Top Gun 3 already has the ideal storyline, as it was subtly set up in Top Gun: Maverick. Tom Cruise had his big break in the 1980s, but it was thanks to Tony Scott’s Top Gun in 1986 that his reign as an action star officially began. Despite getting mixed reviews during its initial release, Top Gun became the highest-grossing movie of 1986 and is now considered one of the best movies of the 1980s – and yet, it took over 30 years for it to finally get a sequel, with Tom Cruise back as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
Titled Top Gun: Maverick and directed by Joseph Kosinski, it reunites viewers with Maverick as he mentors a new group of pilots as they prepare to go on a dangerous mission that will put their lives at risk. Among the new pilots is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), Goose’s son, and Maverick feels responsible for him after Goose’s death in Top Gun. Even though Top Gun: Maverick gives Pete a perfect ending, a third movie is now in development – and the best storyline for it was teased at the beginning of Maverick.
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Top Gun 3 is reportedly in the works, and here are 10 things that need to be in the film in order to properly follow up on Top Gun: Maverick.
Top Gun: Maverick Teased A Future With No Pilots
Top Gun: Maverick opens with Pete testing the hypersonic “Darkstar” scramjet program which Rear Admiral Chester “Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris) plans to cancel. Cain’s reasoning is that the program hasn’t reached the contract specification of Mach 10, but Pete, being the relentless pilot he has always been, proves Cain wrong and reaches the goal. However, Pete pushes his airspeed to go beyond Mach 10 and the prototype aircraft is destroyed. Cain is furious with Maverick and tells him that the planes “sooner than later, [they] won’t need pilots” before sending him to the Top Gun school under Iceman’s (Val Kilmer) orders.
Top Gun: Maverick then focuses on Pete’s arrival at the Top Gun school and the training of the new pilots, but Top Gun 3 can go back to what Cain said. Cain also says to Pete that “the future is coming” and he’s not in it, which can be turned into a moment of foreshadowing for Top Gun 3, where Pete, Rooster, Hangman (Glen Powell), and the rest can face a new reality where technology has replaced them. This would force Pete to retire, but it can also push him and the rest to prove that they can’t be replaced, and there are things that these pilotless aircrafts will never be able to do.
Maverick Saving The Top Gun Division Can Be His Perfect Ending
As mentioned above, Maverick gave Pete a perfect ending in which he fixed his relationship with Rooster and with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), his former lover with whom he reconnected at the beginning of the movie. Because of this, it’s somewhat expected that Top Gun 3 will see the official retirement of Pete in order for Rooster and Hangman to carry on with the Top Gun legacy, but saving the Top Gun division would make a much better ending for Pete.
Despite all his mistakes and reckless decisions, Pete is one of the best pilots to come out of the Top Gun school, and now that Iceman is dead, it would be even more important, emotional, and symbolic if he fought to save it and the future of the rest of the pilots. Pete can still retire after saving the Top Gun division, officially passing the torch to Rooster, and this would be a much better story than simply having him retire or repeat the model of the previous movies, with Pete going on a mission that puts his life at risk.
