Top Gun 3 Risks Undoing Maverick's Perfect Ending
Warning: SPOILERS Ahead For Top Gun: Maverick
While the incredible success of Top Gun: Maverick has led to talk of Top Gun 3, another entry risks undoing Maverick's perfect ending. While Tom Cruise was already on the cusp of movie stardom thanks to the success of 1983's Risky Business, it was Top Gun that pushed him over the finish line. This 1986 blockbuster might have been intensely cheesy, but it also featured great characters, quotable dialogue, a catchy soundtrack and incredible action scenes. While some hit movies fade from collective memory in the years following their release, Top Gun only seemed to grow in audience estimation.
Despite its popularity, Cruise resisted returning for Top Gun 2 for decades, feeling there was no story to explore. The passing of original director Tony Scott also appeared to make a sequel unlikely, but it was eventually greenlit in 2017. Top Gun: Maverick surpassed just about every expectation — including at the box office — with the sequel featuring plenty of easter eggs and callbacks while also providing a surprisingly emotional story and a thrilling finale. To date, Maverick has grossed over $1 billion worldwide.
Related: The Movie That Almost Reunited Tom Cruise & Val Kilmer (Before Top Gun 2)
Top Gun: Maverick isn't the first sequel Cruise has been part of, but both theMission: Impossible andJack Reacher movies were always designed with potential follow-ups in mind. With Maverick, Cruise was content to sit on the project until a compelling story came along, which proved to be the character at the end of his career as a Navy pilot, reckoning with his past mistakes and questioning his future. By the end, he had completed a near impossible mission, reconciled with Goose's son Rooster
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