Maverick

Spoiler alert: some spoilers

Saw it Monday in IMAX.

I give it a solid thumbs up. 

There's a little nod to Lockheed early on in the form of a skunk on the test plane's vertical stabilizer. The plane itself seems to be some kind of successor to the SR-71. This early chunk of scenes doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it gets our hero back to the Navy Fighter Weapons School--and updates his credentials as a loose cannon maverick. 

   Lots of great F-18 footage. At one point they refer to the back-seater at the Weapons Systems Officer (Wizzo), which I thought was a mistake--I thought that was the Air Force term, and that it was always Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the Navy. But I looked it up and the Navy now uses 'Wizzo,' too, apparently. 

   The Tomahawk attack on the airfield:  realism score D-. They send like 20 cruise missiles to take out one airstrip, whereas one dropping cluster munitions would have (I think) done the trick. (But what do I know?) That's $40 million instead of $2 million. I also don't believe they're going to fire the cruise missiles right past a flight of aircraft.

   Nonstop homages to Star Wars. No need to tell you to look for 'em--they're not subtle and you can't miss 'em. By the end I was genuinely surprised that the ghost of Goose did not speak to Maverick on his run.

   Big spoiler you already know about: Maverick ends up back in a Tomcat* to face the Final Boss--a pair of Su-27s--always referred to only as "fifth-generation fighters." These Felons always show up on radar immediately (and, well, I'm willing to believe that about Russian stealth), and exhibit supermaneuverability only when dramatically convenient. (Of course that sort of thing is a staple of movies.) Now, I'm resigned to the tsunami of Tomcat love by the F-14 fanboys...but I do have to admit that this final boss battle was a great idea and fun to watch--though honestly I think it should have been a little more Tomcatty. The variable wing geometry is only referenced with respect to takeoff, whereas it should have been made the deciding factor in the dogfight. I'll bet the 'Cat with its wings out has a much, much, much lower minimum speed than the Felon. And, since they're in a canyon, the fight scene basically writes itself. My one general complaint is that, after all the hype about all the time spent with F-18s and whatnot...the writer and director still neither know nor care much about the aircraft. (At one point in an interview the director refers to the Hornet as 'F-15'. Which could happen to anybody...but...) Yeah, I know: 3D thrust-vectoring beats variable wing geometry...but maybe kinda sorta plausibly not when in a canyon. Also: we're talking cool movie fun here, not reality. But, for the love of God, at least understand the aircraft well enough to produce cool fiction about it.

   Anyway--I think I might go see it again.

*This bit was actually more believable than I ever thought it could be. Except for the startup sequence which I know nothing about...but imagine to be significantly more complicated than represented.