ordered to train for a suicide mission three weeks away. And while it’s true that “Fanboy” (Danny Ramirez), “Phoenix” (Monica Barbaro, effortlessly adding women into the mix), “Hangman” (Glen Powell, grinning up a storm in his note-perfect turn as Iceman 2.0), and the rest of the new class will only have 150 seconds to zip under “the enemy’s” defenses and bomb a ridiculously well-fortified uranium-enrichment plant before it goes operational, the double-meaning of that dialogue is as unsubtle as everything else in this movie.

Once upon a time, Maverick was an entitled, nepotistic jackass who (figuratively) got away with murder because he was such a special little boy. Now, almost 40 years later, it’s embarrassing to see how little he’s changed. Or, more accurately, how hard he’s tried to keep things from changing. Maverick seems to believe that by staying a captain forever — by refusing promotions or retirement for almost half a century — he could live in his glory days forever. In that light, he should be thrilled by the invitation to return to the same Naval Fighter Weapons School where he trained (and eventually taught) in the original “Top Gun.” What better way to make time stand still?

Alas, you can only fly away from the international dateline for so long before you reach tomorrow, and it’s clear that Maverick is almost there. For one thing, the base’s dick-swinging “air boss” ( Jon Hamm in full-on “that’s what the money is for!” mode) takes every chance to remind Maverick that this will be his last assignment. For another, Maverick’s absent wingmen can’t help but remind him that time is always on his tail. Goose is still dead — sad how that works — and Iceman isn’t the perfectly symmetrical Übermensch he used to be. As for “Top Gun” love interest Charlotte Blackwood? Maverick doesn’t even want to know.

If Maverick is desperate to make time stand still, he’s absolutely terrified of allowing it to repeat itself. The look on Cruise’s face when he sees Goose’s resentful son step into his classroom… it’s like he saw a ghost, or at least a Paramount executive who threatened to release one of his movies day-and-date. Played by an uncharacteristically effective Miles Teller — who does an uncanny job of channeling Anthony Edwards, and mines genuine feeling out of begrudging unlikeability — Rooster is still mighty pissed off by Maverick’s involvement in his late father’s death, and the strained relationship between this young hotshot and his stone-faced new flight instructor forms the emotional bedrock of the story. Neither one of them knows how to let go, but that character flaw might just turn out to be an asset in disguise.

Ehren Kruger, Christopher McQuarrie, and Eric Warren Singer’s well-engineered script doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but “Maverick” is all about old-school thrills in defiance of a new world order, and the joy of watching it is anchored in a certain degree of predictability. Much like the original, “Maverick” is a drama steam-baked in so much testosterone and repressed male emotion that it sweats into an action movie. Unlike the original — which, in an historic moment of dumb screenwriting, drops its climactic mission on its hotshots while they were literally still at the Top Gun graduation ceremony — “Maverick” builds up to a particular mission from the start, and drills every detail about it into our heads as if we’ll have to fly it ourselves (those details will have to make room next to the melody of Lady Gaga’s end credits anthem “Hold My Hand,” which is used as score throughout the film to wonderful effect).

When the action finally starts, not even the wildest aerial maneuvers can disorient us. Factor in Kosinski’s ultra-crisp direction (made possible by Claudio Miranda’s camera-in-the-cockpit cinematography), and you have a series of character-driven, heart-in-your-throat dogfights more vivid than anything in the first previous film. Kosinski may not be able to match Tony Scott’s formalist bravado, but he makes up for it with speed, clarity, and a moral imperative to push the limits of what seems possible. Kosinski feels the need… the need… to remind multiplex audiences of what’s possible when people give their entire bodies to a movie instead of simply lending them to a brand (not as catchy, I’ll admit). So what if America’s top guns “no longer possess the technological advantage”? It’s the pilot, not the plane.

It’s certainly not the country. War hawks and Navy recruiters will naturally have a field day with this film, but misgivings about its (absent) politics are mitigated by a story that plays more like an IMAX-sized character study than it does a plea to funnel money towards the United States’ military budget. It’s a blockbuster about the glory of pyrrhic victories, itself a pyrrhic victory against blockbusters.

But if movie stardom is as obsolete as the kind of movies that stars used to make, “obsolete” isn’t the same as “over.” As Maverick whispers at a crucial moment: “There’s still time.” It’s clear that Cruise and Maverick are on their way out — just as this film makes it clear that neither one of them can find someone worthy to whom they can pass the torch — but it’s never too late to live forever. Not for the last star who’s still willing to put every fiber of his being into the movies he makes. Neither Tom Cruise nor Maverick may be in the future, but that will have to be the future’s loss.

Paramount Pictures will release “Top Gun: Maverick” in theaters on Friday, May 27.

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Top Gun: Maverick review: A high-flying sequel gets it right

The need for speed comes with a fresh young cast, but the Cruise control remains.

In Top Gun: Maverick 's opening scene, someone makes the mistake of asking Tom Cruise to take his fighter jet to Mach 9. He pauses, then flashes that megawatt Cheshire grin. Never mind that it's a practice run; there is only one Mach he knows, and it is 10 (or maybe 10.2). That's because he's a maverick, the Maverick — Captain Pete Mitchell of the United States Navy, a rogue's rogue for whom clouds part and Hans Zimmer synths soar.

He's also 36 years older than the cocky young lieutenant he played on screen in the 1986 original , a bare fact that the sequel (in theaters May 27) both elides and celebrates in a movie whose bright stripes and broad strokes feel somehow bombastic and tenderheartedly nostalgic at the same time. Imagine a world where motorcyclists scoff at helmets, all bars burst into jukebox singalongs, and the U.S. military is simply an unblemished agent for good. A few decades ago you didn't have to, because you lived in it; Top Gun: Maverick can because it never left.

