I just watched this film, and I didn't really like it. I am a big fan of the original Top Gun movie and have seen it literally dozens of times. Most of those times were 'comfort watching' as they say that children do when they watch a small set of movies over and over again. For my brother and I, Top Gun was one of those movies.
The Top Gun: Maverick movie is filled with what they call 'fan service', where there is in almost every scene a piece of memorabilia from the first movie, there are flashbacks with footage from the original film, and so often a scene is constructed to touch on something that happened before. A lot of this is forced and always made me cringe. I am familiar with what happened in the first movie, which is why I was watching the sequel. I do not need to be constantly reminded. The plot is rather tedious and the aerial action far more far-fetched than anything that happened in Top Gun, thanks to CGI. Maverick's skills and achievements in the first movie were relatively modest compared to this one, where he is essentially playing a fighter pilot version of the Ethan Hunt character from his Mission Impossible film series.