how they made topgun: maverick

Top Gun is the film that turned a promising young actor called Tom Cruise into a movie star. In fact, you could say he went supersonic. Which is apt, because a whole 36 years later, he’s back in the cockpit for Top Gun: Maverick, and wait until you cop a load of what he and a new generation of precocious aviators get up to. It is mind-blowing.

Cruise’s return as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell rather flies in the face of the film’s best remembered line (“I feel the need, the need for speed!”) but, hell, the guy’s been busy in the interim. Not shy of a sequel – Mission: Impossible 8 is currently in production – Cruise nonetheless refused to revisit Top Gun, and when he finally did come round to the idea, the project was derailed by the tragic death of director Tony Scott. So what can we expect? And what finally lured him back?

Over to Chris McQuarrie, one of Hollywood’s top directors, and co-screenwriter on the new film. Some elements had been kicking around since 1987, he tells TG. “By 2011 there were a lot of fun ideas in search of a story, but something was still missing. Being in a room with three of the guys who created the original film, I chose to assume the observer role for much of the meeting, focusing on the feeling I had watching Top Gun as a 17-year-old kid.

how they made topgun: maverick
how they made topgun: maverick
how they made topgun: maverick
how they made topgun: maverick
how they made topgun: maverick
how they made topgun: maverick
how they made topgun: maverick
how they made topgun: maverick

“All the while I was asking myself, ‘Why do we love Top Gun so much? Why has it lasted so long? Sure, there’s ‘Danger Zone’, ‘Lovin’ Feeling’, ‘Take My Breath Away’, motorbikes and volleyball, Mav and Goose, Mav and Charlie, Mav and Iceman – forget those things. They’ve all long since been copied and never to greater effect. Why does Top Gun really work? What is its essence?’”

McQuarrie became fixated on uncovering this ‘secret ingredient’. Having wrapped Mission: Impossible – Fallout in 2016, he was still pondering it when Cruise got in touch. “About a month before Top Gun: Maverick was due to start shooting, Tom asked me to read the script. And while I was rewriting a particular scene in my head, I had an epiphany. I knew how to contemporise that secret ingredient now. I pitched it to Tom and was immediately brought on to do a two week rewrite. I stayed with the movie for the next two years.”

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, meanwhile, had been in contact with director Joe Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion). The pair flew to Paris while Tom Cruise was filming there, and Kosinski made his bid. “In a very smart kind of producing move, Jerry didn’t really say that Tom did not want to make the movie,” he tells me. “He’s resisted doing a sequel for years, but he let me have half an hour out of his day to make my pitch. And at the end of it he picked up the phone, called Paramount Pictures and said, ‘We’re making this movie’. It was a surreal meeting. It’s like the Superbowl. On the films I’ve made, there’s always a moment where you have to make the case to the star. This was one of those.”

how they made topgun: maverick

There’s an emotional arc to the new film that Kosinski reckons got Cruise over the line, a depth to the character that gives it a surprisingly tender tone. But there’s also a whole new group of hotshots, in thrall to Cruise’s (clean-shaven) high-altitude Gandalf and plunged into a crazy high-stakes mission, and most of all there’s the ACTION. Cruise likes flying planes almost as much as he does hanging off the side of them, and the aerial combat sequences are astoundingly realistic.

“Maverick is still Maverick! He’s still the same guy,” Bruckheimer says. “He’s older and wiser – a bit wiser – but he still bucks the system. He’s brought back to train a bunch of pilots, but the movie is really about the love of aviation, the love of flying. That is a character as much as Maverick is. And that’s what this is about, getting Maverick back up in the air – getting Maverick back to doing what he does best. To do so he has to go back to Top Gun, to where he was all those years ago.”

And how. There’s no CGI going on here. Says Kosinski, “I showed Tom some YouTube videos of navy pilots with GoPros in the cockpits of their jets. I said, ‘If we can’t beat this then there’s no point making this movie’. There was also the challenge of what Maverick is doing 35 years later. I was kind of obsessed with the notion of him being a test pilot in the darker areas of naval research, like Chuck Yeager…”

Kosinski got to work, a gargantuan task lying ahead. As well as directing a team of young actors and some older hands – Ed Harris and Jon Hamm are both brilliantly irascible in it, and, yes, Val Kilmer reprises the role of Iceman – he had to figure out how to capture F/A-18 Super Hornets in excelsis. He and his team managed to fit six IMAX quality cameras into each cockpit.