Inevitably, a few things have changed: Lady Gaga is on the soundtrack now , and there's a whole new class of lion-cub recruits. But that's still Kenny Loggins' " Danger Zone " chugging over the title credits, and Maverick is still the fastest man alive in an F-14, even if he's never managed to exceed the lowly rank of Captain. "You should be at least a two-star admiral by now, or a Senator," Ed Harris 's Rear Admiral grouses early on, before grudgingly sending him off to the Top Gun base in San Diego. Maverick's constant insubordination and looming obsolescence should have gotten him discharged years ago, he reminds him; instead, he's been saved by an old friend, Iceman ( Val Kilmer ), now an admiral himself.

There's a reason for that intervention: a uranium plant in a heavily guarded secret bunker that needs to be eliminated before it becomes operational for the enemy. (What enemy? Don't ask, don't tell.) And only jets can infiltrate it, if the Academy's ten best recruits can be taught to thread the needle and get out of there alive. Leading the team is Maverick's new job, though the bossman there (a scowling Jon Hamm) is not exactly overjoyed to welcome him — and a promising young pilot called Rooster ( Miles Teller , in a kicky little mustache) even less enthused. That's because Rooster's parents were Goose and Carole (Anthony Edwards and Meg Ryan, who appear only in misty flashbacks), and all he knows is that Pete had something to do with him getting pulled from the fast-track flight program years ago.

Otherwise, Rooster's main rival amongst the new hopefuls is Hangman ( Hidden Figures ' great Glen Powell), a fellow pilot whose smirky antagonism recalls the last movie's Iceman rivalry in everything except the frosted tips (Powell is a more natural kind of blonde, but the square-jawed swagger and resting smug face play the same). Director Joseph Kosinski ( TRON: Legacy ) revels in the sonic-boom rush of their many flight scenes, sending his jets swooping and spinning in impossible, equilibrium-rattling arcs. On the ground, too, his camera caresses every object in its view, almost as if he's making a rippling ad for America itself: The unfurling snap of a boat sail; the gleaming Formica in a desert rest-stop diner; golden bodies playing touch football in the California surf while a magic-hour sun goes down.

That nationalistic glow extends to Maverick's courting of a former paramour, Jennifer Connelly , but there's a bittersweet sentimentality in their reconnection, the kind of unhurried adult romance that doesn't make it on screen much anymore. (A brief interlude with Kilmer, who has largely lost his voice to cancer , is also surprisingly moving.) Kosinksi, of course, has to make his Maverick work with or without the context of the original, and the script, by Peter Craig ( The Batman ) and Justin Marks ( The Jungle Book ) toggles deftly between winking callbacks and standard big-beat action stuff meant to stand on its own. Teller and Powell are breezily appealing, actors at the apex of their youth and beauty, though the movie still belongs in almost every scene to Cruise. At this point in his career, he's not really playing characters so much as variations on a theme — the theme being, perhaps, The Last Movie Star. And in the air up there, he stands alone. Grade: B+

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• Tom Cruise revisits Goose's Top Gun death in Lady Gaga's 'Hold My Hand' music video
• The sky's the limit for Top Gun: Maverick hotshot Glen Powell
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'Top Gun: Maverick' Review: Smash Hit Tom Cruise Sequel Streaming in December

You'll feel the need for speed in this box office smash sequel to the '80s classic, streaming on Paramount Plus in time for the holidays.

Tom Cruise takes to the skies in Top Gun: Maverick with Miles Teller and Val Kilmer.

Welcome back to the danger zone. You might not think 2022 needed a sequel to the most '80s movie ever, but Top Gun: Maverick is way more wildly entertaining than it has any right to be. Top Gun 2 reboots the original film's heart-pounding aerial action, infectiously cheesy character drama and don't-think-too-hard-about-it military fetishism in a winning spectacle of cinematic escapism.

It's been more than 35 years since the release of the original Top Gun, in which Tom Cruise employed his widest grin as a US Navy aviator with a point to prove and a childlike delight in playing with high-speed toys (which just happen to be built for killing people, but whatever). Having smashed over a billion dollars in theaters, it's available now in digital stores, on 4K Blu-ray and on DVD (so that's your dad's Christmas present sorted). Top Gun: Maverick will also stream on Paramount Plus from Dec. 22.

Cruise reportedly resisted a sequel for decades, but it turns out if you wait long enough, a story presents itself. He returns to the cockpit as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, still feeling the need for speed no matter what the top brass says. And now, enough time has passed since his co-pilot Goose's death in the original film for Goose's son to be a fully grown man.

Played by Miles Teller , the son is a chip off the old chock, flying with the Navy under the callsign Rooster. When Maverick is called in to train the next generation of cocky kids for a Dambusters-meets-Death-Star suicide mission, the pair are locked onto an intercept course. "And we're off," one character wryly observes of Maverick's anti-authoritarian antics, but he could be talking about the full-tilt re-creation of the original film's glossy thrills. 

Who plays Rooster in Top Gun 2? Miles Teller is the next generation of cocky cockpit jockey.

From the moment you hear the instantly recognizable tolling of the synth bell in Harold Faltermeyer's stirring Top Gun Anthem, it's like the past 30 years never happened. The opening credits describe Maverick, like the original, as a Don Simpson / Jerry Bruckheimer production, even though Simpson died in 1996. The opening text caption explaining the concept of the US Navy's Fighter Weapons School uses the same wording as the first film. And throughout, director Joseph Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda faithfully re-create the late Tony Scott's cinematic style, from a backlit bustling flight deck to ramrod-straight silhouettes arrayed in a hangar. This new version even begins by dropping you into the controlled chaos of an aircraft carrier flight deck with a shot-for-shot re-creation of the first film's iconic intro (probably).

This flight deck sequence has zero connection to what comes after, but it's still a pretty great introduction, instantly immersing you in the familiar feel of a film you may have seen many times or may not have seen for years. More importantly, it feels real , the film setting out its stall from the very beginning: It's about real stuff, like fighter planes and sailboats and proper old-fashioned stunts, not fake stuff like drones and phones and computer-generated spectacle. The marketing makes a big deal out of how the actors really went up in planes, and while there's doubtless a ton of invisible CGI -- as in every film, whether you notice it or not -- almost every shot at least feels like it was done for real. Unlike recent blockbusters (ahem, Marvel movies) which distance you from the action with clearly impossible camera angles and over-the-top CG effects, Top Gun: Maverick uses the visual language of the original, the camera jammed claustrophobically into a cockpit or shaking as it struggles to keep up with a jet screaming past.

