“There’s only so much emotional drama you can play up between jets,” smiles Kosinski. Of all the relationships in the film, none is more important than that between Maverick and Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s old chum Goose (Anthony Edwards), who took Berlin’s advice perhaps a little too literally in the first movie. The big surprise here isn’t that Rooster is simply angry at Maverick over the death of his father — Maverick also used his influence to impede Bradley’s progress as a pilot, lest he suffer the same fate as his old man. With Rooster understandably pissed, that drives the strained dynamic between the two as Maverick tries desperately to prevent history from repeating.
But where Top Gun: Maverick banks hard left to avoid any collision with the debris of the original is in the final outcome, as Rooster and Maverick both overcome their macho bullshit to save each other’s lives in the frenetic, all-out action onslaught of the finale. Ultimately, the two not only reconcile, but join forces — initially on the ground after being shot down, then in the air at the controls of a commandeered enemy F-14 — as banterific best buds, wisecracking their way through near-death skirmishes. And, rather than suffering whiplash after such an abrupt about-turn, it’s a joyous resolution. Again, all intentional. “Eye contact between two guys flying at 600 miles an hour is tricky to pull off,” says Kosinski. “Getting them on the ground together was important. It is a tonal shift, but you’ve spent two acts of the film feeling all this tension. It’s two guys who can’t really say everything they feel to each other, and they finally let it all out.”