A ‘wildly entertaining’ blockbuster with 96% Rotten Tomatoes score and starring Tom Cruise will be free to watch on TV and streaming this weekend.
Top Gun: Maverick is the 2022 sequel to the beloved 1980s flick Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
35 years after the original film, Maverick is one of the Navy’s top aviators and test pilots who has avoided military advancements which would have grounded him.
Maverick finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialised mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”.
Now dealing with his past and uncertain future in the military, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.
Top Gun: Maverick was a huge hit at the Box Office (Image: Paramount Pictures)
The wider cast includes A Beautiful Mind actress Jennifer Connelly as Penelope “Penny” Benjamin, Twisters star LT Jake “Hangman” Seresin, Jon Hamm as Vice Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson and Val Kilmer returning as Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.
Top Gun: Maverick will be broadcast on Channel 4 at 8.30pm on Saturday (February 1) and will run for two hours and 35 minutes until 11.05pm. The film will be available for streaming soon after on its on demand service.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski, the film grossed $1.496 billion worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2022 and the highest-grossing of Tom Cruise’s career.
Top Gun: Maverick is largely deemed to be a superior film to the original and is one of the rare sequels that is widely agreed to be stronger than the original.
The film was nominated for six Oscars in 2023, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Visual Effects. The film won the Oscar for Best Sound.
Miles Teller stars as Goose’s son in Top Gear: Maverick (Image: Paramount Pictures)
Top Gun: Maverick boasts a 9% Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an audience score of 99%.
Critics said Top Gun: Maverick “pulls off a feat even trickier than a 4G inverted dive, delivering a long-belated sequel that surpasses its predecessor in wildly entertaining style”.
One critic shared: “A summer blockbuster of the old school, with rust-bucket F-14s duking it out with young pups in F-18s, all shot on celluloid rather than sketched in by computers, at the behest of a star who refuses to quit.”
Another mini-review reads: “Top Gun: Maverick is almost unprecedented in its class, a nostalgia sequel that doesn’t feel like a cheap IP cash grab.
“Instead, it brings Maverick’s story full circle in a satisfying manner that adds depth and dimension to its predecessor, but still tells a story that’s all its own.”
Top Gun: Maverick was nominated for six Oscars and deemed a superior film to the original (Image: Getty)