Making this explicit connection to such a beloved movie is a risk, of course. The first film was crammed with iconic moments and quotes, and the sequel does little more than rearrange the planes on the flight deck. Still, it's pretty restrained with the catchphrases and callbacks. Yes, Maverick's leather jacket and motorbike get their own theme tune. But the fighter jets and aircraft carriers furnished by the United States Navy aren't the only formidable weapons deployed by the sequel: The toppest gun in the Top Gun arsenal is Cruise's still-explosive charisma.

While the flick again pushes credulity with its deification of Maverick and his godlike flying abilities, Cruise's secret weapon is always his willingness to look silly. So the over-the-top action is balanced with appealing humor and even a little pathos in Cruise's relationship with the younger flyers and his rekindled romance with a bar owner. She's played by Jennifer Connelly , another star who rose in the 1980s (check out who's singing on the jukebox when she first turns up). With Connelly as his old flame and Teller as his surrogate son, Cruise's aging Maverick provides just enough heart to keep things moving as he grapples with the prospect of keeping his feet on the ground permanently. A bittersweet scene reuniting Cruise with the original film's co-star, an ailing Val Kilmer, is also a touching and surprisingly funny moment.

Take to the skies in Top Gun: Maverick.

There's no disguising that a lot of the story is a rerun of the original. For example, Cruise takes the Kelly McGillis role, just for fun. But somehow, despite the fact it's all geared toward a life-or-death mission, the stakes don't feel as immediate as they did the first time around. The original film was fueled by the sense Maverick was genuinely dangerous to the people around him, but this new model doesn't capture the same headlong rush into the danger zone. Partly because the younger models look more like, well, models, rather than warriors. But the main problem is that the mission is so improbably specific to the needs of the plot. The G-force of narrative silliness will start to crush your brain, especially when a late-stage twist fires the afterburners and jets into absurdity that might tempt you to eject.

There are certainly reasons not to like a film like this, whether it's Cruise's personal life or the film's unquestioning attitude to war. Matthew Modine and Bryan Adams were among the '80s stars who declined to be involved in the original because of its jingoistic tone, which was a post-Vietnam reassertion of American military (and masculine) might. Even Cruise dodged a sequel because he didn't want to glorify war. Oddly, Top Gun: Maverick is so bloodless and untroubled by ambiguity it barely feels like a war film. It's just boys with toys.

There's a vague subplot about Jon Hamm's pencil neck in the tower caring that the pilots complete the mission and not so much about them coming back alive, but that only makes the flick's explicit disdain for unmanned combat drones somewhat confusing. In fact, a much truer Top Gun sequel was actually made a few years ago: Good Kill, in which Ethan Hawke plays a Cruise-esque fighter pilot exiled to drone duty, losing his mind in a metal box in the Las Vegas desert as he presses a button and kills civilians thousands of miles away .

Top Gun: Maverick, meanwhile, doesn't even tell us who Tom's fighting against. There's an unnamed faceless adversary, black-helmeted bogeys and boogeymen, stripped of sovereignty or even humanity. The eternal enemy, somewhere out there, doing vaguely defined bad-sounding things that need to be blown up by missiles and helicopters and aircraft carriers. Your tax dollars at work.

But who cares about that? This isn't Saving Private Ryan, this is Top Gun. Ask not for whom the synth bell tolls, because the synth bell tolls for anyone who loves a great popcorn action movie that's as enjoyable as it is ridiculous. Top Gun: Maverick is a blast. The film keeps insisting this is Maverick's last post, but this polished action movie powerhouse is a fun way to fly into the sunset. 

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Tom Cruise hangs on for dear life to his 'Mission' to save the movies

Justin Chang

Tom Cruise is back, and doing his own stunts, in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. Paramount Pictures and Skydance hide caption

Tom Cruise is back, and doing his own stunts, in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.

For some time now, Tom Cruise has been on what feels like a one-man mission to save the movies. Back in 2020, when Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One was shooting in the U.K., Cruise was recorded screaming at crew members who'd violated COVID-19 lockdown protocols, all but claiming that the industry's future rested on their shoulders. Earlier this year, Steven Spielberg publicly praised Cruise for saving Hollywood with the smash success of Top Gun: Maverick .

Now, with the box office still struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels, Cruise has become a kind of evangelist for the theatergoing experience, urging audiences to buy tickets not just to his movie, but also to other big summer titles like Barbie and Oppenheimer .

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'mission: impossible' is back, but will you accept it, or will it self-destruct.

Cruise's save-the-movies spirit goes hand-in-hand with his self-styled reputation as the last of the great Hollywood stars. In this seventh Mission: Impossible movie, the now 61-year-old actor and producer still insists on risking life and limb for our viewing pleasure, doing his own outrageous stunts in action scenes that make only minimal use of CGI. And so we see Cruise's Ethan Hunt, an agent with the Impossible Missions Force, or IMF, tearing up the streets of Rome in a tiny yellow Fiat, riding a motorcycle off a cliff and — in the most astonishing sequence — hanging on for dear life after a deadly train derailment.

The plot that connects these sequences is preposterous, of course, but reasonably easy to follow. In an especially timely twist, the big villain this time around is AI — a self-aware techno-being referred to as the Entity. It's an invisible menace, everywhere and nowhere; it can wipe out data systems, control the flow of information and bring nations to their knees.

'Top Gun: Maverick' is ridiculous. It's also ridiculously entertaining

Hunt and his IMF team are determined to destroy the Entity before it becomes too powerful or falls into the wrong hands. But his old boss, Eugene Kittridge, played by the sinister Henry Czerny, warns Hunt to fall in line with the U.S. government, which wants to control the Entity and the new world order to come.

