Movies Like
Movies Like Top Gun: Maverick: Ten That Earn the Set Piece
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 6 min read
The reason Top Gun: Maverick hit the way it did isn't the flying. It's that by the time the flying starts you already know what it costs each person in the cockpit. Rooster resents Maverick for a specific reason. Maverick is scared of a specific thing. The set piece lands because the character work was done first.
That's the filter for this list: films where the spectacle is load-bearing because someone spent the first hour making you care. Ten of them, each with what it shares with Maverick, where it differs, who it's for, and a fact you can check. No filler, no twenty entries of two-line praise.
Start with the one it's a sequel to
Top Gun is worth a rewatch before or after, and it plays very differently now. It's leaner, cockier and much less interested in consequence, which is exactly what makes Maverick's grief work thirty-six years later.
1986, directed by Tony Scott, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer for Paramount, screenplay by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr.
Who it's for: everyone, honestly. The difference is that the original is a hangout movie with jets and the sequel is a film about mortality.
Practical stunts, real stakes
Mission: Impossible - Fallout is the closest structural match on this list. Tom Cruise again, real helicopter flying again, and a plot built so that every stunt is a consequence of a decision a character already made.
2018, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the sixth Mission: Impossible film and a direct sequel to Rogue Nation (2015).
Who it's for: anyone who wants Maverick's physical-risk feel with a spy plot. The difference is that Fallout is a chase film with almost no downtime, so the character work arrives on the move.
Mad Max: Fury Road does the opposite thing and gets to the same place. Almost no dialogue, almost no backstory, and yet Furiosa's motive is completely legible within ten minutes, because it's shown in what she does. Almost all of it was staged with real vehicles and stunt performers.
2015 Australian post-apocalyptic action film, co-written, co-produced and directed by George Miller with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris, the fourth film in the Mad Max franchise.
Who it's for: viewers who want proof that character work doesn't require speeches.
Black Hawk Down is the hard version of this idea: an enormous ensemble, a single mission, and a two-hour stretch where the plan falls apart in real time. Ridley Scott gives you just enough of each soldier to make the chaos legible.
2001 epic war film, directed and produced by Ridley Scott, co-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, screenplay by Ken Nolan, based on Mark Bowden's 1999 book.
Who it's for: people who want the mission-planning half of Maverick extended into a whole film. It is much bleaker and there is no triumph at the end.
Men and machines
Ford v Ferrari is the purest sibling to Maverick in tone. Two stubborn professionals, an institution that doesn't want them, and a machine that will kill them if they get it wrong. Matt Damon and Christian Bale play the friendship without a single soft scene.
2019 biographical sports drama, directed by James Mangold, written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller, starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale.
Who it's for: anyone who liked the workshop scenes as much as the flying. Slower, more character-driven, no combat.
Rush covers the 1976 Formula One season and the James Hunt and Niki Lauda rivalry, and Ron Howard resists the urge to pick a hero. Lauda's crash and return is the closest any film comes to the "can he still do this" question Maverick is built on.
2013 biographical sports film, directed by Ron Howard, written by Peter Morgan, starring Chris Hemsworth as Hunt and Daniel Brühl as Lauda.
Who it's for: viewers who want the rivalry engine. It's more cynical about glory than Maverick is.
The Right Stuff is the granddaddy of every test-pilot movie including this one, following the Navy, Marine and Air Force pilots who fed into the Mercury program. It runs long and it earns it.
1983 epic historical drama, written and directed by Philip Kaufman, based on Tom Wolfe's 1979 book.
Who it's for: anyone curious what Maverick's grandfather generation looked like. Expect a three-hour commitment and an ensemble rather than a lead.
Tension over explosions
1917 is constructed to feel like one continuous shot, which sounds like a gimmick until you notice what it does: you cannot cut away from these two men, so you're stuck with them, and the dread compounds. Two soldiers, one message, one day.
2019 British war film, directed and produced by Sam Mendes, co-written with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, partly inspired by stories from Mendes' grandfather Alfred.
Who it's for: people who want the held-breath quality of Maverick's canyon run stretched across a feature. Far fewer set pieces, far more sustained tension.
Sicario is the one to pick when you want competence porn with the moral floor removed. Emily Blunt's FBI agent is attached to an operation that will not explain itself to her, and the border crossing sequence is a masterclass in making stillness unbearable.
2015 action crime thriller, directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Taylor Sheridan in his screenwriting debut, starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin.
Who it's for: viewers who want tactical realism without the flag-waving. Much darker than Maverick.
Heat is three hours long and about a hundred minutes of it is people talking about work. Then the downtown shootout arrives and it hits like a truck precisely because Michael Mann spent all that time on the crew and the cop.
1995 epic crime film, written and directed by Michael Mann, with an ensemble led by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
Who it's for: anyone who accepts a slow build in exchange for the best action sequence of the 1990s.
Where these stream
Rights on catalog action titles rotate constantly, and several of these swing between subscription tiers and rental within a single quarter. Where each film streams changes, so the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
Start here
If you want the closest match in feel, watch Ford v Ferrari. If you want the closest match in craft, Mission: Impossible - Fallout. If you want to be ruined for two hours, 1917 or Black Hawk Down. If you want the film that explains why Maverick works at all, go back to the 1986 original.
Once you've cleared this shelf, the hard part is finding the next one that meets the same standard rather than just sharing a poster. Give BingeNext's movie mode two or three of these, and it returns picks with the reason each one fits and where it's streaming, in about a minute.
Topics covered: action, blockbuster, practical-effects, thrilling, emotional
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.