This was a pleasant surprise.

Movies in general have not been great, and especially sequels or reboots of 80s products, not least through the dissonance between the values and priorities of then and now. And of course, there is the problem of a what to do with a sequel, especially at such long remove. Adhere too closely to the original and you run the risk of being boring and repetitive, especially if you undermine the characters' arcs or undo the plot of the original in order to try repeating the formula. Depart too far, and you risk losing what made the original work.

I really feel that TG:M hits the sweet spot. There are plenty of homages to the prior film, but they are acknowledged as such, and placed so that they would make sense. A group of pilots in a bar gathered around a piano singing "Great Balls of Fire" is a blatant call-back, but as the guy playing the piano was a small child in that situation in the first one, you can understand why he might be subconsciously driven to do it. And it works to elicit a reaction from the protagonist. A lot of the callbacks and nostalgia make sense, because of the circumstances of the titular protagonist and his emotional investment, which in turn ties back to the audience nostalgia they are trying to invoke. Unlike the Disney Star Wars practice of imbuing minor props from Lucas' movies with great significance, it's done much more organically here.

So anyway, Pete Mitchell, former NFL tight end for the Jaguars and Giants call sign "Maverick" is a test pilot for a high speed jet development program, where he still pushes limits and defies orders, but with a greater sense of responsibility, rather than arrogant self-assurance of his own abilities. He is reassigned to the training program colloquially known as "Top Gun" to prepare a group of All-Star graduates of the program for a high stakes strike mission. Maverick is that rarity in the modern Navy, a pilot with experience in air-to-air combat, and is under the personal protection of the commander of the Pacific Fleet, an old comrade-in-arms, so he is allowed to remain in the Navy despite his issues with authorities and orders, his age, and his failure to rise in rank, which I understand generally means you get pushed out, if you can't or won't move up. Because of this, the commander officer for the mission, "Cyclone" played by Jon Hamm, is highly skeptical of Maverick's utility as a trainer or for the mission.

Making the issue personal for Maverick is how returning to the Top Gun base brings him into contact with an old flame, a single mom bartender played by Jennifer Connelly, and that one of the pilots for the mission is "Rooster", the son of "Goose", his late friend and crew member, who got killed in the first one. Initially, and from the trailers, it seems that Rooster still blames Maverick for his father's death, but as developed in the film, the reasons are more complicated and make more sense, given the reality that Maverick was far from guilty. Rooster's resentments not withstanding, Maverick is still deeply invested in his well-being, which is the source of their conflict.

Top Gun:Maverick smooths over a lot of the flaws in the story of the first one. Under the sort of metatextual scrutiny most stories are given in this day and age, his antics and arrogance from the original doesn't hold up, but in this film, is translated to something more functional and plausible, and Maverick is allowed to be more mature. His relationship with the younger pilots is well-done. We don't have any "your old hero is a dinosaur and it's time for him to take a backseat to the new generation" garbage. While Maverick is told as much, more than once, it is by people of similar or greater age, as the voice of an institution. Maverick's fight is not to prove he's still got it, in fact his ability or fitness are never in question (because he flies cutting edge planes to the limits of their performance, so duh), but to teach his students to perform in unusual circumstances for which his experience with older equipment, in situations previously believed irrelevant, is directly applicable.

The plot does a good job of setting things up, without being transparent, or pulling developments out of nowhere, to "subvert expectations". You have plenty of expectations generated by the film, and their satiation is satisfying and well-executed. Viewers mileage might vary regarding the ending and whether or not it's excessive and if the film should not have largely ended at an earlier point, but I don't think it's unearned.

Overall, as a sequel, this draws from the source material, without tainting it in hindsight or being too dependent on it, and as a result, is a good film in its own right as well as a satisfying return to the lead character and setting.

EDIT: Also, a thing everyone is talking about is that they used real plane footage, rather than CGI. IDK much about CGI, I still have no idea what everyone is whining about with Henry Cavil's moustache in Justice League, and I think we get a lot of unprepossessing cockpit shots and weird shots from what is obviously a camera mounted on a jet plane, but if you notice and hate CGI, there's that.