This is notably the first time we've seen Kittridge since Brian De Palma 's 1996 Mission: Impossible — the first and still, to my mind, the best movie in the series. That said, the director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie has done a snazzy job with the most recent ones: Rogue Nation , Fallout and now Dead Reckoning Part One .

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Sorry, tom cruise fans — new 'top gun' and 'mission impossible' movies delayed again.

Here, he seems to be paying sly tribute to that 1996 original, even evoking its horrific early setpiece in which Hunt watched helplessly as his IMF teammates were murdered, one by one. That trauma was formative; it explains why, in movie after movie, Hunt has repeatedly put his life on the line for his friends.

If you're kept up with the series, you'll recognize those friends here, including Hunt's fellow operatives played by Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson. You may also remember Vanessa Kirby , reprising her Fallout role as a ruthless arms broker and giving, in a single sequence, perhaps the movie's best performance. There are some intriguing new characters, too, including a wily thief, well played by Hayley Atwell, who draws Hunt into an extended game of cat-and-mouse. Pom Klementieff steals a few scenes as a mysterious assassin, as does Esai Morales as a glowering enemy from Hunt's past.

That's a lot of characters, double-crosses, chases, fights, escapes and explosions to keep track of. But even with a running time that pushes north of two-and-a-half hours — and this is just Part One — the movie never loses its grip. McQuarrie, a screenwriter first and foremost, paces the narrative beautifully, building and releasing tension at regular intervals.

Compared with the visual effects-heavy bombast of most Hollywood blockbusters, Dead Reckoning Part One feels like a marvel of old-school craftsmanship, just with niftier gadgets. Even Hunt wears his devil-may-care recklessness with surprising lightness and grace, spending much of the movie's third act on the sidelines and even playing some of his most daring escapades for laughs. Not that the actor doesn't take his mission seriously. I don't know if Tom Cruise can save the movies, but somehow, I never get tired of watching him try.

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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.

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• 1.4K User reviews
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• 81 Metascore
• 17 wins & 66 nominations total

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• Trivia The frequent delays caused by COVID-19 ballooned the budget to $291 million, making it the most expensive Mission: Impossible film (surpassing Fallout, $178 million), the most expensive film of Tom Cruise 's career (again surpassing Fallout), and the most expensive film ever produced by Paramount (surpassing Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) , $217 million). The insurance company Chubb originally gave Paramount only £4.4 million (about $5.4 million) for the delays, arguing that the cast and crew could still fulfill their duties to the production despite being infected with COVID-19. Paramount sued Chubb in 2021, and the two companies settled in 2022. In 2023, Chubb gave Paramount a £57 million (about $71 million) payout for the COVID-caused delays, reducing the film's budget to about $220 million, which still makes it the most expensive film for Cruise, Paramount, and the franchise.
• Goofs Steam trains, especially moving at high speeds, need to be continuously provided with fuel, in this case coal. With the engineers killed and the controls opened all the way, the locomotive would have gradually slowed down and come to a halt as the pressure in the boiler dropped. That train would never have reached the bridge for that distance with no coal provided. Since the early 1900s, when firebox coal consumption exceeded the efforts of two men, the trains have used mechanical stokers. The coal would continue feeding without one missing coal shoveler.

Ethan Hunt : [speaking in italian] Thank you officers. Please. You can wait ouside. Thank you.

[the police leave the area]

Grace : You. You did this.

Ethan Hunt : I called the police. I didn't tell them about your colorful past.

[throwing a file folder]

Ethan Hunt : That's on you. You put-pocleted that the key on another passenger before you were arrested. You exchanged details and arranged to meet later on. Right now somewhere out there hasn't the slighest clue they're holding on to that key for you. An unwitting courier. The perfect accomplice

[describing the person Grace has used as a mule to carry an item]

Ethan Hunt : I'm guessing a man... middle aged? A man waiting his whole life to be noticed by a woman like you. An orphan. Higly intelligent. Inherntly resourceful. Growing up in the poverty left you longing for the finer things. Other's people's things. Someone saw your potential and helped you hone your skills. Skills that gave you the life thought you wanted. Tailored clothes, fine dining, luxury hotels. Skills that kept you one step ahead of the law, until now.

Grace : You can't blame a girl for trying to make a dishonest living.

Ethan Hunt : You had no idea what you stealing. Otherwise you never would stolen it.

Grace : Tell you what. You get me out of here, and I'll take you straight to the key.

Ethan Hunt : I have a better idea. You're gonna tell me everything. Then I'll think about getting out of here. Now start with who hired you. And don't lie to me, because I'll know.

Grace : I have no idea who hired me. Contact with the client was almost entirely electronic.

Ethan Hunt : Email?

Grace : Texts.

Ethan Hunt : Encrypted?

Grace : Naturally.

Ethan Hunt : Almost?

Grace : Pardon?

Ethan Hunt : You said contact with client was "almost" entirely electronic.

Grace : There was a dead drop in a cafe in Luxembourg. An envelope.

Ethan Hunt : What was in the envelope?

Grace : A ticket to Abu Dhabi. And... a picture of you. My instructions were to follow you at the airport. You'd be taling a mark. Said mark would have a key and four million in criptocurrency. That drive was useless, by the way. It was empty. The only hope I have of getting paid is to deliver your half of the key.

Ethan Hunt : And you were instructed to deliever it to...

Grace : Venice. Party at Ducake Palace, Tomorrow. Midnight Venice.

Ethan Hunt : [looking at the door] You expecting someone?

Grace : Your friends from the airport. Saw them in the halleay a few minutes ago.

Ethan Hunt : You could have said something sooner.

Grace : Well, they we're chaising you, not me.

• Crazy credits Disclaimer as one of the last entries in the end credits scroll: "The Producers wish to express that in no way, shape or form were the Rome Spanish Steps used to drive a moving vehicle down. This segment of the film was re-created with a set built on a Studio backlot."
• Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Most Anticipated Franchises Returning in 2023 (2023)
• Soundtracks The Mission: Impossible Theme Written by Lalo Schifrin

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• July 12, 2023 (United States)
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• Helsetkopen, Møre og Romsdal, Norway (motorcycle jump)
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• $291,000,000 (estimated)
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• Runtime 2 hours 43 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

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Watch Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One with a subscription on Prime Video, Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Apple TV.

