A new trailer for the highly anticipated Top Gun sequel starring Tom Cruise has been released, teasing old faces and even greater flight risks as the action-packed film “finally” prepares for release.

After a staggering number of pandemic-related delays, Top Gun: Maverick is on its way to cinemas, with a release just weeks away.

Paramount Pictures released a two-minute clip from the long-awaited sequel on Wednesday, packed with high-speed aerial stunts and numerous nostalgia hits to celebrate.

The teaser shows Cruise’s formerly hot-headed pilot Pete Mitchell, better known as Maverick, back in action as the captain of the Navy’s top aviators, some 30 years after the original film.

It opens up to a bunch of young and arrogant pilots, including the son of the 1986 film’s iconic aviator, Goose, played by Miles Teller, claiming to be “the best [pilots] there is” as they prepare for a new mission.

“Who the hell are they going to get to teach us?” one of the overconfident pilots ask.

Enter, Maverick.

Tasked with training a new generation of esteemed pilots, Maverick finds himself chosen to train a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialised mission.

He was chosen on the recommendation of the original film’s Top Gun veteran, Ice Man, played by Val Kilmer, who also features in the new trailer.

Cruise’s character is seen returning to the skies, dogfighting with his students as they prepare to enter combat “like no other living pilot’s seen”.

The trailer teases the divide between Cruise’s Mitchell and his best friend’s son, with Teller’s Rooster saying he won’t make the same mistake as Goose and believe in Maverick.

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Top Gun: Maverick will be released in theatres on May 27, after almost three years of delays due to COVID-19.

First teased in July 2019, the sequel is expected to home in on Maverick’s “deepest fears”, as he faces an uncertain future and confronts ghosts from his past.

Paramount said in its synopsis that Maverick will be drawn into a confrontation with these fears, “culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it”.