It was 36 years in the making, but the follow-up to 1986’s Top Gun finally hit the big screen in 2022.

Legacy sequels can be a huge risk decades later, but Tom Cruise’s Top Gun Maverick turned out to be a monumental hit with both the critics and the box office.

Tony Scott’s original action film is an Eighties classic but its follow-up is one of those rare occasions when the second outing is even better.

The Oscar-winning blockbuster sequel features scenes shot inside actual fighter jets flown by the star, has 96 per cent positive on Rotten Tomatoes and made $1.496 billion globally.

The 62-year-old reprises his role as US Navy Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, training a group of younger Top Gun graduates for a dangerous mission.