The best thing about the original Top Gun is that it didn't care for a minute and that somehow saved it from its many flaws and limitations, even though it didn't really deserve it to, thus ending up being a surprisingly fun movie in spite of the odds (like it or not, it is a two hours long, give or take. Military-industrial complex advertorial no matter how you slice it)

Like the Mav likes to argue, if any (normal) guy stopped to think about that movie, it'd kill them dead. Of aneurysm. (Quentin's not normal, of course.)

TG: Maverick does all it can to ingratiate fans of the original ("see! We watched it and EVEN took notes on our iPhones.. how about dat ole HEN!" --seriously, it's got a character named Rooster and he's Goose's kid - I kid you not) while satisfying new moviegoers. Infamously you can't make everyone happy and trying to do so most likely pisses everyone off.

When the crazy warbird mayonnaise couldn't go crazier, it starts jumping sharks, maybe when a 60 yo writes checks his body should never be able to cash, and takes twenny somethings to school, while dropping the conscious act so as to not notice the ridiculous entirely.

After that it's just sharks jumping over sharks on top of shark-jumping sharks until the back row gets aneurysms, too. It never makes much sense beyond a very token, surface level --and you don't even have to stop to think, in the 130 minutes run there's enough down time to allow anybody to do that, sadly: one easy example is the overlong Mach 10 introduction whose task is to establish that Mav is no longer a self-absorbed dick, but in the process forgets to ever tell us why should anybody care about going Mach 10, past a token effort to paint Cpt. Mav as working man, AI fighting, hero. In fact, after the intro the thing is never mentioned or remembered again... and it just trusts that you'll side with the maverick and stick it to the - utterly charming as ever Ed Harris, BTW - man - just because we are all supposed to disregard authority somehow (a sentiment I can entirely subscribe to otherwise), unless the seat of that authority happens to be us (very Trump-like under a certain light) and it can't ever manage to misdirect attention long enough so that the viewer doesn't notice.

Oh BTW just like the original Top Gun I could not be affected less if you don't like this review, you fanbois can swallow a dusty GPZ900 sideways for all I care. The ghost of Obi-Wan, --sorry I mean Goose's, and also Admiral 'Ice' Kazansky's do hate when it does that, nevertheless they would still show you the bird.

PS: what the hell is a "multi-lateral NATO treaty" supposed to be, anyway ? Why would "GPS Jamming" mess up the F-35 ...but not ye ole F-18.. ? I could go on.