Are you scared of heights? Get nervous when the plane you’re on goes through a little turbulence? Does motion sickness strike you when you’re facing backwards on a long train journey? Then you might want to avoid the stomach-churning, gravity-defying, holy-shit-are-they-really-flying-in-those-planes new trailer for Tom Cruise’s return to the skies in Top Gun: Maverick. Have a watch below, if you dare.
Finally coming to cinemas in just two month’s time (after years of COVID-induced delays), Top Gun: Maverick sees Cruise reprise his role as the titular Peter ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, returning to the Navy to help teach the best and brightest of a new generation of pilots, and prepare them to go into combat that, as Glen Powell’s ‘Hangman’ says, is “on a level no living pilot’s ever seen”. As well as Powell, the new recruits include Miles Teller as Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, the grown-up son of Maverick’s former partner Goose (played in Top Gun by Anthony Edwards), Monica Barbaro as ‘Phoenix’, The Good Place’s Manny Jacinto as ‘Fritz’, alongside Jon Hamm’s ‘Cyclone’ and Ed Harris’ Rear Admiral. Also back from the first film are Val Kilmer as Iceman, the man who recommended Maverick for the job, and the character of Penny Benjamin – only mentioned in passing in Top Gun as an implied love interest for Maverick, she’s played here by Jennifer Connelly.
The new trailer delivers everything you’d hope to see in a Top Gun film from a Tom Cruise who has been pushing the boundaries of stunts and action ever since he first took to the cockpit, including epic aerial sequences, zooming shots of Maverick on a motorbike and dramatic mid-air explosions. A sequel 36 years in the making, it’s safe to say that we feel the need, the need to watch Top Gun: Maverick. We’ll get to do so, at long last, on 27 May.