Soaring reviews as critics say 'Top Gun: Maverick' is 'as thrilling as blockbusters get'

Tom Cruise’s long-awaited Top Gun sequel has gone down a storm with reviewers, with one calling it “the greatest blockbuster of the decade”.

The Hollywood heavyweight, 59, is returning to the role of US Navy pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell 36 years after the original film.

After years of dedicating his life to the Navy, he finds himself training the next generation of pilots in Top Gun: Maverick.

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The movie is set to be released later this month and reviewers predict it’s going to be massive.

The Independent gave it four of five stars and said it was “as thrilling as blockbusters get”.

“It’s the kind of edge-of-your-seat, fist-pumping spectacular that can unite an entire room full of strangers sitting in the dark and leave them with a wistful tear in their eye,” they said.

In an article entitled "Top Gun: Maverick is the greatest blockbuster of the decade", GQ said it was “emotionally driven, relentlessly kinetic, stylistically bombastic” and that it was a “glorious ode to the kind of blockbuster movies that once sent filmgoers to the cinemas in their droves”.

The Telegraph gave the movie a whopping five out of five stars, saying Cruise “makes an absurdly exciting return to the skies”.

Film critic Robbie Collin also suggested that the sequel was the “Cruisiest film” that the star has made.

The Hollywood Reporter was also full of praise for the “superior sequel”.

And it noted that Val Kilmer’s screen time was particularly touching.

The actor – who has survived throat cancer – reprises the Iceman role that was such a hit with fans in the 1986 original.

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The reviewer wrote: “The film’s most moving element comes during the brief screen time of Kilmer’s Iceman, whose health issues reflect those suffered by the actor in real life, generating resonant pathos.”

The BBC’s review said the follow up actually “improves on the old one in every respect”.

“The story is cleverer and more gripping, the dialogue is sharper and funnier, the relationships are richer, the aerial stunts are more likely to make you queasy,” Nicholas Barber wrote.

Top Gun: Maverick will be released in the UK and Ireland on 25 May, 2022.

Watch: Need for Speed: Tom Cruise rides helicopter to Top Gun: Maverick premiere