Some news lands on my desk and I just smile. People is reporting that the Top Gun sequel will star Tom Cruise and, in the least surprising development in movie history, it's going to be packed with action scenes. Actual action scenes. The kind where the guy famously insists on doing it himself.

If you've followed Cruise's career at all, you know the pattern by now. He hung off the side of the Burj Khalifa. He broke his ankle jumping between rooftops for Mission: Impossible. The man treats a green screen like a personal insult. So when a Top Gun sequel comes together with his name on it, you can pretty much guarantee the flight sequences aren't going to be a guy in a cockpit set bouncing on a gimbal while a fan blows his hair around.

That's what made the prospect of this sequel interesting in the first place, really. Top Gun is 80s blockbuster filmmaking at its most iconic, all volleyball and sunglasses and a smoky rendition of 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin',' but the flying was the thing. Aerial photography of fighter jets in 1986 felt like a magic trick. Doing it again in the modern era, with the camera technology we have now and a lead actor who refuses to let a stuntman have any fun, could be genuinely jaw-dropping in a way most modern action movies just aren't.

I'll cop to some bias here. I'm the guy who defends three-hour movies at dinner parties while Jess Wingo rolls her eyes at me, so a big-screen spectacle built around real planes doing real things at real speeds is basically my entire wheelhouse. Computer effects are great. I love a good CGI battle. But there's a physicality to practical action your eyeballs can feel, and Cruise has spent forty years being the last true believer in that religion.

The question hanging over any legacy sequel is the usual one: why now, and is there an actual story here or just nostalgia with a fresh coat of paint? We've all watched studios drag beloved properties back out and fumble the landing. But Top Gun always had a simple engine under the hood, ego and mortality and mach speed, and that story doesn't expire. You just need a reason for these characters to get back in the air that doesn't feel like a contractual obligation.

Details are still fairly thin beyond the confirmation and the promise of heavy action. Which, fine. I'd rather know little now and be surprised in the theater than have the whole movie spoiled by a marketing campaign that shows me the third act in a trailer. Studios, if you're listening, less is more.

So file this one under "cautiously excited, trending heavily toward just excited." A Tom Cruise action movie built on flying is about as reliable a recipe as it gets. Big star, real stunts, a story people already love. I said it before and I'll say it again, the old-fashioned formula keeps winning.

So, day-one IMAX for you, or are you waiting for reviews? Because I already know which camp I'm in.