The first trailer for Top Gun: Maverick is a flashback to 1986

At San Diego Comic-Con today, Tom Cruise made a surprise appearance during Paramount Pictures’ Terminator: Dark Fate panel in Hall H to debut a trailer for his next action film, Top Gun: Maverick.

The film is a direct sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, the film that helped establish Cruise as an official Hollywood star. It’s set 34 years later, with Cruise reprising his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, now a flight instructor at the Topgun, the Navy’s Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar. There, he’s teaching the son of his late partner, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, who’s following in his father’s footsteps. There are plenty of callbacks to the original film in the trailer as well — Cruise on a motorcycle, playing volleyball, and of course, flying fighter jets.

This trailer doesn’t show off much of the story, but let’s be honest — audiences will be going to theaters to see Cruise in action. The actor’s insistence on performing all of his own stunts and flying on his own has become his personal trademark, but he was apparently not permitted to fly the F/A 18 Hornets used in the film, because the US government doesn’t let civilians fly military hardware.

That said, there are plenty of shots of Cruise jetting across barren landscapes and over mountain ridges. Despite any misgivings about Cruise as an actor and a person, the trailer certainly sets up some pretty spectacular shots.

The film also reunites Cruise with Joseph Kosinski, who directed him in the 2013 science fiction film Oblivion. The film also brings back Val Kilmer, and it stars Jon Hamm (Good Omens, Mad Men), Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind, Alita: Battle Angel), Ed Harris (Westworld, Apollo 13), and Miles Teller (Fantastic Four, Only the Brave). This sequel has been in the works for a while, and Cruise noted back in 2015 that he’d enjoy getting the chance to get back into the cockpit — provided that they didn’t use CGI jets.

Top Gun: Maverick hits theaters on June 26th, 2020.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/18/20699765/top-gun-maverick-tom-cruise-sequel-trailer-watch-san-diego-comic-con-2019-ed-harris