It is easy to dismiss the new Top Gun movie as just another generic reboot in a content-hungry world desperately rummaging old drawers for new inspiration.

But somehow it is not like that at all. In fact, I noticed when I went to see it in a rare, packed cinema, that lots of people were crying. During the movie. As they were leaving.

This struck me as a little passing strange. Surely this is just a good old-fashion action movie with a simple plot and little to over-analyse. There are enemies, heroes, strained relationships, complex challenges and (spoiler alert) the good guys win. Some simple fun. Right?

In fact, no. Curiously, Top Gun Maverick has struck something much deeper than that. I felt it too.

For a start, for people old enough to have lived in the 1980s (the original movie was 1986), this film is a stark reminder of the passage of time. People ask, “Was that really 1986?” “Where did all the years go?”

And this is not a remake. It is Top Gun 36 years on. Time has passed and there is something stark and raw in its passage.

At the centre of this is Tom Cruise. Cruise has done many movies, but his 1986 portrayal of the restless, uber-confident and unpredictable Maverick was perhaps his quintessential role – the all-American pilot pushing the boundaries, taking things to the edge, and giving hope that the impossible is possible.

Cruise circa 2022 is still Maverick and still looks remarkable for someone about to turn 60 in a couple of weeks. Yet there is a deep and profound world weariness to him that feels wretchedly real.

Maybe it is because he still has a captain rank despite a career of achievement that should have pushed him to stellar heights. Maybe there is a deep sadness that he is still alone, working away in his hanger with a backdrop of photographs from his past.

Then there is Goose. When we watched the original Top Gun, the friendship between Goose and Maverick was the camaraderie we all aspired to. They were two very different people, but their bond was unbreakable, and their differences helped create a mutual-support unity greater than the sum of the parts.

Deep down I think we resented the original writers for killing off Goose. There is a poignant scene in the reboot in which Cruise is staring into the familiar bar watching Goose’s son Rooster belting out a stirring rendition of Great Balls of Fire.

During the scene there is a flashback to the original movie, with Goose and Maverick punching out the same song in the same bar with the same youthful exuberance. The sense of loss in Cruise’s eyes runs long and deep. I suspect a whole generation is staring into the bar with him, lamenting lost youth, the people taken too soon and the unrelenting passage of years that we can neither control nor really comprehend.

And just to wrench the heart with a little more force, we find that Maverick and Iceman (Val Kilmer) have put their rivalry behind and become firm, long-term friends. I won’t give away the plot, but when you cross reference Kilmer’s real-life health challenges with the movie, the sadness is palpable.

Thankfully, the reboot also throws us a few bones. It does not resort to distracting violence or feeling the need to kill off the new characters to shock and mortify us.

Maverick rekindles a relationship with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly) who was mentioned but not seen in the original. There was something very refreshing about Maverick having a love interest aged over 50 with the same sense of battle-hardened experience that bypasses superfluous rituals.

The fact that Maverick had to sneak out of her room and climb down a wall to avoid being seen by her daughter was a well-captured reference to how life and relationships have changed. As was the kid catching him and saying: “Just don’t break her heart this time”.

On some levels, Top Gun Maverick gives us hope that while there is life, there is promise and the opportunity for renewal and the recapturing of lost chances.

On other levels there is the reminder that time is a lot like air travel. In reality the plane is moving at a frantic pace. Yet out the window the world moves almost in slow motion, giving us a false sense of time and the distance from a past place to a future destination.

Perhaps the Top Gun tears are just based on a realisation that all things pass and do so with a disconcerting pace that seems to accelerate as we age.

American essayist Katherine Anne Porter wrote that “the past is never where you think you left it”. We all thought that we left Maverick in the 1980s, carefully boxed up with our youth and a time that seemed less complicated.

Instead, we find that Maverick stayed around and aged with us. This is both comforting and terrifying.

Shane Rodgers is a business executive, writer, strategist and marketer with a deep interest in what makes people tick and the secret languages of the workplace.