Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski has explained why two major characters from the first film didn’t return for the sequel.

Kelly McGillis, who plays Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s love interest Charlie Blackwood, and Meg Ryan as Goose’s wife Carole Bradshaw are both noticeably absent from the new movie.

• READ MORE: Top Gun: Maverick review: an engaging if brainless return to the danger zone

Miles Teller has been cast as Nick “Goose” Bradshaw’s son in the new film, but his mother does not appear.

“Those weren’t stories that we were throwing around,” Kosinski said in an interview with Insider, saying that he hadn’t considered bringing the two women back.

“I didn’t want every storyline to always be looking backwards,” Kosinski said. “It was important to introduce some new characters.”

Twenty One Pilots’ Tyler Joseph, meanwhile, has claimed he was asked to write a song for the film before Tom Cruise rescinded the offer.

“I saw some scenes. They brought me in to show me some scenes and stuff, and I actually don’t think I started writing,” Joseph said.

“It was actually pretty soon after they brought me in to show me parts of the movie of what they were looking for and stuff then I kind of got word that there was a wholesale swap.”

In a three-star review of Top Gun: Maverick, NME wrote: “Top Gun: Maverick does exactly what its intended audience wants it to do – pile on the airborne thrills and steely military heroics without knotting things up with too much moralising or complex character development.

“Its plot may just be an extended Rocky-style training film for the jet fighter equivalent of the bombing of the Death Star, but throwbacks to the original movie supply the emotional heart.”

The film will be released in cinemas on May 25.