By Chuck Valley

Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and Miles Teller plays Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.

In the run-up to watch “Top Gun: Maverick,” I prepared myself like anyone else would by watching the original “Top Gun.” And while, granted, this is not a review of the 1986 classic, there is something to be said about the impression I got from watching it now, firmly ensconced in my adulthood, and how it compares to Maverick. For context, I hadn’t seen Top Gun in a good 20 years (with the exception of a snippet here and there on network tv while channel surfing faster than Hamm in Toy Story). Also (for context-slash-disclaimer) I was never the biggest Top Gun fan – the formula for the movie relies on tropes, clichés, a Deus Ex Goose to violently thrust…