"Top Gun 3" is making all the buzz on Twitter after the Pentagon authorized a U.S. fighter jet to take down the Chinese spy balloon on Saturday after nearly a week of public uproar.
With GIFs from "Top Gun" and "Top Gun: Maverick" swirling around on the platform in addition to cheeky hypothetical headlines and humorous calls to plot the third "Top Gun" installment around a similar balloon takedown, social media gave the moment its share of attention.
"Top Gun 3: F--- that Balloon," one user tweeted.
"Watched Top Gun 3 earlier, and it was EXCELLENT," another captioned a video tweet of the moment a U.S. fighter jet shot down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean.
"NEW Footage of the Chinese Balloon being #ShotDown off the shores of South Carolina in The Atlantic by a NORAD F-22 on the orders of Dark Brandon. He will star in Top Gun 3! Mission Accomplished!" the official account for "The Good Trouble Show with Matt Ford" shared with a CNN video of the takedown.
National security analyst Ben Rhodes chimed in with, "At least we have a plot for Top Gun 3."
"Top Gun 3 is gonna be made in thirty years and Mav is gonna be dragged out of his retirement home blind and immobile, and the Defense Department is gonna make him shoot a balloon out of the sky," Michael Wear, Center for Christianity & Public Life president and CEO, tweeted.
Andrew Mark Henry, an adjunct professor at George Washington University, added, "I hope whoever is writing Top Gun 3 is taking notes."
Others teased that footage of the balloon's takedown was taken from filming of "Top Gun 3" or was instead a trailer or a promo.
Others jokingly wrote that, since the Chinese balloon fiasco set the stage for "Top Gun 3," everyone who hasn't seen the wildly popular 2022 blockbuster "Top Gun: Maverick" should be sure to watch it.
PENTAGON REVEALS DETAILS ON HOW CHINESE SPY BALLOON WAS TAKEN DOWN WITH SINGLE SHOT
Despite calls to take down the suspected spy balloon earlier last week, top U.S. officials waited until it reached the Atlantic coast Saturday before sending an F-22 fighter from Virginia's Langley Air Force Base to shoot it down.
President Biden, despite being admonished by some who say the balloon should have been taken out as soon as it breached U.S. airspace, told reporters on Saturday that he gave the Pentagon the go-ahead to shoot it down "as soon as possible" last Wednesday.
"I told them to shoot it down on Wednesday," he said. "They said to me let's wait for the safest place to do it."
"Top Gun: Maverick" was a win with both audiences and critics last year, earning big box office success and gaining a nomination for Best Picture at this year's Oscars.
