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Top Gun: Maverick trailer sends Tom Cruise back in the air

Blair Marnell
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In 1986, the original Top Gun helped firmly establish Tom Cruise as a movie star. And unlike many icons from the ’80s, Cruise has maintained that status and avoided the direct-to-video phase of his career. Now, Cruise is revisiting the franchise that started it all in Top Gun: Maverick. The film was actually finished three years ago, but it has faced numerous pandemic-related delays. Now that the new trailer has arrived, there are finally clear skies ahead for the sequel.

The trailer picks up with Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) nearly 30 years after the original film. While Maverick’s peers have gone on to bigger things, he remains a captain and a test pilot simply so he can keep flying missions. Maverick finds himself back in the Top Gun program while teaching a new generation of pilots the skills they will need to survive in hostile skies. But at least one of the cadets will remind Maverick of his darkest hour, when his friend, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), was killed in the original movie.

Top Gun: Maverick | NEW Official Trailer (2022 Movie) - Tom Cruise

Miles Teller will portray Goose’s son, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, and it’s clear that he has no love for the man he blames for his father’s death. Fortunately for Maverick, his old friend Adm. Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) sets him on this mission to utilize his skills. However, the deadly nature of the job may force Maverick and his trainees to go on “a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen.”

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Tom Cruise rides a motorcycle in Top Gun: Maverick.

Jennifer Connelly co-stars in the film as Maverick’s girlfriend, Penny Benjamin, with Jon Hamm as Vice Adm.Cyclone, Glen Powell as “Hangman,” Lewis Pullman as Bob Floyd, Monica Barbaro as Natasha “Phoenix” Trace, Charles Parnell as Rear Adm. Warlock, Danny Ramirez as “Fanboy,” Manny Jacinto as Fritz, Bashir Salahuddin as Coleman, and Jay Ellis as Lt. Reuben “Payback” Fitch.

Top Gun: Maverick was directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie. It will fly into theaters on May 27.

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In the pantheon of great Tom Cruise films, we can find the usual suspects. There's the Mission: Impossible series, of course, a franchise that redefined the way we experience action blockbusters. then there are the tentpoles -- Interview with the Vampire, Minority Report, The Last Samurai -- that cemented him as a box-office draw. And finally we have the critical darlings -- A Few Good Men, Born the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, Magnolia -- that confirmed he was more than just another pretty face. And then there's 1986's Top Gun.

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