10 Movie Scenes That Brilliantly Subverted Expectations

With Top Gun: Maverick being a legacy sequel, there was every reasonable expectation that it'd do the thing almost every single legacy sequel does, good or bad - introduce the progeny of the now-aged protagonist.

And so, when the Top Gun sequel revealed that Maverick's (Tom Cruise) on-again-off-again love interest Penny (Jennifer Connelly) had a teenage daughter, Amelia (Lyliana Wray), all signs pointed to her being Mav's child.

It would've been the most obvious route the sequel could've gone to wring some emotional resonance out of Maverick's characterisation, to have him father a child he presumably didn't even know he had.

But alas, what a relief it was to see the movie avoid all that saccharine nonsense altogether. 

Instead, Amelia's actual father is said to live in Hawaii with a new wife, and in a rarest of feats, Maverick is an aged action hero who doesn't have any children to speak of.

That the film focuses instead on Mav's relationship with the younger recruits he's training is hugely refreshing, rather than emotionally manipulating the audience with "family is everything!" Hallmark slop.