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One of the biggest and best action movies of the 21st century has just been knocked off the streaming charts. The film is a sequel to one of the most iconic films of the 1980s. That doesn’t exactly narrow it down when almost every ’80s action franchise, like Predator, Road House, The Running Man, and Rambo: First Blood, are all receiving sequels and reboots. But what if we said the film in question took us a little closer to the danger zone? The incredible follow-up to 1986’s Top Gun, titled Top Gun: Maverick, has had an amazing run on the streaming charts. But, its time at the top has come to an end.
Top Gun: Maverick is currently streaming on Paramount+. Following its successful box office run in 2022, Top Gun: Maverick had a similarly tremendous run on the streaming site, sitting in the top 10 for well over 450 days (that’s nearly a year and a half). However, the film has recently been knocked off the number 10 spot. At the time of writing, Tom Cruise’s underrated crime thriller, American Made, holds the top spot. Also in the top 10 is The Equalizer and its sequel, The Naked Gun reboot starring Liam Neeson, Django Unchained, Step Brothers, and A PAW Patrol Christmas (which isn’t your typical Top Gun alternative, but you might enjoy it).
As previously mentioned, Top Gun: Maverick cooked up a storm at the box office in 2022. Even at a time when audiences were skeptical about returning to theaters following the COVID pandemic, Top Gun: Maverick soared past the $1 billion mark. The film grossed $1.49 billion worldwide. It remains the highest-grossing film of Tom Cruise’s career, and was the second highest grossing movie of 2022, behind Avatar: The Way of Water. The film was also a major hit with audiences and critics, boasting a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an even stronger 99% audience score. “A future classic that’ll be talked about many years after,” wrote one RT user. For the five people that didn’t see the film in theaters or on Paramount+, the official synopsis reads:
“After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”. Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.”
What’s Going on With ‘Top Gun 3’?
With Top Gun: Maverick raking it in at the box office, a threequel was inevitable. It turns out the need for speed never leaves (they’d better use that in Top Gun 3) because Tom Cruise will be back as Maverick for a third installment… it just might take some time.
Top Gun 3 was announced in January 2024. Director Joseph Kosinski is also set to return, along with Miles Teller and Glen Powell. The last update the movie received was in June of this year, where Kosinski teased that the threequel will be even bigger than the already gargantuan Top Gun: Maverick, saying:
“I think we’ve found a way to do it, not only in the scale of what we’re proposing, but the idea itself of the story we’re telling. We’re thinking much bigger than… It’s a really existential crisis that Maverick has in this, and it’s much bigger than himself. It actually… I’m trying to describe it without giving anything away. It’s an existential question that Maverick has to deal with, that would make Maverick feel small, I think, as a movie, compared to what we’re talking about.”