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With world-threatening stakes and epic set pieces to match that massive title, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One proves this is still a franchise you should choose to accept.

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'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' lauded for action-packed drama: 'Impeccably made'

"Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" has yet to rocket into theaters, but the film is already shaping up to be a tour-de-force action flick as far as critics are concerned .

The Christopher McQuarrie-directed action thriller starring Tom Cruise , set for a July 12 release, had its global premiere at the Spanish Steps in Rome on Monday. Cruise, looking dapper in an all-blue suit, appeared on the red carpet alongside his "Dead Reckoning" castmates, including co-star Hayley Atwell .

The latest film in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, "Dead Reckoning" follows the adrenaline-pumping stunt shenanigans of Cruise's superspy Ethan Hunt as he wards off deadly forces.

So far, the film has earned rave reviews from critics for its stunning action sequences and compelling performances.

Erik Davis of Fandango called "Dead Reckoning" an "impeccably made action film that does not stop entertaining."

" Each action sequence is long, crazy and intense, " Davis wrote on Twitter. "The story is big and sprawling, but I like how it both felt complete and left you dying for what comes next."

I had the absolute best time watching #MissionImpossible - an impeccably made action film that does not stop entertaining. Each action sequence is long, crazy & intense. The story is big & sprawling, but I like how it both felt complete & left you dying for what comes next pic.twitter.com/iNaKlDMH8l — Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) June 19, 2023

Perri Nemiroff of Collider said the film is "another winner for the franchise," including the addition of "Mission: Impossible" freshman Atwell.

"Tom Cruise is A+ as always and Rebecca Ferguson continues to be a favorite, but franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell wound up being the major standout for me," Nemiroff tweeted . "She can do it all. Action, comedy, a capable hero in many respects while trying to get her sea legs in others."

While Screen Rant's Joe Deckelmeier commended the film's action, he also noted how "Dead Reckoning" incorporates new technology into the film's plot. " With (artificial intelligence) being the villain, this feels like a cautionary tale, " Deckelmeier wrote on Twitter.

Germain Lussier, a senior entertainment reporter at Gizmodo, wrote that the film "gets a little dense at times, but its pace and intensity more than cover that."

" 'Dead Reckoning Part One' is fantastic, " Lussier tweeted. "Huge variety of action and a final set piece that ranks top 2-3 all-time for the franchise."

More 'Dead Reckoning': Tom Cruise races through Rome in 20 minutes of 'Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning' footage

'Top tier Martin Scorsese': 'Killers of the Flower Moon' gets rapturous reception at Cannes

Contributing: Brian Truitt, USA TODAY

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Here’s Why the Tom Cruise ‘Jack Reacher’ Movies Are Better Than the TV Show Everyone Loves

Where to stream:.

• Jack Reacher

How To Watch Tom Cruise’s Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony Stunt: Time, Livestream And More

Gina gershon thought she “broke tom cruise’s nose” while filming their ‘cocktail’ love scene, new shows & movies to watch this weekend: netflix’s ‘the decameron’ + more, manny jacinto wasn’t as upset as his fans that he only appeared in seconds of ‘top gun: maverick’: “tom cruise writes stories for tom cruise”.

There aren’t many instances where Tom Cruise ’s version of a character gets overshadowed by someone else’s. Frankly, there aren’t that many instances of Tom Cruise playing a role also inhabited by another actor; even on a more symbolic level, his Ethan Hunt, created for the Mission: Impossible film series, is now far more synonymous than anyone to do with the classic TV show that inspired it. Does Cruise (eventually) playing a mummy in The Mummy count? Probably not; no one really thinks of that as Cruise playing a mummy, or Cruise replacing Brendan Fraser. They think of it as Cruise in a Mummy movie that didn’t work. Such is the power of one of the most globally recognizable movie stars of the past half-century.

Alan Ritchson , like most of the rest of the world, is not on Tom Cruise’s level. He’d be easy to spot in a crowd, to be sure; he’s tall and muscle-y to be believable as Jack Reacher, the signature part he’s played on the Amazon streaming hit Reacher for two seasons now. But surely some people who did recognize Ritchson would shout for him as that character – hey, man, it’s Reacher! – rather than his actual name. It’s harder to imagine anyone calling out “Maverick!” or “Ethan!” for Tom Cruise (except, of course, Ving Rhames).

And they certainly wouldn’t call out “Reacher” for him, either, because it’s easy enough to forget that Cruise did, in fact, play Jack Reacher first, in an abbreviated two-film franchise that predates the Amazon show. It’s a savvy move for Netflix to license these titles, and makes sense that they jumped into the Netflix Top 10 ; we’re between Reacher seasons, and while Cruise’s version of the character was moderately successful in theaters, there are probably plenty of newly minted Reacher fans who haven’t seen the movies (especially the ill-regarded second installment, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back ). The popular consensus among those who have seen both, especially those who are also familiar with the Lee Childs books that form their source material, is that Ritchson is the better, or at least more accurate version, of the man described as 6’5 and 250 pounds. Cruise, by contrast, is a below-average 5’7 and has to choose his camera angles carefully in order to appear of normal height.

It’s true that Ritchson more clearly embodies the Lee Child’s vision of Jack Reacher , an unstoppable force for chivalry and self-sufficiency who will politely tear off his own zipties in a way that makes you realize he could have done so all along. It’s also true that Reacher is enjoyable, easy-to-binge, airport-novel-on-TV stuff, like a comfort-watch CBS procedural with a memorable character already built in. Still, a part of me mourns for the curtailing of Cruise’s Jack Reacher franchise, because in a lot of ways, it’s better than the show – especially the first movie .

