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There’s also something comforting for audiences in seeing familiar faces on the screen, like Tom Cruise in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” which returned to the flyboy’s story after a 36-year hiatus, or Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life,” which came 17 years after the franchise’s last installment.

Yes, we loved watching Cruise reprise his flyboy thing, but voters weren’t impressed.

So with all that, why the optimism now for Tom Cruise’s flyboy movie?

Based on Adam Makos’s 2014 nonfiction book by the same name, “Devotion” tells the true story of flyboy friendship and heroics involving two U.S.

Usually when actors deign to return to a classic role, they arrive with star wattage weathered but undimmed by time; the chiseled Cruise of “Top Gun: Maverick” makes the flyboy of the first film look like he’s still working off his baby fat.