Robin's Great Coloring Pages: Review of Top Gun: Maverick and F-14, F-18, F/A-18, F-35, & F-22 coloring pages

Welcome to my free coloring pages blog.

Today I am posting a new drawing of the F-14 Tomcat jet fighter.

I am also giving a review of "Top Gun Maverick."

F-14 Tomcat Fighter

(new drawing)

I drew this F-14 Tomcat last night after we got home from watching the new movie: Top Gun: Maverick. We went to that movie last night. It is a very good movie! You may think that this is odd, but my favorite part was the scene with Iceman... played by Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer has a tracheotomy tube and very little voice. I am in the same situation. So, in spite of Val Kilmer suffering from a major disability, they found a way to include him in portraying an important character in this movie. Quite honestly, I was touched. I think this movie appeals to the younger crowd and the older crowd. We older people grew up with Top Gun. Seeing the characters (actors) aging with dignity was fulfilling.

The movie starts out with Maverick as a captain in the US Navy. He gets transferred from test pilot to teacher in the Top Gun school. I don't want to give away any spoilers but I will say... This is really well done. As someone who LOVED the first movie way back in 1986, I can say that they were true to the spirit of that first movie. But actually, I felt like this new movie was even better.

The producers (including Tom Cruise) had all the "pilots" training in the passenger seats of F-18 Super-Hornets. This meant that those actors also had to learn how to control the camera in the instrument panel of the cockpit. So the G force you see them under... is REAL, not fake or CG. The Navy cooperated with the producers in providing all the jets and the flying footage. That footage was incredible! I have never seen anything like it. I HIGHLY recommend this new Top Gun movie.

The reason they did not use the F-35 C or the Navy version of the F-35 was that that aircraft has too many top-secret systems. So they used the F/A-18 Super-Hornet instead. The F-14 was used as the primary jet fighter in the first Top Gun movie.

About the F-14. The navy replaced it with the F-18 Hornet. However, in some ways, the F-14 was a superior aircraft according to some experts. However, the FA-18 Super-Hornet is a great improvement on the original F-18. The country of Iran still flies F-14s and during the Iran/Iraq War the F-14s shot down something like 160 Iraqi aircraft. The F-14 was expensive to maintain because of the swept-wing system. But it was faster than the F-18. On the other hand, the F-14 had a much shorter combat range.

Below are the other fighter jets mentioned in this review. They are the F-18, the F/A-18, and the F-35. To get to the pictures in printable form just click on the button labeled Vehicles and Military Vehicles. Then scroll down.