Though Reacher is a former military man, Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher plays up the noirish angle of a drifter rolling into town on the bus with only the clothes on his back and the cash in his pocket; by comparison, the unmissable Ritchson version looks more like a guy who got separated from his tour group. Cruise, admittedly, reads as more of a weirdo as we learn more about his spare, no-frills, no-change-of-pants lifestyle – another in his post-2000 line of warrior monks . Yet this weirdness also sells the character’s mystique with more grace, just as having a skinny, semi-short guy issue beatings to groups of thugs is more pleasing and faux-surprising than having a mountain of a man turn out to be, indeed, a mountain of a man. (The funnier twist with an appropriately gigantic Reacher would have him be not that great at fighting, just using brute force – but the Childs faithful would never allow such heresy.) By comparison, Ritchson plays Reacher as more of a smug superman, waiting for the lesser beings in his wake to screw up.

Beyond my personal preference for Cruise, a man of considerably skill and movie-star charisma, over the more workmanlike Ritchson, Jack Reacher itself has a great nighttime vibe, with a seedier, creepier feel than the show wants to evoke. This is aided immeasurably by the delightfully inexplicable presence of Werner Herzog as the bad guy of the piece, lending some standard conspiracies – Reacher is investigating a soldier accused of a mass shooting, has every reason to think the man guilty, but becomes convinced this isn’t the case – an unknowable menace not often seen in mainstream movie adaptations of airport novels. McQuarrie turned out to be an accomplished director of Cruise Action in the Mission: Impossible movies that followed (he helped write the fourth , then has directed every entry since), and it’s fun to see him practice on a smaller, grubbier scale here.

That Mission: Impossible connection means that Jack Reacher turned out to be a crucial movie in Cruise’s 2010s, which focused so heavily on reclaiming his brand, sometimes at the expense of his formidable talent. He struck the strongest balance between the two in the McQuarrie-scripted Edge of Tomorrow , a year and a half after Reacher , but this movie put him on the right path in between middling simulations of the Cruise Thing that came with Knight and Day and Oblivion . He may have been grasping at straws, but this was a particularly good straw.

By the time Never Go Back rolled around, Cruise had another Mission under his belt, and a four-years-later Reacher sequel felt like an afterthought. Yet that movie is also pivotal to Cruise’s trajectory, in that its middling box office results, preceding the underperformance of The Mummy , seems to have helped to convince Cruise to put all his chips into finally making Top Gun 2 and (maybe) finishing out the Mission: Impossible series. On the basis of the movie itself, this was not a bad decision. The Mission: Impossible movies are world-class, Cruise-branded spectacle; he’s made them into his second-act life’s work. Top Gun: Maverick , of course, beat long odds to become a beloved all-time smash. In all the hullabaloo, nobody much missed Jack Reacher beating up guys in parking lots. But even Never Go Back – an all together squarer, less atmospheric Reacher adventure – is highly watchable, maybe the closest thing Cruise could ever make to a streaming movie. Look, Denzel Washington makes stuff like this all the time.

Maybe that’s why Cruise’s Reacher resonates more than Ritchson’s. This is probably the role of a lifetime for Ritchson, and by all accounts he seems like a cool guy, not nearly as meatheaded as you might stereotype him. At the same time, watching his Reacher is like watching an uneven, vaguely juvenile comic book adaptation that all of the hardcore fans swear up and down is more “accurate.” Tom Cruise and Jack Reacher aren’t a perfect match: This isn’t one of his signature characters, and he’s not the obvious choice to play a burly, courtly super-detective. Even when the character involve self-flattery, Cruise has to work at it. Reacher is a frictionless experience; that’s why watching Ritchson easily avoid various scrapes makes such an easy comfort watch. Jack Reacher , however, has just as much Sunday-afternoon comfort, while scraping harder.

Jesse Hassenger ( @rockmarooned ) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com , too.

• Reacher (2022)

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Tom Cruise reportedly to end Paris Olympics with epic stunt to pass the torch to L.A.

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Tom Cruise will take a page out of his “Mission: Impossible” playbook for the Olympic closing ceremony.

The 62-year-old actor is reportedly planning an epic stunt that will unfold as Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo hands over the Olympic flag to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass at the Aug. 11 celebration, TMZ first reported. And he pitched the idea to the International Olympic Committee himself.

How Céline Dion reacted to her triumphant Eiffel Tower performance at Paris Olympics

Céline Dion describes her Olympics performance as a ‘dream come true’ after returning to the world stage at the 2024 Games’ globally viewed opening ceremony.

July 29, 2024

The alleged plan is to have Cruise start by rappelling from the roof of the Stade de France to the stadium’s field, Olympic flag in tow. (There are also reports that Cruise may use a stunt double for this portion, but nothing is confirmed yet.)

The broadcast will then cut to a pre-recorded segment that shows the Academy Award nominee skydiving down to the Hollywood sign. There, he’ll pass the flag to athletes, including a cyclist, skateboarder and volleyball player, as they wave it around the host city for the 2028 Games.

The Hollywood sign sequence was filmed in March, according to TMZ, but given Cruise’s penchant for near-lethal stunts, his dive raised little alarm. Similarly, sightings of the star speeding around Paris earlier this year were dismissed given “Mission: Impossible 8” was filming in Europe.

Representatives for Cruise did not reply immediately Friday to The Times’ request for comment.

2024 Paris Olympics

Most picturesque Olympics ever? Paris venues will offer ‘phenomenal backdrop’

The 2024 Paris Games are a made-for-TV Olympics with the Eiffel Tower, Château de Versailles, the Seine, and the Grand Palais each hosting events.

July 24, 2024

With Paris 2024’s artistic director Thomas Jolly at the helm, the closing ceremony — dubbed “Records” — is poised to rival the drama of a Cruise film.

The Stade de France will be “transformed into a gigantic concert hall,” the official Olympic website reads, where more than 100 performers, acrobats, dancers and circus artists will “take spectators on a journey through time, both past and future.”

“It’s a very visual, very choreographic, very acrobatic show with an operatic dimension to give a great visual fresco and say goodbye to athletes from all over the world,” Jolly said. “Together, let’s make this evening a memorable and conscious celebration, honouring the past and embracing the future.”

“Expect a major Hollywood production,” a source told Deadline .

