NUCLEAR-POWERED PLOT LINES

TOP GUN: Maverick opens 36 years after the original. Cruise is

called back to the US Navy’s ‘Top Gun’ fighter training school to coach a band of new recruits for a ‘mission impossible’ to bomb a uranium treatment plant owned by an unknown enemy.

While Top Gun was famous for its ‘bromance’ with an all-male fighter crew, this time around there is a female pilot and black and Hispanic pilots (above). To add to the plot twists, the son of ‘Goose’ – Maverick’s best friend who died in the first movie – is also part of the crew who takes on the daring raid. He blames Maverick for his father’s death.

The aerial dog-fights are breathtaking. A source who worked on the film said: “The fact that they used real planes and real locations makes what you see even more spectacular. When those planes roar and take off, the seats in the cinema shake.

‘People were cheering, stomping their feet, crying. It’s such an emotional movie which is not what you expect walking in. You feel like you’re in that jet with those characters.’