10 Movie Sequels That Avoided Obvious Mistakes
3. Bringing Back Every Original Cast Member - Top Gun: Maverick
Though Top Gun: Maverick's marketing certainly suggested it'd be one hell of a visual feast, it was harder to get a bead on the story, and how aggressively it'd function as a "legacy sequel."
Generally speaking, legacy sequels feel obliged to bring back as many prior characters as possible, as can often cause them to feel overcrowded or desperately trying to activate the audience's nostalgia receptors.
But Maverick actually split the difference quite brilliantly, because while it absolutely adhered to many legacy sequel tropes - namely, having the aging Maverick (Tom Cruise) teach a new class of young recruits - it clearly didn't feel compelled to bring every character back just because.
While we do get a bittersweet reunion between Maverick and Iceman (Val Kilmer), numerous key characters from the original movie are absent - Mav's original love interest Charlie (Kelly McGillis), Top Gun instructors Viper (Tom Skerritt) and Jester (Michael Ironside), all of the original surviving pilots aside from Iceman, and Goose's (Anthony Edwards) wife Carole (Meg Ryan).
Rather than bloating the runtime out with perfunctory everyone-is-here cameos, Maverick achieves a considerably more streamlined synthesis of fan service and contemporary blockbuster thrills. As a result, it's one of the greatest legacy sequels of all time.