Summary and Key Points: Senior defense writer Harrison Kass evaluates the strategic development of “Top Gun 3,” expected to reunite director Joseph Kosinski with stars Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, and Glen Powell.
-Following the cultural “pro-American pivot” of Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, this report analyzes the franchise’s potential to maintain artistic standards while addressing the shift toward autonomous aviation.
Su-57 in Top Gun: Maverick. Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot.
-Kass explores the bankability of Hangman (Powell) and the narrative challenges of completing Maverick’s arc.
-While financial success is nearly assured, the film faces a monumental task in defining the cultural moment of the late 2020s.
Top Gun 3 High Priority: Why Paramount is Betting on Tom Cruise and Glen Powell for a 2028 Blockbuster
“Top Gun 3” is in active development at Paramount Pictures. No release date has been set, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer confirmed that the project is a high priority. The screenplay is currently being written, with “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski expected to return, along with cast members Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, and Glen Powell.
Both Top Gun (1986) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) were the top-grossing pictures of their release years, and more importantly, distinct cultural moments.
Top Gun was an era-defining hit, launching the stardom of Cruise, the biggest Hollywood star of the last half-century, and inflating Navy recruitment. The sequel, released over three decades later, marked a post-COVID return to theaters and, culturally, an optimistic, pro-American pivot after years of protest and discontent. With the bar set so high, can a new sequel match the success of its predecessors? That depends on the type of success.
Financial Success
Top Gun 3 will be a financial hit; that much is roughly assured. Both entries in the Top Gun franchise were blockbuster hits, recouping large production budgets that included extensive naval aviation-related shooting.
Top Gun: Maverick Promo Photo.
Top Gun 3 will also have a large budget and is expected to clean up at the box office. Tom Cruise is a proven, bankable star with decades of precedent; his sequels, most notably within the Mission: Impossible franchise, are bankable.
Director Joseph Kosinski is on a heater, too, coming off of Top Gun: Maverick and the Best Picture-nominated F1, starring Brad Pitt. Also promising to drive attendance is the emergence of Glen Powell as an A-lister in the years since the release of Top Gun: Maverick; Powell, who portrayed Hang Man in the sequel, was still a relatively unknown, but has since exploded in popularity thanks to a string of hits including Twisters and Anyone But You.
Cultural Success
Top Gun 3 is unlikely to match the cultural success and impact of either Top Gun or its sequel. Each of the Top Gun films to date has managed to capture lightning in a bottle. The first is arguably the defining film of the 1980s—jingoistic and masculine with fighter jets, motorcycles, guitar anthems, and blue-tinted sex scenes. The film transcended Hollywood, became a foundational piece of American culture, and has endured in the decades since as a time capsule of 80s filmmaking and Cold War attitudes about what it meant to be an American.
Oddly, the sequel captured a moment, too. The future of cinema-going was very much in question; the pandemic had effectively halted the prospect of seeing a movie in theaters, raising questions about the viability of the medium amidst the continued rise of streaming platforms.
SR-72, maybe. Screenshot from Top Gun 2 Trailer.
Top Gun: Maverick marked the de facto return to cinema for the entire industry; released in May 2022, the film was widely released in theaters and widely attended—as was the intention of the production team, a point Cruise made in a brief introduction aired before the film.
And beyond the return to theaters, Top Gun: Maverick is a tone that much of the country was craving—something optimistic, something proudly American.
Through Trump’s first term, in the years after George Floyd’s murder, American morale was at a generational low point; much of the population held openly anti-American views. Top Gun: Maverick, perhaps unintentionally, provided a cultural counterpoint to the prevailing anti-American sentiment that dominated the early 2020s: Tom Cruise returned, with motorcycles, fighter jets, and guitar anthems, once again in a film that spoke to American exceptionalism.
Though more elegiac, restrained, and poignant than the original, the sequel offered Americans a rallying point for American pride.
The likelihood that Top Gun 3 will define its cultural moment (2028 or so) is extremely low.
Artistic Success
Both Top Gun films to date are artistic achievements, from a technical and narrative perspective. Cynics will joke about volleyball and the like, but Top Gun 1 and 2 are beautiful films with enduring themes.
The 2022 sequel upheld the technical standards of the first, and more surprisingly, the narrative was worthwhile. The film was elegiac, restrained at times, even melancholy—an unexpected study in Maverick’s efforts to come to terms with his twilight, likely inspired by Cruise’s own personal efforts to do the same. The reunion between Maverick and Iceman was genuinely touching, elevating the film as a whole.
For Top Gun 3 to be worthwhile, the filmmakers will need to honor the artistic standards the franchise has upheld for forty years. While Top Gun 2 was an elegy for Maverick’s character, Top Gun 3 could create a similar gravity by offering an elegy for the fighter pilot profession itself in twilight as automation increases. And while Maverick’s arc felt complete at the end of Top Gun 2, Cruise is charming enough to justify one more tour, which would surely end with a more definitive conclusion for the character.
Top Gun 3 is happening. It will be a financial success, and it could potentially be an artistic success if they treat the installment with the reverence it deserves. Though, don’t expect the third film to define the cultural moment the way the first two films did. Regardless, I’ll be there opening night, on the edge of my seat, engaged in the way Top Gun demands.
About the Author: Harrison Kass
Harrison Kass is a senior defense and national security writer at The National Interest. Kass is an attorney and former political candidate who joined the US Air Force as a pilot trainee before being medically discharged. He focuses on military strategy, aerospace, and global security affairs. He holds a JD from the University of Oregon and a master’s in Global Journalism and International Relations from NYU.