Cruise also personally devised a three-month training regime for the actors. In the original film, he was the only one who could live with the intense g-forces, which meant that most of the scenes were shot on a giant gimbal rig. This time everyone did it for real, and trained until they could cope as their real life navy pilots put them through the wringer. That also meant getting to grips with the camera equipment and learning about the light, as well as remembering their dialogue. “We rehearsed it over and over until it became muscle memory,” Kosinski says. “Things would go wrong, maybe they’d forget to pull their visor down. We’d review the footage immediately, then in the afternoon go up and do it again. We shot more than 800 hours of footage. It was painstaking but it was the only way to get what we got. I think Tom did three flights one day…”

how they made topgun: maverick

Greg ‘Tarzan’ Davis, who plays Coyote, remembers the drill well. “We weren’t acting, we were living it,” he tells me. “I’m not saying we’re going to be navy pilots but we experienced what they experience. We learned to look at the horizon when you’re pulling gs, how to breathe properly. We learned not to look out to the side, because we needed to keep facing the camera. Tom kept saying, ‘We need to see your face, this is the money maker…’

“And yes it got competitive. I’m not going to puke, I’m going to pull the most gs, you did an hour in the air so I’m going to do an hour and 15… I want to give a big shout out to Monica Barbaro (who plays Phoenix), she really held it down!”

The result, as they say in the movies, is all on the screen. “It’s never been about the money for me. It’s been about how we entertain people, how we take them on a ride. The reason I go to the movies is because of movies like Top Gun,” Bruckheimer says. There are cars and bikes, too. Look closely in one establishing scene and you’ll spot an Aston Martin DBR1 alongside the Kawasaki Ninja that played such a pivotal role in the original. And there’s a cameo from an early Porsche 911.

But ground-based transportation is just a distraction. When you’re not utterly immersed in the aerial sequences, you might find yourself wondering how the hell they pulled it off. Over to Kevin LaRosa, aerial coordinator and lead camera pilot, and one of the movie industry’s very few qualifed jet pilots.

“[Tom] was talking about the next Top Gun. He said, ‘Kevin… we’re going do this.’ And when Tom says he’s going to do something, he’s going do it. Then he said, ‘Kevin, we gotta do it for real. Everything has got to be real for Top Gun. You just can’t fake that experience and performance.’”

how they made topgun: maverick

LaRosa and his partners spent nine months figuring it out. They devised the Cinejet, a modified L-39 Albatros, a two-seater Czech-made jet used to train pilots. The development team mounted a Shotover camera gimbal on the nose, with a huge field of view. “It can look up, reach back very far both left and right, look straight down and even look under the L-39’s belly at aircraft that are chasing us,” LaRosa explains. “This is how we get those great head-on shots of the F-18. As well as that, we used a highly modified Phenom 300 business jet for our longer range missions, and of course our camera helicopter.”

LaRosa is keen to credit his camera operators, David Nowell and Michael FitzMaurice. “They’re the brave souls who sit in the back seat, while I’m flying, with their heads down, buried in a monitor and composing these shots with silky smooth reflexes as we fly through turbulence or jet wash at 300 knots several feet above the ground.”

As well as the human and technological input, the new film also makes dramatic use of locations, a factor that both Kosinski and LaRosa cite as key to its impact. No spoiler alerts here, but we’ll say this: there’s a sequence that was shot in the Cascade mountain range in British Columbia that will fry your mind.

“Where can we go that will give us the most astonishing background, and how do we fly our aircraft as low as possible there?” LaRosa says. “Anybody can shoot airplanes in blue skies with the ground 10,000 feet below. But when you put these aircraft deep inside some of the most extreme terrain, it adds a whole other level to the action.”

COVID-delayed for two years, Top Gun: Maverick emerges into a world where old-fashioned entertainment is in big demand. Prepare for your speed need to be fully reignited – and satiated. This is a giant film but it’s got heart and soul, too.

“Character and story are the same for me regardless of scale. There’s nothing that says the same film can’t be both epic in scope and emotionally intimate,” Chris McQuarrie says. “There was a time when that was the whole point. So we specifically set out to make the kind of movie they just don’t make anymore. And that’s the real secret to Top Gun: Maverick’s sense of nostalgia for me; I’m not just reconnecting with a character and a story, I’m reconnecting with an era in which that kind of character and story were a part of every summer.”