Cruise, who in 2004 helped carry the Olympic torch in L.A. as it made its way to Athens, cheered on Team USA during the first week of the Paris Games, attending women’s gymnastics and swimming events.

“It’s awesome,” the “Top Gun: Maverick” star told Reuters . “Great stories, great athletes. It’s incredible what they have to do, the sense of accomplishment.”

More to Read

L.A. reveals some of its Olympics closing ceremony performers

Aug. 10, 2024

Olympics 2024: Celine Dion closes dazzling opening ceremony atop the Eiffel Tower

July 26, 2024

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Why is Tom Cruise at the 2024 Paris Olympics closing ceremony? Action star will reportedly do 'epic stunt'

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The 2024 Paris Olympics will end Sunday with an extravagant exclamation point.

After 17 days of intense, high-stakes competition between the best athletes in the world in their respective sports, the closing ceremony will mark the conclusion of the Games and start the long, occasionally excruciating four-year wait for the Olympics to return.

Unlike the opening ceremony , which took place along the Seine River, the closing ceremony will more closely resemble its predecessors, with many of the nearly 11,000 athletes representing 206 national delegations walking joyously into the Stade de France, where track and field events have taken place over much of the past two weeks.

REQUIRED READING: Follow USA TODAY's coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics

The famous faces inside the 80,000-seat venue won’t be limited to the likes of Simone Biles , LeBron James and Katie Ledecky.

Among the famous faces there will be Tom Cruise , who will be more than just a spectator as the Olympics draw to a close.

Why, exactly, is he there?

Here’s what you need to know about Cruise’s appearance at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, as well as how to watch the event:

2024 PARIS OLYMPICS: Meet the members of Team USA competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics

Why is Tom Cruise at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics?

Cruise, of course, was not among those competing in the Olympics. Beyond his age — 62 years old, well past his athletic prime for the overwhelming majority of Olympic sports — the American actor stands at just 5-foot-7 and has famously unorthodox running form .

He has been spotted in the crowd at various Olympic events, including gymnastics and swimming in the first week of the Games and, more recently, the United States women’s soccer team’s 1-0 victory against Brazil in the gold medal match Saturday.

His most notable contribution to the Olympics will come right as they’re ending.

At Sunday’s closing ceremony, Cruise or a stunt double will reportedly rappel down from the top of Stade de France and land on the stadium’s file while carrying the Olympic flag. According to TMZ , NBC’s broadcast of the closing ceremony will then transition to a previously recorded video of the actor flying from Paris to Los Angeles, where he skydives from a plane down to the Hollywood sign.

The skydiving video was filmed in March, according to TMZ, which released photos of Cruise climbing the Hollywood sign. Though he was shown on the iconic sign, there was no photographic or video evidence of Cruise skydiving.

TMZ’s report noted that Cruise had actually approached the International Olympic Committee (IOC) himself and proposed doing a series of stunts during the closing ceremony.

While Cruise’s inclusion in the festivities may seem random, it serves a purpose beyond a gratuitous cameo for a movie star.

Cruise will be at the center of the ceremonial transition from the Paris Games to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. At past closing ceremonies, the Olympic flag has been handed over to members of the delegation from the host city of the next Summer Olympics host. Among those at the closing ceremony from Los Angeles will be the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, who will be presented the flag from Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. It will mark the first time a Black female mayor has received the flag, Bass’ office told Reuters .

Though there’s the looming possibility a stunt double will go in Cruise’s place, the actor has been famous throughout his career, even in the later stages of it, for performing his own stunts. During the filming of the 2023 movie “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” Cruise rode a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuted down to safety. Years ago, he also learned how to fly a helicopter so he could pilot the aircraft during certain scenes for the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.

This won’t be the first time Cruise has been involved in some form with an Olympic tradition. In 2004, he helped carry the Olympic torch through Los Angeles as the torch made its way across the world en route to its final destination in Athens, the site of that year’s Games.

When is the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics?

Date : Sunday, August 11

Time : 3 p.m. ET

The closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics will air live Sunday at 3 p.m. ET. A replay of it will be shown at 7 p.m. ET.

Watch the 2024 Paris Olympics with Fubo (free trial)

What channel is the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics?

TV channel : NBC

Streaming : NBCOlympics.com | NBC Olympics app | Peacock | Fubo (free trial)

The closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics will air on NBC, which will be the network home for both the live broadcast and the replay later that day. Streaming options for the closing ceremony include NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Olympics app, Peacock and Fubo , the last of which offers a free trial to potential subscribers.

Watch the 2024 Paris Olympics on Peacock

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why is Tom Cruise at the 2024 Paris Olympics closing ceremony?

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Tom Cruise Injects Some Hollywood Flash Into Olympic Closing Ceremony Handoff

The  Mission: Impossible  actor took the Olympic flag from gold medalist Simone Biles and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass before riding away into the night.

Tom Cruise is a man on a mission. 

The 62-year-old actor was recruited by the organizers of the Summer Games to help in the handoff of the Olympic flag between Paris and Los Angeles officials at the Closing Ceremony on Sunday. 

In an action-packed sequence, the actor repelled from the top of the Stade de France to grab the flag from Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles  and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass before climbing onto the back of his motorcycle and speeding through the City of Lights. He then took a high-speed flight to Los Angeles in record time and jumped out of the plane with his parachute. As he lands on the mountains above Los Angeles, he travels to the Hollywood sign, which is transformed to include the Olympic rings.  

Olympic medalist skateboarder Jagger Eaton , mountain biker Kate Courtney, and track and field gold medalist Michael Johnson then have their turn carrying the Olympic flag. They skate, bike, and run through the streets of Santa Monica and pass by other iconic sites.

IT'S A BIRD. IT'S A PLANE. IT'S TOM CRUISE! 🤯 #ParisOlympics | #ClosingCeremony pic.twitter.com/5v4j8pOwBF — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 11, 2024

RELATED: All About Phoenix and Their Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony Performance

A Preview of LA28

Eaton, Johnson, and Courtney's journey to L.A. ended on the beach, where the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish , and Snoop Dogg  were waiting to hold their own concert on the beach. The Red Hot Chili Peppers went first before handing off to Eilish and her brother Finneas, who performed her hit song "Birds of a Feather."

