Top Gun is a pretty frenetic film at times. The camera switches from cockpit to cockpit, goes upside down, leaves the cockpit to show us planes zooming by, and so on. The story itself, however, is pretty straightforward. It's more or less a movie about Maverick (you can count on one hand the number of scenes that don't feature him), and it follows his path from an aircraft carrier, to Top Gun and a series of adventures there, and ultimately back to the aircraft carrier.

Top Gun doesn't play any games with plot or anything like that. There are no confusing flashbacks, no parallel plot lines going on, no glimpses of the future. Things are straight up linear.