Top Gun: Maverick is now in cinemas

Keyword: How they made TOPGUN: MAVERICK

CAR'S NEWS RELATED

Best cars for a 'Love Bug' remake

Tennessee’s Yard Art The Thorndyke Special The Hot Rod The Hippie Van Jim’s Lamborghini Growing up, it’s safe to say my absolute favorite movie was Disney’s “The Love Bug.” As a kid living in a world before Pixar’s “Cars,” it was pretty much the best car movie. I loved ...

View more: Best cars for a 'Love Bug' remake

Audi timing belt tensioner prompts Utah bomb squad visit

An aftermarket timing belt tensioner found in a Salt Lake City apartment prompted a visit from the bomb squad this week after it was mistaken for a potential explosive device. Police partially evacuated the apartment complex in which it was found “out of an abundance of caution” and called ...

View more: Audi timing belt tensioner prompts Utah bomb squad visit

2023 GMC Sierra HD 2500 and 3500 will get more expensive

GMC Sierra HD pickups are about to get more expensive again after recently becoming more expensive, according to GM Authority. In July, GMC and Buick raised the prices on certain vehicles in their lineups anywhere from $975 to $1,675 by making the previously optional OnStar a standard feature. Next ...

View more: 2023 GMC Sierra HD 2500 and 3500 will get more expensive

Our week with EVs: Recapping the diverse collection of electric cars we tested

Mercedes-Benz EQB First Drive Review: Next electric Benz is a little different 2022 Chevy Bolt EV Road Test Review: Time to play EV, gas or airplane 2023 Genesis GV60 Road Test Review: The third of Hyundai Group’s E-GMP EVs is the fastest, but softest It may be hard to ...

View more: Our week with EVs: Recapping the diverse collection of electric cars we tested

Europe car sales lowest since 1996 after 12-month decline

BERLIN – Europe registered the lowest number of new passenger cars in the month of June this year since 1996 at just over 1.06 million vehicles, with some carmakers seeing sales drop by nearly 50%, data from Europe’s automobile association showed on Friday. Volkswagen Group was the hardest-hit major ...

View more: Europe car sales lowest since 1996 after 12-month decline

More Than Just A Carmaker: Toyota Motor PH Launches Toyota Mobility Solutions

Automotive industry leader, Toyota Motor Philippines Corporation (TMP) inaugurated today Toyota Mobility Solutions Philippines, Inc. (TMSPH), a wholly owned subsidiary that will be a provider of mobility-related services. TMSPH ventures into the development and offering of a range of ‘new mobility solutions’ that will enhance Toyota as a brand ...

View more: More Than Just A Carmaker: Toyota Motor PH Launches Toyota Mobility Solutions

'F1 22' feels fast and familiar | Gaming Roundup

‘F1 22’ impressions ‘Construction Simulator’ is launching Sept. 20 Autoblog may receive a share from purchases made via links on this page. Pricing and availability are subject to change. This week in racing game news: ‘F1 22’ impressions At its core, “F1 22,” the latest installment in the F1 ...

View more: 'F1 22' feels fast and familiar | Gaming Roundup

Watch a single-engine plane crash-land on 91 Freeway in California

A single-engine Piper Cherokee airplane was forced to crash land on the 91 Freeway in California after losing power about 45 minutes outside of Los Angeles. Yes, that means this was a very busy highway, practically bursting at the seams with traffic. No, amazingly nobody died, either in the ...

View more: Watch a single-engine plane crash-land on 91 Freeway in California

Ford files 'Mustang Dark Horse' trademark application

Make adventures more comfortable with high-quality Jeep grab handles

New Lucid Air variant to debut & Stealth Look to be on display during Monetary Car Week

Chevy offers incentives to prevent Corvette Z06 flipping

Average U.S. gas price falls below $4/gallon

German court: SUV driver must pay more than a car for running red light

Australian vehicle crash tests to include underwater performance

Toyota C-HR rumored to get revamp next year and an EV version

Geely's electric Zeekr 009 is an EV Alphard we never had; 700 km, 542 PS, top speed 190 km/h

