Four years after its release, Top Gun: Maverick continues to prove why it became an unexpected box-office juggernaut—now streaming free on Pluto.
On a quiet month of scrolling, the decision feels almost too perfect: Top Gun: Maverick is streaming for free on Pluto. You can jump back into the cockpit without paying a thing—and still get that same rush that turned skeptics into believers.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski. the film follows Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) as he returns to Top Gun 35 years later to train a group of elite young pilots for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. The mission is the kind where the chances of success are slim. and where Maverick doing as he’s told is even slimmer.
The movie’s momentum comes with a full roster of familiar and rising names. Miles Teller (Whiplash) plays Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw. while Glen Powell (Anyone But You) is Jake “Hangman” Seresin and Lewis Pullman (Lessons in Chemistry) appears as Robert “Bob” Floyd. Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind). Jon Hamm (Mad Men). and Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown) round out the ensemble. joined by the late Val Kilmer in what is described as his final performance. returning as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.
But the reason so many people still talk about Top Gun: Maverick isn’t just that it delivers. It’s that it did it at a scale Hollywood didn’t see coming.
The film opened to $126.7 million domestically and went on to gross $721.9 million in North America and $1.502 billion worldwide against a $177 million budget. It became Cruise’s biggest hit in his entire, storied career. It also landed as the highest grossing film of 2021. with the added cultural punch of being framed as “saving cinema” despite very low expectations.
That audience reaction matched the awards love. Rotten Tomatoes lists Top Gun: Maverick at 96% with critics and 99% with audiences. The film earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and won Best Sound—especially notable for anyone who’s experienced it in IMAX.
The sequence makes the outcome hard to dismiss: low expectations. then a worldwide total of $1.502 billion on a $177 million budget. backed by 96% critic approval and 99% audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes. plus six Oscar nominations and a Best Picture nominee that still walked away with Best Sound.
If you want the numbers, they’re there. If you want the feeling, it’s waiting on Pluto—May 27, 2022 release date in mind, at 131 minutes runtime, with Joseph Kosinski credited as director. The writers listed are Christopher McQuarrie, Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Peter Craig, and Justin Marks.
Four years later, the film still holds up for one simple reason: it didn’t just entertain. It converted doubt into numbers, and then turned those numbers into a standard everyone keeps returning to.
Top Gun: Maverick Pluto Tom Cruise Glen Powell Miles Teller Joseph Kosinski Val Kilmer box office Oscars Best Sound streaming free
Wait so it’s free on Pluto now? That’s pretty cool I guess.
I don’t even care about the Oscars, but $1.5B is insane. Also they say it’s still “saving cinema” like that’s a real thing lol. My brother told me Val Kilmer was in it too, so I’m pretty sure this is all just publicity.
I’m confused though—if it’s free on Pluto then why is everyone still acting like it was some huge box office miracle. Like, doesn’t streaming kill the numbers? Also Rotten Tomatoes 99% audience seems fake, people just rate stuff high if Tom Cruise is in it. And 131 minutes… that’s not even that long, unless the whole movie is just airplanes screaming the whole time.
Top Gun: Maverick will always be the movie with the best sound or whatever, because I remember seeing the ads and thinking it was gonna flop. Then it didn’t, so now everybody pretends they knew. The article mentions it “trained pilots for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines” but I swear I heard it was like, not even that realistic? And the $177 million budget sounds like nothing compared to $1.502 billion, so yeah Hollywood math is weird. If Pluto has it free I’ll watch again and judge myself I guess.