In Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Tom Cruise returned as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, now a captain and test pilot who is asked to train a new group of graduates for a mission that seems impossible. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, the film follows Maverick as he confronts his past, including his relationship with Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, played by Miles Teller, the son of his late friend Goose.
Cruise gave Maverick maturity and emotion, a hero who had aged but not lost his need to fly. The film’s aerial sequences, filmed with real aircraft, became its hallmark, and the film became the highest-grossing film of Cruise’s career.
Top Gun: Maverick remains a signature Cruise role because it closed a circle begun in 1986, showing that Maverick, and Cruise himself, could still lead a blockbuster more than three decades later.