For the grand finale, Snoop Dogg rapped his song "Drop It Like It's Hot" and then brought out fellow West Coast rapper Dr. Dre to join him on the stage. The celebration ended with a blast of colors on the beach.

Following their performance, Leon Marchand brought the Olympic flame back to the Stade de France, where the flame was extinguished. 

With the Paris Olympics officially over, the countdown to the Los Angeles Olympics has officially started. Come 2028, thousands of athletes will descend upon the City of Angels to go for the gold. And though the Games are just under four years away, the Los Angeles organizers have already announced the venues and locations of some sports . Included among those sites are the iconic L.A. Coliseum and the Inglewood Stadium (also known as the SoFi Stadium).

Let the countdown begin!

To see the Closing Ceremony in primetime tune in to Peacock or NBC at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Countdown to LA28 will air at the conclusion of the Closing Ceremony, at 10 p.m. ET/PT, and will be hosted by Venus Williams.

Have an Olympics programming question? Ask OLI

With so much happening at the   Olympic Games, it can be a challenge to keep track of when to watch   all your favorite events and athletes. Enter: OLI, the   NBC Olympics AI-powered viewing guide that will answer any of your burning Olympics programming questions, day or night. Check it out on  NBCOlympics.com ,  NBC.com , NBCSports.com ,  USANetwork.com  and  Today.com .

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Tom Cruise Olympics closing ceremony stunt, explained: Inside the movie star's skydiving promotion for 2028 LA Games

It's a bird. It's a plane.

Nope, it's Tom Cruise. 

Cruise is no stranger to being involved in thrilling acts through the air. You may know the movie star as Ethan Hunt in the "Mission Impossible" franchise or as Lt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in the "Top Gun" movies. The three-time Golden Globe recipient frequently is involved in entertaining movies with plenty of dangerous stunts. 

It turns out, his latest acrobatic feat is going to have an Olympics theme to it. The actor is reportedly going to be featured in a stunt for the closing ceremony, bringing an end to the 2024 Olympics in Paris and teasing the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

Here's what we know about Cruise's stunt at the Olympics closing ceremony in Paris. 

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Tom Cruise Olympics closing ceremony stunt

TMZ was the first to report about a potential stunt involving the actor to close out the Paris Games. The outlet reported that the plan for Cruise is to rappel down from the top of Stade de France, landing on the field while carrying the Olympic flag. 

That's exactly what unfolded, as the movie star soared down from the roof at Stade de France. 

TOM CRUISE! #ParisOlympics | #ClosingCeremony pic.twitter.com/ATiKiufrV8 — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 11, 2024

Thank you, Paris! Now off to LA. pic.twitter.com/MxlAb0hZbT — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) August 11, 2024

IT'S A BIRD. IT'S A PLANE. IT'S TOM CRUISE! 🤯 #ParisOlympics | #ClosingCeremony pic.twitter.com/5v4j8pOwBF — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 11, 2024

After gathering the Olympic flag, Cruise mounted a motorcycle and before you knew it, he was out of the stadium. 

That thrilling act then lead into a previously recorded film that was shown on the big screen at the stadium and on the TV broadcast. The clip showed Cruise's journey via plane from France to Los Angeles, delivering the Olympic flag to the next destination for the Summer Olympics. 

Once in L.A., Cruise dove out of a plane down to the famous Hollywood sign. Once grounded, he passed the flag to a group of Olympians that took the flag to Los Angeles. 

This wasn't the first time Cruise is involved in the Olympic. In 2004, he helped carry the Olympic torch through the City of Angels as a part of a relay around the world for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Will Tom Cruise use a stuntman?

It's not 100-percent confirmed if Cruise will use a stuntman or if he will be the one to rappel from Stade de France. However, if there is anything to know about Cruise, it is that the actor prides himself in his ability to pull off his own acrobatics. 

While a majority of actors use stunt doubles for the dangerous acts that take part in the movie, Cruise is the opposite. Even at 62, the Hollywood star loves putting his life at risk in order to pull off the exceptional stunts for his movies. 

Here is a compilation of some of his best stunts:

How old is Tom Cruise?

Born on July 3, 1962, Cruise is 62. 

Bryan Murphy is an NHL content producer at The Sporting News.

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Tom Cruise Jumps Off Stadium Roof to Pass Baton to Los Angeles

Cruise, one of Hollywood’s most well-known movie stars, rappelled down into the Stade de France, and the crowd of Olympians went wild as Paris handed over to the next Summer Games, in Los Angeles.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

• Aug. 11, 2024

No, it wasn’t a scene from “Mission: Impossible.” Tom Cruise, one of Hollywood’s most well-known movie stars, rappelled down into the Stade de France as H.E.R. played guitar, and the crowd of Olympians went wild as Paris handed over to the next Summer Games, in Los Angeles. He accepted the Olympic flag, shook a lot of hands, jumped on a motorcycle, and drove right out of the stadium and into prerecorded footage.

It’s hard to imagine a more apt melding of the Olympics’ awe-inducing athleticism and Hollywood’s showy sensibility than Cruise, who, at 62, still famously loves to perform as many of his own “Mission: Impossible” stunts as feasible in the film series. At the 2022 Cannes Film Festival , ahead of the release of “Top Gun: Maverick,” he was asked about his penchant for death-defying feats, which he might reasonably be expected to delegate to a stunt person. “No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’” he quipped.

Cruise’s carefully choreographed acrobatics (and selfies with athletes) were fit for this closing ceremony’s vibes — especially the showmanship behind them. The details of what exactly was going to happen had been kept quiet, although People reported that back in March he had filmed the segment in which he sky-dives to the iconic Hollywood sign. Nobody quite knew until now what he’d do on live television in Paris. But it’s Tom Cruise: He lives, and occasionally defies death, to give us a good time.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson