It's gotten high scores on all the ideologically poisoned "review" sites and scores ultra high among fans.
Just came back from it just felt like a good, old school action flick with a Hero's journey type of story. It's great, and it does a proper "sendoff" with a character (Rooster) being a strong link between the previous movie and this movie.
This is one of those "turn your brain off and enjoy the ride" sorta deals. It just tries to be a good movie, and it's damn good. Lots of FUCK YEAH AMERICA tones to it as well.
I still want to know who the "enemy" they were fighting are though. Considering the wintery location it must be a reference to Russia, with the Su-57's kinda making an appearance as their opposition.
Regardless it's a great movie, even leftist publications are praising it. Go watch it if you have time.
Tom Cruise himself insisted that everything be as authentic and "real" as possible. They used actual fighter planes with the actors actually experiencing the G-forces that would be impacting the characters in the actual movie.
Everything was as practical effects as possible, and if they couldn't, I heard they used replica models. I imagine a lot of the reasons why it was so fucking good was Tom Cruise himself being autistic about keeping it as genuine to the sequel as possible.
Also it helps that Cruise, while he's much older, didn't feel like he was "out of his place" like old man Harrison Ford was with the Indiana Jones sequel that doesn't exist.
Maverick was good and everyone in the movie knew he was good. You didn't have to question it, it was a "Gary Stu" but who the fuck cares, he's still charismatic, he's still badass, and he's still a damn good pilot.