Arriving 36 years after the original movie, “Top Gun: Maverick” drops nostalgia bombs with precision. Back are the gongs and synthesizer chords of the first movie’s musical score and the “Danger Zone” jet montage. Tom Cruise, age 59, is back in the leather aviator jacket astride his speeding Kawasaki motorcycle.
Into the midst of all this swaggers a character type as familiar as other callbacks to the 1980s—the movie’s cocky jerk.
He’s Lt. Jake Seresin. That’s “Hangman” to you and everybody in the movie who address each other by their Navy call signs. Hangman considers himself the best of the elite young fighter pilots training for a dangerous mission under the guidance of Mr. Cruise’s Maverick.
In Hangman’s first scene, he hits multiple bullseyes on a dart board, refers to Maverick as “old timer” and “pops,” and—as Foghat’s “Slow Ride” plays on the jukebox—he lets everyone know: “I’m very good. In fact, I’m too good to be true.”
