‘Top Gun’ callbacks to watch for in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

If you feel the need — the need for nostalgic callbacks galore — worry not. “Top Gun: Maverick” has you covered.

Tom Cruise is back in the cockpit as U.S. Navy airman Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, 36 years after he flew to superstardom in the 1986 hit “Top Gun.” He’s now an experimental test pilot hiding from the ghosts of his past while continuing to push limits, fly fighter jets and defy authority.

But Maverick’s not alone blasting his way back from the past. Along with a crop of new flying aces, he’s brought loads of fan service and flashbacks to the original film with him.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski and written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, “Maverick” is chock full of that lovin’ feeling for its predecessor. Though the sequel stands alone, and in certain respects — action scenes, absence of creepy behavior toward women in bars — is clearly superior to the original, “Maverick” often feels like an homage to the original. Here are some callbacks you might have missed.

—The movie’s opening sequence may seem familiar. Watching the first minutes of “Top Gun: Maverick,” you would be excused for thinking you wandered into a time warp. There are the title cards explaining the origin of the Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, aka Top Gun. There’s the crew readying the planes for takeoff. There’s composer Harold Faltermeyer’s synths lulling us into nostalgia zone. And that font.

Kosinski says he wanted to let people know that this is a “Top Gun” movie and — hell yes! — he loves the original just as much as you do. (Maybe more, given all the footage from the 1986 version he incorporates into his sequel.)

• We’re still in the “Danger Zone.” To that end, the Kenny Loggins hit is back in pretty much the same position in the sequel as it was in the original (in that copycat opening sequence), though not repeated as often as it was in the 1986 film.

• Maverick still zooms around San Diego on a Kawasaki motorcycle. And because he’s Maverick, he doesn’t wear a helmet. Neither does his old lady. Really, this is a more a Tom Cruise thing: He loves riding motorcycles in movies and loathes helmets, probably because if he wore one, we wouldn’t be able to properly appreciate his Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses and flashy smile. Who cares if it’s the law? He’s Maverick/Tom Cruise! As he told Iceman (Val Kilmer) in the original, “I ... am ... dangerous.”

• And he’s still irritating admirals. In the first movie, we learned that he’d misbehaved with an admiral’s daughter (more on that later). In the second one, he raises the hackles of another, this time played by Ed Harris, by disobeying orders. We don’t know about you, but when it comes to elder movie authority figures we would not want to annoy, Ed Harris is right at the top of the list.

—Jennifer Connelly’s Penny Benjamin was in the original. Sort of. Connelly did not appear in “Top Gun.” But her character in the sequel, a single mom who runs a bar, takes Maverick sailing and gives him all the feels, was only referenced in the 1986 film. The first mention comes early in the original when Maverick is chewed out for his latest hijinks and we’re told he has “a history of highspeed passes over five air control towers and one admiral’s daughter!” (Winkwink, nudge-nudge.)

Maverick cannot quite remember her name, so wingman Goose (Anthony Edwards) whispers it to him. Later, Goose’s wife (Meg Ryan) reveals that Goose “told me all about the time you went ballistic with Penny Benjamin.”

Another constant in the two movies: Maverick in no way deserves this woman.

• This time, the romance feels different. In what might be called an anti-callback, Maverick’s relationship with Penny is seemingly designed to draw a contrast with his relationships with women in the original. Back then, we witnessed the full-on ‘80s sexy-time treatment, replete with music video lights and camera angles, as two hot young people went at it. Here, the bedroom scene is postcoital, with Mav and Penny talking about life. You’ll have to be the judge of whether this says more about Maverick’s evolution or the culture’s.

• The Top Gun Bar is back! The original filming location of the pilots’ divebar hangout, Kansas City BBQ, is still in business in downtown San Diego, but it receives a canonical update in the new film with much roomier square footage and Penny behind the bar. This one is called the Hard Deck.

• And you know Maverick still has issues with hard decks. One of Mav’s first run-ins with authority in the original comes from him violating the “hard deck” (the minimum altitude allowed) in a training exercise. Though he has presumably matured in other ways over 36 or so years, he has not addressed these issues in the second. And it’s pretty entertaining that he hasn’t, actually.