The fans have spoken, and Top Gun: Maverick has been voted the best movie of the year, according to a Screen Rant survey on social media.

Top Gun: Maverick has been crowned the best movie of 2022 by fans. Not long after Top Gun: Maverick flew into theaters before Memorial Day weekend, it started to become apparent that the long-awaited sequel was one of the best movies of the year. Before its release, reviews were trending in the right direction, calling Top Gun: Maverick one of the rare sequels that surpasses its predecessor. Audiences loved the film too, and in the coming months, Top Gun: Maverick broke multiple box office records on its way to becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year.
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As the year comes to a close, Screen Rant conducted a casual survey on social media to determine to the best movie of 2022. Now, the fans have spoken and to little surprise, Top Gun: Maverick appears to have the most votes. The Batman, the seventh highest-grossing movie of the year, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, A24’s highest-grossing movie of all time, also had strong support from fans as well, along with Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Related: Top Gun: Maverick Ending Explained (In Detail)

Why Top Gun: Maverick Is So Well-Received

As a legacy sequel to Tony Scott’s 1986 classic Top Gun, which was also the highest-grossing film the year it was released, Top Gun: Maverick successfully taps into the familiarity of the original. For older audiences, this carries significant nostalgic appeal. Top Gun: Maverick is an ode to traditional blockbuster cinema, which many believe has fallen to the wayside in favor of franchise filmmaking.

Even though Top Gun: Maverick is technically a sequel, it functions perfectly as a standalone movie, too, especially for younger audiences who have no connection to the original. It also helps that Tom Cruise, who is now perhaps the biggest movie star alive, returns to reprise his iconic role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and headline the sequel. There is also a strong cast of younger stars supporting him, including Miles Teller’s Rooster, Glen Powell’s Hangman, and Monica Barbaro’s Phoenix.

Putting its recognizable IP and star power aside, Top Gun: Maverick is a significant filmmaking achievement in and of itself. The sequel delivers on all the stunning aerial sequences as promised, accomplished through Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski’s commitment to practical filmmaking in lieu of CGI. Underneath all the exhilarating spectacle, Top Gun: Maverick also features a surprisingly heartfelt story involving Maverick and Rooster, as well as Val Kilmer’s Iceman. It’s not often that a blockbuster film captivates both critics and audiences of all ages in the way that Top Gun: Maverick has, and for that, it deserves to be crowned the best film of the year.

More: Glen Powell’s Hangman Rejection Made Top Gun: Maverick So Much Better