There’s a line in Top Gun: Maverick that sums up its production maybe more than any other. Appropriately, it’s said in a scene between two of its returning heroes: Tom Cruise’s title character, Maverick, and his old nemesis-turned-wingman Iceman, played once again by Val Kilmer. The pair are discussing their passion for being pilots, looking back on what their careers mean to them. ‘It’s not what I am,’ Maverick tells Iceman. ‘It’s who I am.’
On Friday September 7, 2018, Tom Cruise returned to Miramar, the military base where much of Top Gun was filmed 33 years previously, in the Spring of 1985. He was there to undergo a full ASTC (Aviation Survival Training Curriculum), to qualify for the extensive flying sequences in U.S. Navy F/A-18s that he had personally insisted were essential to the making of its long-awaited sequel, Top Gun: Maverick.
As he embarked on a training programme unlike any other in film history, it was impossible to not note the parallels between Maverick and the person who plays him; two men constantly testing the limits of themselves and their profession. Two men also not averse to breaking the odd rule along the way, if that means pushing their craft further than anyone ever has before, exploring its possibilities, stretching its edges.
‘I’d thought about a sequel to Top Gun for all these years,’ says Cruise of only now returning, as actor and producer, to perhaps his most iconic ever role. ‘People had asked for a sequel for decades. Decades. And the thing I said to the studio from the beginning was: “If I’m ever going to entertain this, we’re shooting everything practically. I’m in that F/A-18, period. So, we’re going to have to develop camera rigs. There’s going to be wind tunnels and engineering. It’s going to take a long, long time for me to figure it out.” And I wanted to work with Jerry [Bruckheimer]. I wouldn’t do this movie without him in a million years. For years, people had said, “Can’t you shoot [the movie] with CGI?” And I always said, “No. That’s not the experience.” I said, “I need to find the right story. And we’re going to need the right team. This movie is like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. I’m not playing.”’
That Bruckheimer factor is essential in understanding what this movie means to the people who have made it – and what it will mean for the audiences soon to experience it, too. Cruise describes Bruckheimer simply: ‘He’s a legendary producer. One of the great Hollywood producers.’ And he should know. It was on the original Top Gun that Bruckheimer and his late producing partner, the equally legendary Don Simpson, took a then 21-year-old actor who wanted to learn it all under, well, their wing.
‘When we started working on this [new] movie, we were working on the script and I looked across at Jerry and I just felt like a kid again, like I was back in 1985, working with him. [Back then] I wanted to learn everything about being a producer,’ Cruise remembers. ‘And Don and Jerry, at a time when I asked to be involved with something, to be in those meetings, were very generous with me. And as we all know, not everyone is like that. Top Gun was the next phase for me [in my career]. For me, like Jerry, I always just wanted to make great stories and entertain the world. That was my purpose.’
On the original movie, although Cruise was filmed in the cockpit of an F-14 Tomcat, his castmates weren’t so successful in their endeavours. ‘We had other actors up there, flying,’ says Bruckheimer. ‘But their footage unfortunately wasn’t usable because they didn’t have enough experience in training. When we put them in the air, none of them could hack it. Tom was the only one we had usable flight footage for. We had tons of footage of the other actors in the air with their eyes rolling back in their heads. This time, thanks to Tom, all the actors on Top Gun: Maverick became accustomed to the fundamentals and mechanics of flight and G-forces, because of all the training they did months in advance. Unlike the first film, our actors are actually in the cockpits of the F/A-18s in flight, acting and speaking their lines of dialogue.’
That seismic shift is not just about an increase in aviation authenticity, either. Rather, it is part of an amplification of a number of factors that made the original Top Gun resonate so strongly. ‘In this movie we very much wanted to have a more developed group and a greater sense of the pilots around Maverick,’ says writer and producer, Christopher McQuarrie, the Usual Suspects Oscar®-winner who has collaborated with Cruise since writing Valkyrie in 2008, and has since written and directed him in one Jack Reacher and two Mission: Impossible films, with another two on the way.
‘One of the things I said to Tom early on was that the original Top Gun was not just about Maverick. It wasn’t just about Maverick and Goose. It was about a culture,’ McQuarrie observes. ‘It was about the culture of these pilots and the competition that they all had with one another, and we wanted to bring some of that in. As a result, all the pilots in this film are more richly drawn. It’s a deeper bench but also a richer canvas. That tapestry of pilots all help to serve an understanding of who Maverick is now. Obviously, this movie takes place over 30 years later. And we didn’t want to stop the movie and reflect upon what those 30 years were. We wanted you to feel that history unfolding while you were watching the movie.’
