I finally watched this and thought it was decent. I thought there was a little too much fan service with Maverick saying "Talk to me Goose..." and then his son for no reason saying "Talk to me Dad..." Then having to have the volleyball Football scene. We all saw Top Gun let's move on.
The beach scene, unlike in the original Top Gun, moves the story forward. It shows an experience that Maverick—and by extension, the audience—has been through as a character and reframes it as an unorthodox way of building a team. It keeps Maverick still in direct confrontation with his navy supervisors but brings him closer to his pupils, with the added layer of the first film as backstory.
Same for the "talk to me" lines, which are integral to the story arc they're trying to build across both films.
Truly, what this movie achieved is nothing short of extraordinary and I for one am super happy that it has resonated with so many people. It does what so many of these modern nostalgia-driven blockbusters fail to do time and again: tell a good story. Not only that, it manages to tell a good story by
building on the original instead of resorting to vapid references that come out of nowhere and serve zero purpose. It's not trying to be a new film, it embraces the fact that it's a legacy sequel, yet it does this
right. It is better than the original Top Gun in every sense. It's better shot, better written, better acted, and better structured. Where the original ended up being a mostly aesthetics-based propaganda fest with barely any story to tell, this becomes a quite spectacular action flick with emotional punch and an engaging plotline. In a way, it may have been so successful precisely cause the original wasn't so good to begin with. I guess it's easier to build on Top Gun than Jurassic Park or Star Wars. But still, at least now there's a precedent for how these things should be moving forward. Not that many film executives will take notice. They didn't with Mad Max: Fury Road either.