Tom Cruise is a militant. Launching his richly satisfying blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick in Cannes last week, the star was adamant about the scale at which he works. The release of a behemoth like this on a streamer was, he insisted, simply not going to happen. “Ever,” he added. That Cruise makes movies for the cinema only is evident from a film built for screens the size of Luxembourg. But the stuff between the aerial high jinks is supersized too, a throwback to a time where Hollywood actors could sell giant emotional pay-offs with single syllables and a steely gaze into the middle distance. That gift now feels like a dying artisanal skill. After Cruise, who?

Of course, what the movie calls back to in particular is the first Top Gun, the 1986 megahit that secured Cruise’s solo ascent from what was then called the Brat Pack of junior male leads. Thirty-six years on, the independent spirit of his adrenalised fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell still vexes the Navy. Enough to cut ties, in fact — until a summons to coach a batch of youngbloods ahead of a critical mission. This being the 21st century, an Apprentice-style contest will sift through the hopefuls with their own tell-tale call signs: Hangman, Rooster, Payback. But the work on nostalgic pressure points is expert, the original story referenced with something like — surely not! — subtlety. The most direct link comes with Rooster, Miles Teller smartly cast as the son of Top Gun’s tragic Goose, nursing unfinished business.

If this sounds like hokum, it is. But the storytelling too reminds you of the best version of old Hollywood, broad strokes rendered with watchmaker care. The script is the work of writers including longtime Cruise whisperer Christopher McQuarrie. The result is precision-engineered. Melancholy here, wisecrack there, and cue whoop-worthy applause line.

In the movie’s midsection, air show thrills and ground-level drama share the screen. Out of the cockpit, the youthful hotshots are an anachronistic bunch, huddled around a jukebox. Unlike last time, a woman (Phoenix, played by Monica Barbaro) now makes it into the air. Elsewhere, gender equality wobbles. Jennifer Connelly is cast as an old flame. At 51, the actress is 13 years younger than the uninvited (indeed unmentioned) love interest of the first film, Kelly McGillis.

Redundancy is often on the movie’s mind, Maverick’s age a frequent punchline even if Cruise looks so fresh-faced that the jokes feel like humblebrags. But the star and McQuarrie often mean another relic anyway: the big-screen experience. “Your kind is headed for extinction,” Maverick is told, and the voice might be that of a cackling Netflix exec, at least before the streamer’s downturn. “Maybe,” comes the reply. “But not today.”

The first Top Gun didn’t have to be a recruitment ad for the very act of cinema-going. It did, however, nudge young cold-war Americans into joining the Navy. The new film too comes out with US-Russian relations stressed. Again, the film-makers borrow a trick from the original, the enemy unnamed (and here, anonymised). But their brief feels harder — to make an escapist military fantasy in a time when luring kids into uniform would be frowned on and radar images of US air strikes still call to mind Baghdad and Kabul.

Navigating recent history may be McQuarrie’s deftest touch. The film is at once upfront (yes, Maverick was in Iraq) and artful. The mission ahead is potentially bloodless, the patriotism vanilla. Among the Navy brass is the returning Val Kilmer, fighter pilot Iceman now an admiral. The actor has lately survived cancer; his cameo lands with poignancy.

Emotional stakes loaded, the supersonic ballet takes over the third act, a humdinger spectacle of jets in peril. In a film this star-powered, the director can be taken for a hireling. That would be unfair to Joseph Kosinski, for whom pulling off the action without green screen is some feat. But Cruise is the linchpin, of course, his zeal apparent in eyes lit up above his oxygen mask, lost in the g-force of his own infectious sincerity. He is 60 this year, and there is a limit to how long one actor can keep this kind of ultra-mainstream, crowd-pleasing cinema in the air. Extinction may still come. But not today.

★★★★☆

In cinemas from May 27