One of the highest grossing films in the history of movies, Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel decades after the first 1986 Top Gun film, exemplifies why old-fashioned story-telling wins. As producer Jerry Bruckheimer said following a special screening at the Whitby Hotel this week, it’s an action movie wrapped around a love story. You cannot beat the aerial sequences, sleek planes on a mission to destroy an enemy arsenal. But the Top Gun team, led by “Maverick,” Tom Cruise at his best, heroic and sensitive, features pilots you can love. Particularly fine are “Rooster,” a son-surrogate played by Miles Teller, “Ice,” a touching Val Kilmer, his character, a rival to Cruise in the original, so debilitated by terminal throat cancer he communicates by texting, and “Hangman,” a fresh, snide Glen Powell. And, who knew Maverick had a woman in the wings? And what a woman! Jennifer Connelly is stunning as Penny who tends her own bar.

Director Joseph Kosinski said it’s her intelligence that made him want her for the movie, and that unbelievably, Jennifer had never worked with Tom Cruise before. Their chemistry is visceral as she flips her auburn mane, bringing out something in Cruise we’ve never seen before, and it’s thrilling. Jennifer Connelly said it was all in the wig.

Kosinski said the hardest scene was one with them on a sailboat in rough winds. Penny turns out to be the better sailor. They had to finally shoot it in San Francisco, after many tries in undramatically calm California waters. You don’t have to see them in bed to get how sexy they are. On his motorcycle, Penny digs her cheek into his back. Once they arrive at her door, she leaves it ajar for him. Words are beyond the point. Which may explain why this movie has made so much money abroad, especially in Asia.

Miles Teller told a story about Tom Cruise who was warned that if he kept the Taiwan patch on his jacket, the movie would not screen in China. To his credit, said Teller, Cruise remained unfazed; perhaps Top Gun’s biggest market was in Taiwan and Japan where many viewers saw it multiple times. As to the father-son/ buddy vibe between Teller and Cruise, Teller said, at a certain point they said, ok, it’s time for our Butch and Sundance.

Now it’s only a question: can such a wildly popular and financially successful film garner Oscars over the usual art house fare? Many insiders think it’s time.