Joseph Kosinski doesn't consider Top Gun: Maverick to be an action film

Joseph Kosinski doesn't think that 'Top Gun: Maverick' is an action film.

The 48-year-old director helmed the hugely successful sequel to the 1986 action movie but he explained that the story was an "emotional" tale with Tom Cruise's Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell at heart.

Joseph told Vulture: "I still stand by the original intent of film, which was to tell an emotional, relatable story about a guy going through a rite of passage at a later point in his life. The first film, I always said, was a drama wrapped in an action film.

"Did I ever think of it as an action film when I was making it? I didn't. The drama was always at the forefront. The execution of the flying sequences was in support of that."

Joseph stressed that "emotion" was at the heart of every scene and meant that audiences were frequently returning to see the film again and again.

He said: "Every action sequence, we're always telling a story, pushing the narrative forward, learning something about the character's state of mind. We tried to do that not only in every sequence but every shot of every sequence.

"So, sure, it's the action that got people in to see it the first time, but it was the emotion that brought them back for viewings two, three, four. Some guy came up to me the other night, said he had seen it 32 times!

The 'Tron: Legacy' director continued: "It's the emotion that brings people back. And that's, I think, the key to giant hits. I don't know if you saw 'Avatar 2', but I felt like that with that film, the spectacle was one part of it, but there was a real emotional through line that got me.

"So emotion is key, but you need to make something that the audience knows they have to see on the big screen to get the full experience."