History Film / TopGunMaverick

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Leaning more on the sweet than bitter. The mission to destroy the enemy uranium stockpile in the mountains succeeds with no casualties despite all odds, and Maverick and Rooster have reconciled their differences and both of them finally come to terms with Goose's death. However, Iceman has passed away from his throat cancer, and Maverick's flying days with the Navy are likely over, either due to him retiring or the numerous transgressions Maverick pulled over the years finally catching up to him without [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty Ice to keep the Navy at bay]]. There's also the EndOfAnAge implication that the days of TOPGUN itself are numbered, due to the increased interest in switching to unmanned drones slowly making manned dogfighting obsolete. But Maverick has at least been able to end his Navy career with dignity and retire happily to pursue a relationship with Penny.]]

** When Maverick and Rooster are going in for a landing on the carrier, one of the engines of their stolen F-14 flames out. Rooster tells Maverick to not say they lost an engine. Maverick agrees to not say it.

** he F14:

*** [[spoiler:The stolen surplus F-14 has loaded guns and missiles and countermeasures. What it ''doesn't'' have is a functioning RIO eject seat. Either the new owners skimped on that part of the maintenance, [[{{Foreshadowing}} or that was precisely why it was in the hangar in the first place]]. Or the pilots simply missed arming them in their hurry to get out of there since they didn't bother doing any pre-flight inspection or checklists.]]
*** [[spoiler:The F-14, like any post-WWII fighter, requires an extensive checklist to get it from cold and dark to ready to fly. Mav and Rooster skip all that and just do the bare minimum needed to get airborne in a hurry, but when they get up there they've got nearly no avionics because none of the circuit breakers are in place, meaning none of the equipment is powered up; the reason the checklists exist in the first place is to ensure something like that doesn't happen. It may also explain the ejection-seat issues above, as ejection seats need to be armed as part of a startup checklist because they contain a solid rocket motor that needs to be saved when the aircraft isn't flying]]

* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: Played with. Maverick lays out the plan in excruciating detail, and strongly emphasizes how the plan is almost impossible. It will require "two miracles", he says, and the training backs him up. And even then, there's a conspicuous point where they accomplish their main objective and have to fly back through a hurricane of [=SAMs=], which there is ''no'' plan for and they might not even ''survive''. [[spoiler:Rooster pulls off a ''different'' second miracle when the originally planned miracle doesn't work out, and in the ensuing furball Maverick sacrifices himself to save Rooster, then Rooster goes and returns the favor, leaving them both stranded in enemy territory to have to make a daring escape. This was not part of the plan ''at all'', and they are only able to accomplish said escape because Hangman made an instinct call to save them with a kill shot on the enemy, but the end goal of completing the mission with their entire team alive and intact is successful.]]

** The Blinchik maneuver the Su-57 uses is impressive to look at, but totally useless in a real-life engagement due to modern dogfights taking place at beyond-visual ranges where an enemy pilot would have plenty of time to adjust aim without flying past -- not to mention a large, stationary target to blow to pieces; Maverick empirically has enough time to switch to guns and open fire, with the only possible explanation being that the maneuver's AwesomenessIsAForce that stays his hand. (It ''is'' a badass maneuver.) Finally, even with the [=Su-57=]'s on-paper stealth capabilities, modern radar and weapons are designed for BVR situations where the Su-57's insane maneuverability would be less useful.[[note]]This is why the F-35 doesn't include thrust vectoring in its design: modern US fighter plane doctrine is about designing essentially sniper planes that can destroy targets before the victim is CrosshairAware, and the added cost of things that would nevre be used in such situations was deemed unnecessary[[/note]].

The cast also includes Creator/ValKilmer briefly reprising his role as Thomas "Iceman" Kazansky, Creator/JenniferConnelly, Creator/GlenPowell, Creator/MonicaBarbaro, Lewis Pullman, Creator/DannyRamirez, Creator/JonHamm, Creator/CharlesParnell and Creator/EdHarris. Following multiple delays (some of them due to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic), the film was finally released on May 27, 2022.

The cast also includes Creator/ValKilmer briefly reprising his role as Thomas "Iceman" Kazansky, Creator/JenniferConnelly, Creator/JonHamm, Creator/CharlesParnell, Creator/EdHarris, Creator/GlenPowell, Creator/MonicaBarbaro, Lewis Pullman and Creator/DannyRamirez. Following multiple delays, some due to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, the film was finally released on May 27, 2022.

Creator/TomCruise reprises his role as [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US Navy]] aviator Peter "Maverick" Mitchell, who, after a 30-year career, hasn't been able (or did not want) to RankUp beyond Captain. An unauthorized hypersonic jet test flight gets him in trouble... which gets him sent back to the former[[note]]the Navy moved the training program out of San Diego in 1996[[/note]] home of TOPGUN at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, this time as a flight instructor. There, he finds himself having to train a whole team of elite pilots for a perilous mission to destroy an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant in a hostile nation. The team happens to include Bradley Bradshaw (Creator/MilesTeller), the son of Maverick's late friend Nick "Goose" Bradshaw.

