Top Gun. The original. Came out in '86. HUGE. Didn't see it till a few years later. Great movie. For me to this day, not a remote drop. But it is iconic. Great scenes, good actors, good story, quotable lines. 35 years later, Maverick.

It starts with a tad of intrigue and nostalgia. I'm on board. That's when engine 1 flames out. The Lazy Susan spinning of nostalgia, establishing character and story, poor casting, poor script, shallow story, anchoring through nostalgia with near and HUGE misses delivers a huge budget box office bonanza straight to DVD smoldering, festering STAR WARS prequel disappointment.

Tom Cruise knows how to make a good movie. Tom Cruise knows how to make a great movie. Tom Cruise knows how to act. Tom Cruise didn't know how to make this. The final product is an insult to the term slap-dash. Each side story amounts to nothing more than a Dear Diary entry based on over hearing 5% of a conversation.

Miles Teller and Jennifer Connelly, who the hell is Penny?, are wasted. The connection between the first movie and this are wasted. Low hanging fruit is not harvested but wasted in the interest of watching Tom Cruise actually do his own death defying stunts. Incredible to watch. He is a marvel doing that. However it plays more like a YouTube video than an actual, well, you know, movie.