Top Gun 2 Trailer Proves Maverick Hasn’t Learned His First Movie Lesson
The new Top Gun: Maverick trailer reveals that Maverick hasn't learned his biggest lesson from the original film. Tom Cruise is revisiting arguably his most iconic role as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell more than three decades since debuting the character in Top Gun. However, it appears as if time hadn't helped the aging pilot make himself better, as he continues to have the same glaring flaws that he did when fans first met him back in 1986.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Top Gun: Maverick has been delayed multiple times. That said, Paramount is finally ready to premiere the blockbuster in theaters in May. To celebrate that, the final trailer for the film has been released. While not as flashy as its predecessors, the clip leans on nostalgia with the revelation of Val Kilmer's Tom "Iceman" Kazansky's role in the sequel. Viewers also get to learn additional details about its narrative, including its central conflict between Maverick and Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller) — the son of Mitchell's former RIO, Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards). Aside from its supporting players, Top Gun: Maverick is meant to be an introspection of its titular character, which will be interesting since it doesn't seem like he learned anything from his Top Gun experience.
The recently-released Top Gun: Maverick trailer has done a great job hyping up the film without giving much away. It also establishes that Maverick has been tapped to train a new generation of brilliant Navy pilots for a special mission. At one point in the clip, Mitchell's new love interest, Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), gives him a pep talk. She says, "those are your pilots. If anything happens to them... you'll never forgive yourself," referring to Maverick's students. This implies that, like in Top Gun, he retreats once things get a bit too difficult for his liking, to the point that he's ready to abandon his contemporaries either in the middle of their training or the mission itself. It's worth remembering that after Goose died and even when he was cleared for any fault regarding it, Maverick decided to push everyone away because he didn't know how to process his guilt. Instead of confronting it, he decided to bury his head in the sand, which is what may be happening here again.
If Mitchell does leave his students, it's arguably a worse offense than when he did something similar in Top Gun because these are younger pilots. Despite Maverick’s squabble with Rooster, not to mention the other conflicts within the group, it's safe to say that most of them look up to him as their captain. On the flipside, despite Maverick's attempt to walk away from them, he still cares for those kids. Penny is right; if anything happens to them, his conscience will haunt him for a long time. The original Top Gun film ended with the idea that he was finally able to move on from the death of Goose and how he wasn't at fault for the tragedy. Clearly, that is no longer the case, with Rooster's anger still affecting him. If Maverick is still ruminating about the accident more than 40 years later, one can only imagine how it would cripple him moving forward, knowing that a young pilot died because he decided to abandon them.