THE RETURN OF MAVERICK

Buckle up and prepare for take-off: the Top Gun sequel has its wings

- JASON BARLOW

Top Gun is the film that turned a promising young actor called Tom Cruise into a movie star. In fact, you could say he went supersonic. Which is apt, because a whole 36 years later, he's back in the cockpit for Top Gun: Maverick, and wait until you cop a load of what he and a new generation of precocious aviators get up to. It is mind-blowing.

Cruise's return as Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell rather flies in the face of the film's best remembered line (“I feel the need, the need for speed!") but, hell, the guy's been busy in the interim. Not shy of a sequel - Mission: Impossible 8 is currently in production - Cruise nonetheless refused to revisit Top Gun, and when he finally did come round to the idea, the project was derailed by the tragic death of director Tony Scott. So what can we expect? And what finally lured him back?

Over to Chris McQuarrie, one of Hollywood's top directors, and co-screenwriter on the new film. Some elements had been kicking around since 1987, he tells TG. “By 2011 there were a lot of fun ideas in search of a story, but something was still missing. Being in a room with three of the guys who created the original film, I chose to assume the observer role for much of the meeting, focusing on the feeling I had watching Top Gun as a 17-year-old kid.

"All the while I was asking myself, 'Why do we love Top Gun so much? Why has it lasted so long? Sure, there's 'Danger Zone', 'Lovin' Feeling', 'Take My Breath Away', motorbikes and volleyball, Mav and Goose, Mav and Charlie, Mav and Iceman - forget those things. They've all long since been copied and never to greater effect. Why does Top Gun really work? What is its essence?"