UPDATE: Read our breakdown of the Top Gun: Maverick trailer.
Paramount has released an official trailer and poster for Top Gun: Maverick online, with Tom Cruise reprising his iconic role as Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell. Cruise surprised the crowd in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 by taking the stage immediately after the conclusion to the Terminator: Dark Fate panel and unveiling the trailer earlier today.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy, Oblivion), Maverick picks up in real-time after the events of Tony Scott's original 1986 film Top Gun. Joining Cruise in the cast are Val Kilmer (reprising his role as Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky) and Miles Teller (Only the Brave) as Bradley Bradshaw, the now-adult son of Anthony Edwards' character Nick - aka. the late 'Goose' - from the first movie. Elsewhere, Jennifer Connelly (Alita: Battle Angel), Glen Powell (Set It Up), Jon Hamm (Good Omens), and Ed Harris (Westworld) are all set to play key roles in the sequel.
The official trailer for Top Gun: Maverick is now online, along with the teaser poster. You can check them both out in the space below.
The trailer focuses heavily on scenes of Cruise's Maverick pushing the speed limit in a fighter jet (be it across the desert or over mountaintops), but tempers them with voiceover from Harris' character talking to Pete and pointing out that, after all these years, he's struggled to move up in rank beyond captain. Harris' dialogue further alludes to the film's storyline, which is said to involve Maverick serving as the flight instructor to a new generation of hotshot Navy pilots - Bradley Bradshaw included - and struggling to accept that, thanks to advances in technology, his kind are beginning to become a thing of the past. And speaking of the past: the trailer naturally mines audiences' nostalgia for the original Top Gun by including its classic theme music, in addition to shots of a scene that's clearly an homage to that film's famous volleyball sequence.
While the footage looks incredibly crisp and the aerial sequences seem as impressively-staged as the action in Kosinski's previous films, it's difficult to say if Top Gun: Maverick is shaping up to be a worthy continuation of the first movie... or the Top Gun equivalent of an Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull-style hollow nostalgia trip. Cruise, for his part, has continued to deliver the goods when it comes to both the Mission: Impossible franchise and genre fare like Edge of Tomorrow in recent years, but he's also had a few big misses along the way (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, The Mummy). We will just have to wait and see where Top Gun: Maverick ultimately lands, but the trailer will do in the meantime.
Source: Paramount Pictures