Creator/TomCruise reprises his role as US Navy aviator Peter "Maverick" Mitchell, who, after a 30-year career, hasn't been able (or did not want) to RankUp beyond Captain. An unauthorized hypersonic jet test flight gets him in trouble... which gets him sent back to the former[[note]]the Navy moved the training program out of San Diego in 1996[[/note]] home of TOPGUN at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, this time as a flight instructor. There, he finds himself having to train a whole team of elite pilots for a perilous mission to destroy an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant in a hostile nation. The team happens to include Bradley Bradshaw (Creator/MilesTeller), the son of Maverick's late friend Nick "Goose" Bradshaw.

** When Maverick and Rooster are going in for a landing on the carrier, one of the engines of their stolen F-14 flames out. Rooster tells Maverick to not tell him they lost an engine. Maverick agrees to not tell him.

* ExactWords: After being told that Admiral Cain is on his way to personally shut down the Darkstar program, Maverick points out that he hasn't arrived ''yet''.

-->[[spoiler: '''Rooster:''' Holy shit. What the ''fuck'' was that?!]]

** A Bradshaw telling Maverick to "do some of that pilot shit", followed by a maneuver that lets Maverick's aircraft get behind his opponent.

** Early on when training the pilots, Maverick uses the Cobra maneuver to quickly switch positions with a plane that's tailing him. This leads to a reprimand from Cyclone, as the maneuver is considered too dangerous to both the pilots and planes.

* MsExposition: Ms. in this case. Penny catches the audience up on the last 30 years of Maverick's career by [[AsYouKnow reminding the man]] how busy he's been.

* MadeOfIron: Maverick appears none the worse for having three ejections under his belt when just one might medically disqualify most other pilots.

* MrExposition: Ms. in this case. Penny catches the audience up on the last 30 years of Maverick's career by reminding the man how busy he's been.

** The US Navy's secret desert airbase hosting the Darkstar program is not named, but is most likely China Lake and ''not'' the Air Force base at Groom Lake, which is more popularly known as "Area 51."
*** It was later confirmed that China Lake was the filming site for the Darkstar program scenes.

* AllForNothing: [[spoiler:Maverick decided to honor Carol's {{Dying Wish}} and pulled Rooster's Naval Academy papers to prevent him from becoming a pilot; this only resulted in Rooster's admission being delayed for four years, after which he became a TOPGUN anyway]].

* ArmorPiercingResponse: After one failed training session, Maverick asks Rooster why he was dead. Rooster insists he was the only pilot to make it to the target, but Maverick counters that he was too slow and would be intercepted by superior enemy fighters.

** Flare countermeasures are completely useless against radar-guided SAMs, as they're meant specifically to defeat IR-guided missiles. Realistically, the Dagger pilots would use chaff decoys instead, which are essentially packets of metal strips that reflect radar emissions. This is justified visually, since it would have been much harder for viewers to see chaff being released.

* StockFootage: Some of Maverick's {{flashbacks}}s of Goose are taken from the first film (chiefly Goose at the piano at the bar and his death) and shown in DeliberateVHSQuality.

** [[spoiler:Iceman dies of cancer and gets a MeaninfgulFuneral with military honors and planes flying over. It occurs not long after he gets one last heartfelt scene with Maverick, who attends the funeral and hammers his Aviator wings onto the casket lid.]]

** The Blinchik maneuver the Su-57 uses is impressive to look at, but totally useless in a real-life engagement due to modern dogfights taking place at beyond-visual ranges where an enemy pilot would have plenty of time to adjust aim without flying past (and a large, stationary target to blow to pieces). To say nothing of the fact that even with its on-paper stealth capabilities (dubious in the real world due to Russian corruption with the plane's development and repair) modern radar and weapons are designed for over-the-horizon attacks where the Su-57's insane maneuverability would be less than useful [[note]] this is why the F-35 doesn't include thrust vectoring in its design, modern US fighter plane doctrine is about designing essentially sniper planes that can destroy targets before the victim knows they're even in danger, and the added cost of maneuverability that would only be useful at point-blank range was deemed unnecessary[[/note]].
** The weapons are depicted rather unrealistically. Missiles have proximity fuses and can damage their targets by simply exploding nearby. Additionally, the bullets fired by both the F-14 and the Su-57 are customarily high-explosive and can destroy targets with only a few rounds.
** Flare countermeasures are completely useless against radar-guided SAMs, as they're meant specifically to defeat IR-guided missiles. Realistically, they would use chaff decoys instead, which are essentially packets of metal strips that reflect radar emissions. This choice to have them use flares is mostly justified though because it would have been much harder for viewers to see chaff being released.