It took Tom Cruise 36 years to head back to the danger zone and movie critics are saying it was worth the wait to see Top Gun back on the big screen.
The sequel to the 1986 blockbuster, called Top Gun: Maverick, currently has a 97 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while on Metacritic it has an 81 aggregate ranking.
"It is unquestionably the best studio action film to have been released since 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road," wrote Robbie Collin for the Daily Telegraph.
"The epitome of the big screen blockbuster bringing with it all the fist-pumping adrenaline, death-defying in-camera dog-fighting and all the feels we all need and deserve from a 2022 Top Gun," said Newshub's Kate Rodger.
"Top Gun: Maverick is as thrilling as blockbusters get," declared Clarisse Loughrey for The Independent.
The film is set to debut in New Zealand cinemas on May 26.
In the movie, the 59-year-old Cruise reprises his role as Pete Mitchell, the cocky Navy pilot who has never risen through the ranks because of his penchant for bucking authority. Mitchell, whose code name is Maverick, is asked to train a group of young fighter pilots for a specialized mission.
Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press called the new film "a textbook example of how to make a sequel".
"The movie satisfies with one foot in the past by hitting all the touchstones of the first film," Kennedy said, "and yet stands on its own."
Box office analysts project the movie will rank as one of the biggest box office hits of the summer. It had been scheduled for release in June 2020, but distributor Paramount Pictures delayed the release multiple times during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice Pro, estimated that ticket sales would hit US$100 million over the Memorial Day weekend in the United States and Canada. That would make it the highest-grossing debut of Cruise's career.
The actor is promoting the movie at events around the world. At a premiere in San Diego, he made a grand entrance by piloting a helicopter onto an aircraft carrier. Next week, he will attend a screening at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
Critics said the movie offers thrilling flight scenes, an emotional story and strong performances by the supporting cast, including Miles Teller, who plays the son of Goose, Maverick's partner who died in the original film.
A Rotten Tomatoes round-up of the early reviews on is headlined Top Gun: Maverick first reviews: the most thrilling blockbuster we've gotten in years.
But most of the praise was showered on Cruise.
"It's a fresh-faced gloss on the original... powered, like the original, by a star who'll simply never stop being a star," wrote K Austin Collins of Rolling Stone.
Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly said the movie "belongs in almost every scene to Cruise".
"At this point in his career, he's not really playing characters so much as variations on a theme - the theme being, perhaps, The Last Movie Star," she said. "And in the air up there, he stands alone."
Reuters / Newshub.