Production notes
Top Gun: Maverick
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
©: Paramount Pictures Corporation
A Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production Presented by: Paramount Pictures, Skydance, Jerry Bruckheimer Films
With the participation of the: Canadian Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit
Executive Producers: Tommy Harper, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Chad Oman, Mike Stenson
Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison
Jerry Bruckheimer Films Associate Producer: John Campbell
Associate Producers: Melissa Reid, Emily Cheung, Don Ferrarone
Unit Production Managers: Leeann Stonebreaker, Tommy Harper
Production Supervisor: Christie Kwan
Production Co-ordinator: Katrina Elder
Financial Controller: Elena Holden
Supervising Location Manager: Mike Fantasia
Post-production Supervisor: David E. Hall
2nd Unit Director (Aerial Unit): Eric Schwab
1st Assistant Director: Scott Robertson
2nd Assistant Directors: Andrew Stahl, Robert E. Kay
Script Supervisors: Becky Boyle, Bryan Sundstrom
Casting by: Denise Chamian
Screenplay by: Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie
Story by: Peter Craig, Justin Marks
Based on Characters Created by: Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr
Director of Photography: Claudio Miranda
2nd Unit Director of Photography (Aerial Unit): David B. Nowell
2nd Unit Additional Director of Photography (Aerial Unit): Michael Fitzmaurice
Lead Camera Helicopter/Camera Jet Pilot (Aerial Unit): Kevin LaRosa II
A Camera Operator: John T. Connor
B Camera Operator: Tucker Korte
Chief Lighting Technician: Andrew Korner
Visual Effects Supervisor: Ryan Tudhope
Visual Effects Producer: Paul Molles
Visual Effects by: Method Studios, MPC, lola | VFX
Special Effects Co-ordinator: Scott R. Fisher
Computer Graphics Design and Animation by: Blind Ltd
Film Editor: Eddie Hamilton
Additional Editing by: Chris Lebenzon
Associate Editor: Laura Creecy
Production Designer: Jeremy Hindle
Visual Consultant: Colleen Atwood
Supervising Art Director: Clint Wallace
Art Directors: Lauren Polizzi, Ron Mendell, Ron Meyer, David Meyer, A. Todd Holland
Set Designers: C. Scott Baker, Kevin Cross
Set Decorator: Jan Pascale
Property Master: Robbie Duncan
Construction Co-ordinator: Anthony Syracuse
Costume Designer: Marlene Stewart
Assistant Costume Designer: Stephanie Porter
Costume Supervisor: John Casey
Military Costumer: Jared Chandler
Make-up Department Head: Felicity Bowring
Key Make-up Artist: Elena Arroy
Hair Department Head: Jules Holdren
Music by: Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga, Hans Zimmer
Score Produced by: Lorne Balfe
Score Consultant: Guthrie Govan
Sound Design Consultant: Gary Rydstrom
Sound Designers: James H. Mather, Al Nelson
Production Sound Mixer: Mark Weingarten
Re-recording Mixers: Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor
Supervising Sound Editors: James H. Mather, Al Nelson, Bjørn Schroeder
Sound Effects Editors: Benjamin A. Burtt, Scott Guitteau, Qianbaihui Yang
Naval Aviation Technical Adviser/Aerial Coordinator: Captain Brian Ferguson
Aerial Coordinator: Kevin LaRosa II
Stunt Co-ordinator: Casey O’Neill
Cast Pilot: Randy Hepner
‘In Memory of’: Tony Scott
Cast
Tom Cruise (Captain Pete Mitchell, ‘Maverick’)
Miles Teller (Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw, ‘Rooster’)
Jennifer Connelly (Penny Benjamin)
Jon Hamm (Admiral Beau Simpson, ‘Cyclone’)
Glen Powell (Lieutenant Jake Seresin, ‘Hangman’)
Ed Harris (Rear Admiral Chester Cain, ‘Hammer’)
Val Kilmer (Admiral Tom Kazansky, ‘Iceman’)
Lewis Pullman (Lieutenant Robert Floyd, ‘Bob’)
Charles Parnell (Admiral Solomon Bates, ‘Warlock’)
Bashir Salahuddin (Warrant Officer Bernie Coleman, ‘Hondo’)
Monica Barbaro (Lieutenant Natasha Trace, ‘Phoenix’)
Jay Ellis (Lieutenant Reuben Fitch, ‘Payback’)
Danny Ramirez (Lieutenant Mickey Garcia, ‘Fanboy’)
Greg Tarzan Davis (Lieutenant Javy Machado, ‘Coyote’)
Jack Schumacher (Lieutenant Neil Vikander, ‘Omaha’)
Manny Jacinto (Lieutenant Billy Avalone, ‘Fritz’)
Kara Wang (Lieutenant Callie Bassett, ‘Halo’)
Jake Picking (Lieutenant Brigham Lennox, ‘Harvard’)
Raymond Lee (Lieutenant Logan Lee, Yale’)
Jean Louisa Kelly (Kazansky, Sarah)
Lyliana Wray (Amelia)
Chelsea Harris (Admiral’s aide)
Darnell Kirkwood, Austin Bowerman, Stephanie Andrea Barron (comms-crew techs)
Alec Williams (Cain’s aide)
Rachel Winfree (waitress)
Peter Mark Kendall (meek engineer)
Ian Gary (jaded engineer)
Bob Stephenson (senior engineer)
Landon J. Gordon (kid in truck stop)
Margaret Strabala, Ryan Heilmann (air control officers)
Shantel Limbo (staff sergeant)
James Handy (Jimmy, bartender)
Whylip Lee (fuel)
Tristan Henry (surfaces)
Jason Robert Boles (mini boss)
Brian Ferguson (fighter pilot in bar)
Chido Nwokocha, Chaz Ingram, Rachel Markarian, Shannon Kane, Norman Ralph Eliasen (mission controllers)
USA 2022©
130 mins
Digital 4K
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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