I felt that it went against several of the popular things in movies these days. It was comparatively low on CGI. It had a prominent male lead character without a female character supporting in the main plotline. Someone else mentioned on this discussion about Chinese funding. They took a decision than angered the investors there and, I believe, caused them to pull out
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/02/media/top-gun-maverick-ta...Maybe I'm overthinking it. I saw the first one as a kid and spent a lot of time doing dogfights with my toy planes since. The nostalgia hit me quite hard and it genuinely felt like a nice sequel which retained the macho 80s spirit of the original. I've never felt that with other modern movies.