Top Gun: Maverick has been officially announced as the best-reviewed film of 2022. The film, which came to theaters on May 27, is a decades-later sequel to the original 1986 Tony Scott hit Top Gun, bringing back original star Tom Cruise as hotshot pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who must now apply his skills toward training a new crop of young pilots how to carry off a seemingly impossible mission. One of these pilots is Rooster Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of his fallen friend Goose with whom he has a strained relationship.
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes has announced their official 2022 Golden Tomato Awards for 2022 with the hit Top Gun: Maverick taking top prize as the best-reviewed film of the year. The film has a 96 percent rating between 459 critics’ reviews. With both of those factors being taken into account, this places the film at the top of the list, above even the widely beloved Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the Golden Globe Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) winner The Banshees of Inisherin.
Why Critics and Fans Agree on Top Gun: Maverick
As much as critics love Top Gun: Maverick, audiences may love it even more. On Rotten Tomatoes’ fan score, the film has received a 99 percent ranking from over 50,000 votes, an even greater proportion than its incredible critics’ score.
The Top Gun sequel was also a massive box office hit, having ended 2022 as the highest-grossing film of the year with a worldwide total of $1.488 billion, holding strong in the domestic Top 10 for a grand total of 20 weeks before dropping off the chart in October.
Part of the reason that Top Gun: Maverick has thrilled nearly everyone who watched it was Cruise’s continued commitment to death-defying stunts. The actor has gained a reputation for pulling off dangerous tricks on his own in his role as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which has seen him run down the Burj Khalifa and hang onto the side of a jet plane in midair.
While the Top Gun: Maverick stunts weren’t quite as outré as Mission: Impossible, most of the airplane action shown in the movie was actually performed using real fighter jets, which adds a level of reality to the proceedings that helps pump up the adrenaline of anyone in the audience.
Combining that high-octane action with a heavy dose of nostalgia proved to be a winning idea for Top Gun: Maverick. In addition to having Cruise return and contend with the fallout of the events of the original film, the sequel also featured a cameo from original star Val Kilmer in the role of Iceman. Fans who loved the original film in the 1980s and passed on that love to future generations were gratified by the way the sequel took its legacy seriously, even while it introduced a new crop of pilots to continue into a potential Top Gun 3.