By jasper 
To pay tribute to the aviation theme of the film, the festival organizers specially invited the French Air Force for an aerial performance. When Tom Cruise and the entire cast walked down the red carpet at the premiere, eight fighter jets roared through the clouds, spewing red, white, and blue smoke. The audience on-site gasped in amazement, making the Lumière Hall the focus of attention on the entire Côte d’Azur.
Since the release of the first “Top Gun” in 1986, Tom Cruise’s motorcycle, aviator jacket, aviator sunglasses trio, and his rebellious handsome face have become significant symbols in popular culture. Along with Berlin’s classic song “Take My Breath Away,” as soon as the melody plays, scenes of young pilots eager to conquer the sky flash in viewers’ minds.
Directed by Tony Scott, this recruitment propaganda film from the Reagan era has left a deep impression and reportedly significantly boosted pilot enlistment numbers at that time. Over the years, calls for a sequel to “Top Gun” have never ceased. Especially for lead actor Tom Cruise, an international A-list Hollywood star who persistently takes on various extreme challenges on screen.
HALO jumps, skyscraper parkour, free climbing, helicopter dangling climbs, spiral dives, grabbing onto a plane taking off with bare hands… few in this world can match him. It is precisely this relentless pursuit that makes his image increasingly overlap and merge with that of “Maverick” Pete Mitchell. The more Tom Cruise pushes himself to the limit, the more audiences are reminded of Maverick’s “I’ll risk my life to defy fate” attitude.
Director Joseph Kosinski fully understands his mission upon being invited to direct the sequel to “Top Gun”: To create unprecedented highlights in Pete Mitchell’s flying career with the coolest aerial combat scenes, impossible missions, and rebellious yet gradually tamed peers and subordinates.
At the beginning of the film, Tom Cruise’s character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell re-establishes his title as “the fastest man on Earth” with a supersonic test flight. As a Navy test pilot trying to save a dying research project, he pushes an experimental aircraft to 10 Mach — ten times the speed of sound (about 3403 meters per second). But his love for adventure drives him to try for 11 Mach, causing the aircraft to explode and crash.
However, Maverick’s flying career doesn’t end there. An order from “Iceman” sends him back to where it all began — Top Gun Naval Fighter Weapons School. Once rivals with Maverick in Top Gun 1, Iceman has since become a close friend who respects Maverick’s dedication to flying. Now an admiral himself, Iceman sees Maverick as someone who could have been promoted long ago if not for his stubborn personality. He understands that Maverick’s true calling is in continuous combat and flight.
Returning to Top Gun is not about continuing as an ace pilot but about taking on a new role as an instructor for a highly classified mission: teaching top Navy pilots how to bomb a secret enemy uranium enrichment facility hidden in a treacherous canyon. Normally impatient with teaching others, Maverick now finds himself forced into this role due to being at risk of being kicked out of the Navy.
On his first day on duty, he gives these elite pilots a harsh wake-up call: lowering hard deck limits for low-altitude dogfighting exercises and shortening simulation times while increasing difficulty levels. He even personally plays enemy forces and declares anyone shot down must do 100 push-ups.
In rounds of thrilling drills where no one completes their tasks without being hit by Maverick — resulting in collective push-ups until they vomit — he becomes known as a demon instructor. But for Maverick himself, what’s hardest isn’t pushing these already outstanding pilots or building team spirit among ambitious youths; it’s facing one particular trainee: Rooster (played by Miles Teller), son of his late friend Goose.
Years ago during an accident that killed Goose (not due to Maverick’s fault), guilt has haunted him ever since despite Rooster not knowing this truth nor appreciating how much effort Maverick puts into protecting him from afar leading their conflicts during training sessions boiling over.
Despite giving everything he knows away freely still fails turning them into another version himself leaving everyone believing completing mission impossible until sudden demise Ice Man cancer relapse leaves no unconditional supporter left behind facing imminent expulsion navy brink.
