Quentin Tarantino has praised Top Gun: Maverick for providing a “true cinematic spectacle”.

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

The director shared his thoughts on the Tom Cruise sequel while speaking to the ReelBlend podcast with Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, where he was emphatic in his admiration.

“I fucking love Top Gun: Maverick,” Tarantino said. “I thought it was fantastic. I saw it at the theaters. That and [Steven] Spielberg’s West Side Story both provided a true cinematic spectacle, the kind that I’d almost thought that I wasn’t going to see anymore. It was fantastic.”

Tarantino also praised the sequel for capturing the spirit of the 1986 original directed by Tony Scott, who died aged 68 in 2012.

He added: “But also there was just this lovely, lovely aspect because I love both Tony Scott’s cinema so much, and I love Tony so much that that’s as close as we’re ever going to get to seeing one more Tony Scott movie.

“[Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski] did a great job. The respect and the love of Tony was in every frame. It was almost in every decision. It was consciously right there, but in this really cool way that was really respectful. And I think it was in every decision Tom [Cruise] made on the film. It’s the closest we’re ever going to get to seeing one more Tony Scott movie, and it was a fucking terrific one.”

Speaking about the scene that reunited Cruise and Val Kilmer, Tarantino described it as “almost too cheap, but it absolutely works”.

“It’s a bit like Charlie Chaplin dying onstage for the last scene of Limelight… but it fucking works,” Tarantino said. “You’re waiting for it and the fucking scene delivers.”

Top Gun: Maverick has become the highest-grossing film of Cruise’s career, earning $1.3billion (£1billion) at the global box office.

In a three-star review 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.”