Hey, remember Top Gun? It was that 80s movie full of strong-jawed, confident men flying cool fighter jets and having intense but controlled confrontations in their underwear. Well, the executives at Paramount Pictures remember it – along with the hundreds of millions of dollars it made them at the box office. They remember it so well that they’ve gone and made it again!

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Released last year, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ returns 36 years later (!) to the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Once a cocky young flyboy, Mav is now a weathered test pilot whose career has stalled. He’s been put out to pasture, but he’s still in the Navy, he’s still a crazy maverick and he’s still the best of the best. Now he’s got to return to the Top Gun flight school for one last mission and teach these young bucks how to do it right.

America lost its mind for this movie, but Brian and Hemal had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it beautifully captured the whole elite, fighter-jock vibe of the original movie, and set the bar even higher in terms of how the airplane stuff was shot and integrated into the story.

But the fan service – my God, the fan service. Hardly a scene goes by when the filmmakers don’t stop the action to wave something in our faces from the original movie. Hey, remember this guy? Remember this awesome scene? Remember when Mav said that cool thing? Here it all is again! 

The theory seems to be that we loved it before, so there’s no reason to change anything. But also they don’t think highly of our intelligence, so they want to make sure we get it. We can accept the first part of the theory, but the second part wears us down. Yes, for the love of Christ, we get it.