With their proven record of reviving a classic film franchise, the Creed movies can offer some valuable lessons on how Top Gun 3 should unfold. Top Gun: Maverick does an incredible job at upping the ante of its predecessor's aerial dog fights and adding more emotional depth to Capt. Pete Mitchell's overarching storyline. From dizzying, white-knuckling F-14 Tomcat sequences to awe-inspiring moments featuring Tom Cruise racing his Kawasaki across the runway, Top Gun: Maverick offers everything that one can expect from a sequel.
Its monumental box office numbers and positive worldwide reception are enough for it to be followed up with another installment, but the franchise must now tread carefully given that it took Top Gun 2 more than two decades to see the light of day. Like Top Gun 2, the potential sequel Top Gun 3 will have to be technically marvelous with its aerial maneuvers and aviation technologies. However, more than that, it will also need a concrete reason to continue Maverick's overarching narrative. Considering how the Creed series effectively resumes Rocky's story without tainting his legacy, Top Gun 3 can learn some lessons from it to move forward in the right direction.
4 Top Gun 3 Should Focus On Rooster's Aviation Journey (Like Creed With Adonis)
Like Rocky Balboa marks the end of Sylvester Stallone's titular character's boxing journey, Top Gun 2 brings a well-rounded closure to Tom Cruise's aviation endeavors as Maverick. Like Rocky, Maverick gets to revisit demons from his past, bury them for good, and rekindle his relationship with a former rival turned lifelong wingman, Iceman. Both literally and metaphorically, Rocky and Maverick fly off into the sunset and earn the standing ovation they deserve as their narratives seemingly reach their natural conclusion.
Dragging their storyline beyond these fulfilling endings would not only discredit their legacies but also dilute the overall qualities of their respective franchises. Therefore, it made sense for the Rocky franchise to branch out into a spin-off featuring Adonis Creed as the lead, which makes it logical for Top Gun to tread a similar path by focusing on Rooster in future installments. Creed's success also offers insight into how a young boxer trying to follow in his father's footsteps and legacy makes for a compelling narrative arc. Considering Rooster's history, Top Gun 2 can go down the same route while featuring Tom Cruise's Maverick in a new Rocky-esque role.
3 Maverick Can Be Rooster's Rocky In Top Gun 3
Top Gun 2 already establishes Tom Cruise's character as a guiding force for Miles Teller's Rooster. Continuing this narrative, Top Gun 3 can feature Rooster as the franchise's new face while allowing Maverick's character to grow as the young pilot's mentor. Similar to how Rocky helps Creed find his feet in his early boxing years, Top Gun 3 can have Maverick taking the responsibility of guiding Rooster through his formative years as a naval aviation pilot. This would not only help Rooster grow as a character, but help Maverick come full circle from renegade to role model.
Top Gun 2 perfectly sets the stage for this narrative by establishing how Maverick earns Rooster's trust by helping him realize his true potential as a pilot. Rooster has a hard time confiding in Maverick after knowing that he held him back from becoming a pilot. However, towards the end of Top Gun: Maverick, Miles Teller's Bradshaw buries his old grudges after understanding that Maverick was only looking out for him. Now that he trusts Maverick and looks up to him as a father figure, he can reach out to him for help in his future aeronautical adventures in Top Gun 3, just like Adonis seeks Rocky's advice in Creed.
2 Top Gun 3 Can Focus On Maverick's Personal Life (Like Rocky In Creed)
While depicting how Rooster rises in the ranks in the Navy, Top Gun 3 can shed new light on Maverick's life. In the original Rocky films, Balboa's narrative primarily revolves around the highs and lows of his boxing career and how he overcomes many odds outside the boxing ring to win against opponents inside it. Similarly, the first two Top Gun films are more about the ebbs and flows in Maverick's pursuit of becoming a great pilot and less about his personal life outside the cockpit. Although Top Gun 2 adds romantic developments to Maverick's overarching story, it never delves into the intricacies of his role as a father and husband.
Like the Creed movies portray how Rocky attempts to rekindle his relationship with his family, Top Gun 3 can dive deeper into Maverick's relationship as Penny's partner and Amelia's stepfather. Similar to Rocky's orthodox boxing antics and training montages in the original films, Maverick's high-octane aerial acrobatics and dogfights have been highly compelling in the first two Top Gun movies. However, with his newfound relationships with Penny, Amelia, and Rooster, Top Gun 3 has the opportunity to add more emotional depth to his storyline by emphasizing more on how his grit and discipline as a pilot reflect in his personal life.
1 Top Gun 3 Can Honor Legacy Characters While Embracing A New Era (Like Creed)
Instead of suddenly ending Maverick’s arc after Top Gun 2 or unnecessarily extending his stay as the franchise’s lead, Top Gun 3 can gradually loosen his grip on the movie series by shifting its focus to a new era of pilots. Like the Creed movies keep Rocky and Apollo's boxing legacy alive through Adonis' rite of passage as a boxer, Top Gun 3 can use Rooster's arc as a primary narrative device to strengthen the proverbial roots of Goose and Maverick's narratives. To strike a chord with the first Top Gun's primary audience, Top Gun 3 can also feature cameos from the first movie's side characters like Tom Skerritt's Viper, Barry Tubb's Wolfman, and John Stockwell's Cougar, among many others.
The original legacy characters will always be a crucial part of the Top Gun franchise, but passing over the mantle to a new era of pilots like Hangman and Rooster in Top Gun 3 would allow it to grow in a direction that is not redundant. Gradually shifting the franchise's focus from Tom Cruise's Pete Mitchell to Miles Teller's Bradley Bradshaw in Top Gun 3 may also help audiences bid their farewell to Maverick while accepting Rooster as an independent leading character. Like Creed 3's Adonis, Top Gun 3's Rooster can then look back at the lessons he learned from Maverick but eventually pave the way for his own legacy.