Here are the impressions of an old Navy fighter guy.
Let’s get the big one out of the way: tactically, it was ridiculous. I can think of a dozen better ways to accomplish that mission, and I’ve been out of the service for nearly 30 years. From a purely military standpoint… well - I had to shut off that part of my brain
But… there were some things I’m glad to say they got right.
It was by far the best depiction of how physical an air-to-air fight is for the participants. You’re straining just to maintain consciousness, not to mention swiveling your now-120 lb head around to see what’s going on. They actually depicted GLOC - G-Induced Loss Of Consciousness - very accurately, with tunnel vision setting in. Time to ease that turn for a second and get some blood back up to your noodle. They filmed many of those scenes in the backseats of real fighters, and showed how face-stretching it can actually be. The carrier deck scenes were much more accurate than the original, too.
That said, I have a few nits to pick. I’ll bet the Technical Consultants had a fit about these, too.
The Hard Deck - this isn’t some sort of namby-pamby You’ll-Get-In-Trouble-If-You-Break-This overly cautious safety rule. If you go below the hard deck, you’re dead. Out of the fight, because you hit the ground. Paying attention to your altitude, and the elevation of the ground below you, is a critical part of air combat. As we say: The ground has a Probability of Kill of 1.0. It’s undefeated. If you start a vertical maneuver that takes 3000 feet to recover from at 2999, you’re a skid mark. Flying an enemy into the ground is a perfectly viable strategy, so you practice with a little cushion.
Throwing away the book - sorry, but you can’t “Maverick” a plane into doing any better than it’s gonna do, and that’s already been figured out for you. This doesn’t mean your hands are tied, but it does mean that flying your numbers (best turn speed, best rate-of-climb) are the best you’re ever gonna do, no matter what your reputation is. Also, any maneuver that dumps all your energy instantaneously (Maverick’s famous pitch-up/hit the brakes) leaves you a sitting duck. Pull that on a competent pilot in any fighter and he’s going to go straight up, while you watch helplessly. Then he’s going to roll over the top, and pop you.
Their “Fifth Generation” fighters are so much better than our older, fourth-generation planes. Well… depends. It turns out that designing, and mass-producing, fifth-generation fighters are two separate skill sets, and right now the US is the only country with both. Russia and China have both demonstrated fifth-gen-ish fighters, but have only produced a couple dozen at best, and are nowhere near exporting them. Besides, in a close-in fight the pilot with the best situational awareness has the advantage, and that’s something Western planes are much better about supplying. Realistically, if the Navy had to use fighters for this mission, they’d have used the F-35s. But you can’t film the actors in a real F-35, because none of them have back seats.
Stealing a plane, especially if you destroy it, doesn’t get you a chewing-out and another assignment - It gets you jail. Nobody wants to risk their lives around a loose cannon, no matter how good they are at certain things. There’s even a term for this: NAFOD. No Apparent Fear Of Death. These are the ones who’ll get you killed with their recklessness. Real courage isn’t fearlessness; it’s going ahead even when you’re properly afraid.
Overall, I did enjoy the movie, and even got a tear in my eye when they brought in an old F-14, which is still the coolest-looking fighter jet ever. And I was damn proud to have flown them.