Tom Cruise

Uhhhhh... what was this about?

The ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, 2010s and now the 2020s.

The long-awaited sequel is an improbably personal film.

The film is due in theaters next summer.

The flying sequences in this movie look incredible.

Are these movies ever going to come out?

One of the cool things about Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation are its subtle nods to the first film in the franchise. Both movies begin with a cold open action sequence; both then immediately segue into very similar looking credits sequences (with Lalo Schifrin’s classic Mission: Impossible score). Then the hero of the film receives his top secret mission; first, he has a heavily coded conversation with a woman, who hands him a piece of analog recording technology that contains his briefing. The difference is that in the original Mission: Impossible from 1996, the analog device (a small video cassette) represents the cutting edge of entertainment technology. In Rogue Nation, that analog recording (a vinyl record) is now wildly archaic.

Turns out following Covid protocols was the real impossible mission.

Tom Cruise is back as the coolest fighter pilot ever in the long-awaited sequel.

The finalists for the role of Goose Jr. include Miles Teller and Glen Powell.

Let me make this perfectly clear: I’m less of a Top Gun fan and more of a fan of putting Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in more blockbuster movies, but the end result is pretty much the same: I am ready for a little Top Gun 2 action. The long-rumored film — or perhaps just long-desired film — was finally confirmed by Cruise earlier this year, and now Paramount Pictures is cranking up the movie-making machine to deliver on the promise of more midair dogfights and subtle homoeroticism. With Cruise back, and Kilmer hopefully soon to follow, this could be the perfect throwback to the heydays of studio filmmaking of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Val Kilmer has taken to his personal Facebook page to post a Top Gun 2 status update with ramifications on a scale that we can only describe as tectonic.