Tom Cruise returns as Maverick in these exclusive images from the Top Gun sequel

Top Gun: Maverick
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)

For a sequel to a film built around the need for speed, Top Gun: Maverick has been a long time coming. Recent additional delays caused by the pandemic mean that this sequel is finally touching down 36 years after the original landed.

That’s a long wait for fans who’ve been clamouring for more since Tony Scott’s fighter-pilot drama took their breath away in 1986. But, Maverick, true to his call sign, has never played by the rules.

In the cover story of the new issue of Total Film magazine, Tom Cruise and the cast and filmmakers of Top Gun: Maverick talk in depth about the years in the making sequel. Below, you can check out three exclusive new images from the issue:

Top Gun: Maverick

(Image credit: Paramount Picss)

Top Gun: Maverick

(Image credit: Paramount Picss)

Top Gun: Maverick

(Image credit: Paramount Picss)

The long-anticipated sequel sees Tom Cruise’s titular aviator, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, back in the cockpit once more. When we pick up with Mav in Top Gun: Maverick, he’s still taking to the skies as a test pilot, having avoided the promotions that would chain him to a desk.

A highly specialised mission requires him to train a detachment of graduates from Top Gun (the United States Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, to give it its more formal name). So we’re talking the best of the best *of the best* young Naval Aviators. Of course, among their number is Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Mav’s former Radar Intercept Officer, Nick Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), better known as Goose. Goose died in the first film during an ejection gone wrong, sending Maverick into a guilt-ridden crisis.

Top Gun: Maverick opens in UK cinemas on May 25, and US cinemas on May 27. For much more from Cruise, Teller, the new cast and the filmmaking team of director Joseph Kosinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, check out the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves on Thursday 31 March.

Total Film's Top Gun: Maverick covers

(Image credit: Total Film/Paramount Pictures)

If you’re a fan of Total Film, why not subscribe so you never miss an issue? Sign up via MagazinesDirect and you’ll save money on the cover price, as well getting exclusive subscriber covers like the one you can see above. And with our current subs offer, you can also get a free pair of headphones.

Total Film's subscription offer

(Image credit: Total Film/Paramount Pictures)
Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.

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