It WAS kind of cool that by THIS time - EVERYONE knew that Pete Mitchell was almost a GOD as a pilot. In the original, he was cocky - and lucky.
His signature move was to do something so dangerous, no one else would dare try it. He was a fairly two dimensional character who only seemed real when he lost Goose.
His character comes out a lot more in this one. I heard that this movie would make men cry. I came CLOSE at one point, but not the one everyone thinks. Near the beginning, when he gets thrown out of the bar - and he is literally outside looking in, watching Goose's KID play "Great Balls of Fire". And you KNOW it's not just killing him, but it's been killing him for more than thirty years.
And when he does that RUN when everyone says it's impossible - it reminded me of all the similar iconic bits in movies. Two in particular - the one in "The Right Stuff" where Chuck Yeager - arguably the best test pilot the nation had ever seen but whom was not in the Mercury program - because he did not have a DEGREE - where Yeager decides his altitude record will NOT be beaten and flies straight up into the stratosphere - and just like in the movie, went into a flat spin, came out burned and beaten and took months of medical attention to recover.
The other is fictional, but it depicts the same kind of cocky bravery - at the end of Gattaca, where the two brothers - one genetically designed for perfection, the other born naturally (and thus - less than perfect) - re-enact their boyhood challenge of swimming out into the dark ocean to see who could swim OUT furthest - knowing that you had to have enough stamina to return alive. And the non-perfect brother beats him AGAIN. When asked how he does it - he answers - "because I never saved ANYTHING for the trip back". He would rather die, than fail.
Yeah, I liked the movie. But the first one still kind of wins, to me, because unlike the sequel, the first dominated EVERYTHING back then - the music, the lines, the scenes. People will NOT be quoting this movie for decades.