Tom Cruise is your flight instructor in new trailer for long-awaited 'Top Gun: Maverick'

We were originally supposed to see Top Gun: Maverick, the follow-up to the 1980s fighter pilot classic, almost three years ago, and that release date only arrived after years of discussions and teasers that the film was coming eventually. Then came production delays, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the film was rescheduled several times to its eventual Memorial Day Weekend 2022 release date. 

The good news is that we're finally closing in on seeing Maverick, which returns Tom Cruise to one of the roles that made him a superstar. With just two months to go until it's finally in theaters, Paramount Pictures has released a new trailer for the film, one that leans more heavily on plot details than any footage that's come before. 

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Cruise) has spent years as a Navy test pilot, doing whatever he can to stay in the sky, including refusing promotions that would put him behind a desk instead of in a cockpit. On the recommendation of Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer), Maverick is pulled out of test pilot work and ordered to return to Top Gun to train a new generation of elite pilots for a combat mission so daunting, no living pilot has any experience with it. Maverick's lack of teaching experience makes that a daunting enough task, but there's an extra layer of tension that comes with this particular mission. One of his students is Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Nick "Goose" Bradshaw, Maverick's best friend and former navigator who died during a flight years ago. 

As you'll see in the new trailer below, Goose's death hangs over a certain section of the plot, but that's far from the only thing Maverick has to worry about as he tries to pass on some of his hard-earned wisdom to the next generation of the best of the best.

Check out the new trailer below:

Development on a Top Gun sequel dates back to at least 2010, back when original Top Gun director Tony Scott was considering tackling the project alongside producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Scott passed away in 2012, but the project lived on, with Cruise and Bruckheimer occasionally dropping teasers of what might lie ahead between other projects. In 2019, Cruise made a surprise appearance at San Diego Comic-Con to debut the first footage from Maverick, wowing the crowd with the very real flight footage the cast and crew managed to capture doing shooting.

Everything was set for June 2020 release, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hobbled film releasing, and Maverick was pushed back to late 2020, then several spots in 2021, until Memorial Day Weekend 2022 became the landing spot for the long-awaited would-be blockbuster. Now, we have just a few weeks of waiting left.

Top Gun: Maverick arrives May 27.