While Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick has impressed both critics and fans alike, it presents a very difficult challenge for Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Featuring actual fighter jets with incredibly real speeds and action that pushes the limits of filmmaking, Top Gun: Maverick sets the bar very high for fighter pilot movies across the board. As such, it will likely be very difficult for Rogue Squadron, which is set to focus on Star Wars X-Wing pilots, to meet or exceed expectations following the Tom Cruise film.

For Top Gun: Maverick, the decision was made to use as many practical effects as possible, keeping the use of CGI to a bare minimum. Cruise and the rest of the film's cast (such as Miles Teller's Rooster) went through an extensive three-month training regimen to prepare them for the real F/A 18 Super Hornets used in production, allowing them to successfully and safely experience the g-forces and speeds that came with the impressive flight maneuvers. While the dogfight sequences with bullets and missiles were of course done digitally, the decision to not have the cast in front of green screens is a move that clearly paid off. The flight sequences are objectively stunning.

Related: Top Gun: Maverick's Box Office Shows Importance Of Non-Marvel Audiences

As a result, Top Gun: Maverick presents a unique challenge for Rogue Squadron. In the film's 2020 teaser, director Patty Jenkins shared her passion to make "the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time." While that's still possible, the bar has been set quite high after Maverick and its impressive lack of CGI. Heavy uses of CGI in Rogue Squadron will be unavoidable with its fictional starfighters, space flights, lightspeed, and more. Normally, a key strength would be nostalgia. Rogue Squadron is a Star Wars movie, after all. However, Maverick tapped into its own nostalgia from the original Top Gun incredibly well, creating an even playing field on that front. As such, Rogue Squadron's digital effects and more elements will need to go beyond the norm seen in past Star Wars films.

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Even if Rogue Squadron had been released before Maverick, the need for the film to be visually stunning would still be a necessity. This film will be the first time starfighters are the focus and their pilots are the stars, rather than just being part of the bigger ensemble that makes up a Star Wars film. Seeing as how practical effects during action sequences will be largely non-existent, Rogue Squadron will need to rely on its characters and narrative to a large degree in order to measure up to Maverick. Jenkins' did communicate her desire to combine "tragedy and thrill" in the Rogue Squadron teaser. Considering her background where her father was a fighter pilot, she does seem primed to create a truly dynamic story for the upcoming film.

Top Gun: Maverick is hopefully challenging Rogue Squadron to be even better, pushing the limits in other areas seeing as how meeting the same level of practical stunts and effects simply isn't feasible. While production on the Star Wars film was delayed in 2021, Patty Jenkins is still attached as its director (though Rogue Squadron still has a 2023 release date). At any rate, Rogue Squadron could still get close to being "the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time," though that goal has certainly become harder to reach after the success of Top Gun: Maverick.

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