Paramount Pictures has released brand new character posters for the upcoming action film Top Gun: Maverick. A direct sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, the film features Tom Cruise as Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell as he trains a new batch of the Navy’s TOPGUN program recruits.

The posters also highlight the pilots’ unique call signs, which are basically military nicknames assigned to them based on their appearance, personality, or exploits, and stay with them forever. Some sound cool, others not so much. While everyone is familiar with Tom Cruise’s Maverick and Val Kilmer’s Iceman, here are the call signs of the new cast: Rooster (Miles Teller), Phoenix (Monica Barbaro), Coyote (Greg Tarzan Davis), Hangman (Glen Powell), Fanboy (Danny Ramirez), Payback (Jay Ellis), Bob (Lewis Pullman), and Cyclone (Jon Hamm).

You can check out the posters (released via Twitter) below:

While Tom Cruise is a veteran action star who has gained notoriety for performing his own stunts, no matter how death-defying, he also made sure to push his young co-stars to their limit. The intense training coupled with the extensive aerial combat scenes are just a few reasons why Top Gun: Maverick has taken so long to arrive. Director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Only the Brave) and the rest of the crew went to extreme lengths to capture the intensity of flying a fighter plane, even shooting around 800 hours of footage. Fortunately, if the early reactions to Top Gun: Maverick are any indication, all of that hard work will pay off massively.

Here’s a video of the Top Gun: Maverick cast explaining the significance of call signs.

Related: Lady Gaga Unveils Music Video for New Single from Top Gun: Maverick Soundtrack

Critics Are Calling Top Gun: Maverick The Best Tom Cruise Film In Years

Cruise Top Gun Maverick 2022 Skydance
Paramount Pictures

Top Gun: Maverick is among the films with the longest gaps between sequels, and that usually doesn't bode well for most movies, but then again, most movies don’t have Tom Cruise flying fighter jets. Top Gun: Maverick is receiving rave reviews from critics who are praising literally everything about the film, from the casting, action sequences, music, sound design, and cinematography to the story’s emotional core. It has certainly been a while since a mega-budget action film not made by Marvel or DC has received this much acclaim. Let’s hope Cruise repeats the feat in his final two Mission Impossible films as well.

Joseph Kosinski directs Top Gun: Maverick from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie. The film also stars Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, and Charles Parnell alongside Tom Cruise.

Top Gun: Maverick flies into theaters worldwide on May 27, 2022. The official plot synopsis for Top Gun: Maverick reads:

"After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of TOP GUN graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: "Rooster," the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka "Goose.

Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it"