Tom Cruise can be our wingman, anytime: his latest blockbuster, the 80s military hit sequel Top Gun: Maverick is officially the third-highest-grossing film in Aussie box office history, and it’ll soon be closer to our hearts than ever.
After a record-breaking cinema run, Australian audiences can now rent or buy Top Gun: Maverick on demand, via Google Play and iTunes. We feel the need…the need to rewatch Maverick’s jingoistic renaissance, even if it’s not on the big screen it was born for.
Top Gun: Maverick was birthed by Cruise’s realisation that filmmaking technology would be advanced enough to capture precisely what it’s like for fighter pilots in the exclusive Top Gun program. Despite years of fans and producers begging for a sequel, the action man felt that an improvement on the 1986 Tony Scott hit was only possible if digital cameras could fit in real plane cockpits.
Turns out: yeah they can, and the resulting footage is bloody magnificent. The flight scenes in this legacy sequel are like nothing you’ve seen in mainstream cinema before, with Maverick and his new squadron of Top Gun hopefuls experiencing 10 Gs in breathtaking close-up.
Our review by Daniel Rutledge began with a disclaimer to not get reader expectations too sky-high: “this is simply an example of everyone involved in the film getting it right, without an arrogant studio executive or dumb test screening edits or something else screwing up the process.”
But then Rutledge lets himself get lost in full-blown fanboy glee: “Now with that out of the way, prepare for more hyperbole because holy shit, I loved this film. Top Gun: Maverick is an exquisitely rare gem in the 1% of nostalgia bait where it pays just the right amount of tribute to the original, updates in just the right ways, and then impossibly surpasses its greatness.” You can experience the same Kenny Loggins-booming, aviator-sunglass-wearing, ‘Murican-flag-waving joy from the comfort of home right now.