A Newey, Brawn and Anderson row that shows F1 doesn’t change

Sorry, EV buyers, you won't get to pick your own pedestrian safety sounds

There won't be enough copper to meet climate goals, study indicates

OTHER CAR NEWS

; Top List in the World https://www.pinterest.com/newstopcar/pins/
Top Best Sushi Restaurants in SeoulTop Best Caribbean HoneymoonsTop Most Beautiful Islands in PeruTop Best Outdoor Grill BrandsTop Best Global Seafood RestaurantsTop Foods to Boost Your Immune SystemTop Best Foods to Fight HemorrhoidsTop Foods That Pack More Potassium Than a BananaTop Best Healthy Foods to Gain Weight FastTop Best Cosmetic Brands in the U.STop Best Destinations for Food Lovers in EuropeTop Best Foods High in Vitamin ATop Best Foods to Lower Your Blood SugarTop Best Things to Do in LouisianaTop Best Cities to Visit in New YorkTop Best Makeup Addresses In PennsylvaniaTop Reasons to Visit NorwayTop Most Beautiful Islands In The WorldTop Best Law Universities in the WorldTop Richest Sportsmen In The WorldTop Biggest Aquariums In The WorldTop Best Peruvian Restaurants In MiamiTop Best Road Trips From MiamiTop Best Places to Visit in MarylandTop Best Places to Visit in North CarolinaTop Best Electric Cars For KidsTop Best Swedish Brands in The USTop Best Skincare Brands in AmericaTop Best American Lipstick BrandsTop Michelin-starred Restaurants in MiamiTop Best Secluded Getaways From MiamiTop Best Things To Do On A Rainy Day In MiamiTop Most Instagrammable Places In MiamiTop Interesting Facts about FlorenceTop Facts About The First Roman Emperor - AugustusTop Best Japanese FoodsTop Most Beautiful Historical Sites in IsraelTop Best Places To Visit In Holy SeeTop Best Hawaiian IslandsTop Reasons to Visit PortugalTop Best Hotels In L.A. With Free Wi-FiTop Best Scenic Drives in MiamiTop Best Vegan Restaurants in BerlinTop Most Interesting Attractions In WalesTop Health Benefits of a Vegan DietTop Best Thai Restaurant in Las VegasTop Most Beautiful Forests in SwitzerlandTop Best Global Universities in GermanyTop Most Beautiful Lakes in GuyanaTop Best Things To Do in IdahoTop Things to Know Before Traveling to North MacedoniaTop Best German Sunglasses BrandsTop Highest Mountains In FranceTop Biggest Hydroelectric Plants in AmericaTop Best Spa Hotels in NYCTop The World's Scariest BridgeTop Largest Hotels In AmericaTop Most Famous Festivals in JordanTop Best European Restaurants in MunichTop Best Japanese Hiking Boot BrandsTop Best Universities in PolandTop Best Tips for Surfing the Web Safely and AnonymouslyTop Most Valuable Football Clubs in EuropeTop Highest Mountains In ColombiaTop Real-Life Characters of Texas RisingTop Best Beaches in GuatelamaTop Things About DR Congo You Should KnowTop Best Korean Reality & Variety ShowsTop Best RockstarsTop Most Beautiful Waterfalls in GermanyTop Best Fountain Pen Ink BrandsTop Best European Restaurants in ChicagoTop Best Fighter Jets in the WorldTop Best Three-Wheel MotorcyclesTop Most Beautiful Lakes in ManitobaTop Best Dive Sites in VenezuelaTop Best Websites For Art StudentsTop Best Japanese Instant Noodle BrandsTop Best Comedy Manhwa (Webtoons)Top Best Japanese Sunglasses BrandsTop Most Expensive Air Jordan SneakersTop Health Benefits of CucumberTop Famous Universities in SwedenTop Most Popular Films Starring Jo Jung-sukTop Interesting Facts about CougarsTop Best Hospitals for Hip Replacement in the USATop Most Expensive DefendersTop Health Benefits of GooseberriesTop Health Benefits of ParsnipsTop Best Foods and Drinks in LondonTop Health Benefits of Rosehip TeaTop Best Air Fryers for Low-fat CookingTop Most Asked Teacher Interview Questions with AnswersTop Best Shopping Malls in ZurichTop The Most Beautiful Botanical Gardens In L.A.Top Best Mexican Restaurants in Miami for Carb-loading rightTop Best Energy Companies in GermanyTop Best Garage HeatersTop Largest Banks in IrelandTop Leading Provider - Audit and Assurance In The USTop Best Jewelry Brands in IndiaTop Prettiest Streets in the UKTop Best Lakes to Visit in TunisiaTop Highest Mountains in Israel