Top Gun: Maverick

Sending in a drone to take out the enemy target would have made for a much less interesting movie.

There's a French movie: Sky Fighters 2005.

Indeed.... Most fans wouldn't be expecting much so their views would be along the lines of the fanboi sh1te here.

Hmmmm... $757m worldwide ($393m USA, $353m World) now..

It'll definitely pass Batman at $770 .. Not sure it'll get the $1b or even pass Dr Strange at $930m

Still early days all the same.

Not sure what hold Jurassic World can do and what pull Lightyear will have.

Top Gun might be able to coast along until Minions and Thor in July.

Having now outgrossed Dr Strange 2 in the US, this will probably be the highest-grossing movie of the year there, although maybe Thor or Avatar 2 can overtake it.

They were not training in a canyon..

The were flying along mountain and hillside but in several scenes wide open ground in the other side was clearly visible.

They were simply flying as though it was a valley or canyon.

I think Maverick even stated I. The first meeting that they had no similar terrain to train in.

It would be more satisfying from the standpoint of fiction but also more inflammatory.

As for co-operation with the military... in the first film in 1986 the camera lingered on a recruitment poster at one point. Many critics saw it as a 110-minute recruiting ad, which it was. It led to a 500-percent increase in naval aviation recruitment.

The military talk openly about using these films for recruitment and have big links to Hollywood.

That the current US armed forces doesn't have enough pilots is well known in military circles so that American Airlines which depends on ex-military pilots is now running buses instead of planes between regional airports. Plus they will now need even more military personnel if Sweden and Finland join NATO (Yes, I'm aware that this film went into production in 2018 long before the conflict in Ukraine started).

'“The movie came out on Friday and [we] haven’t seen a giant uptick yet just because it’s the weekend,” said Navy recruiter Lieutenant Caitlin Bryant. “But we’re looking forward to it.”

Bryant says there was a noticeable bump even after the trailer first came out.'

Only one country in the world flies Su-57s (the enemy fifth gen fighter) and another country is the only one to have operational F-14s so it might be a team up between those two.