I don't hate him either. It's just that making him a "generic White guy pretty boy action hero" and THE lead of this movie, was a mistake imo. Tom Cruise could pull this off in Top Gun, but that was because it was the 80's and, Tom just has more charisma and personality to him. Plus, Maverick still had more dimension/nuance to him than many of the imitators, including here.
The first movie was cool because it went outside of the box with it's leading men. Will Smith as the charismatic action hero at a time when Black action hero leads were still pretty rare overall, especially in sci-fi. And Jeff Goldblum, who while he isn't a bad-looking dude by any means, wasn't traditionally "leading man" handsome in the film. And he was doing his whole "brilliant, but nervous and twitchy intellectual" schtick, which was also unusual for a leading man in an action movie. This movie feels like a regression in that regard honestly. And add to that the poor treatment of Vivica A. Fox (who was actually pretty cool and tough in movie one) and the wasted Selma Blair, Angelbaby getting next to nothing to do, etc and the regression feels even more pronounced.
And if that weren't enough, shoving Will Smith's adoptive son and Bill Pullman's daughter, who would have made FAR more sense as the new leads of this film imo, in favor of Not-Maverick, just makes no sense to me.
