Real flights and fierce training: the wild filming of “Top Gun: Maverick” told by its cast

“top gun” made many want to learn to fly. According to newspapers of the time, the year after the film was released, registrations for the US Army grew by 500%. Even its leading man, Tom Cruise, got on the plane never to get off again. Today he is a professional pilot, he has a commercial flight license for jets and various types of ships, and he even does things like getting to the ‘premieres’ of him driving his own helicopter. And because the actor knows what it feels like to be in command of a plane, he has become a careful student of the film’s portrayal of him. The proposal for a sequel to “Top Gun” pursued him for two decades, but only in 2017 did he feel that there was enough technology to transfer to the screens what he feels when taking flight.

For “Top Gun: Maverick” to become a reality, Tom Cruise designed a special training program so that the actors could resist the conditions in which he had planned the filming, but, in addition, he had to make several postponements: the first, in 2019, to make some improvements in the aerial shots and, the second, the longest of all, from 2020 to 2022, so that the pandemic and its consequences allow it to be released in theaters. He did not conceive that a story like the one he was preparing would not be seen on the big screen.

Tom Cruise’s training for the cast was not easy, they took three months of military preparation that included an exercise that almost seems like the title of an action tape: ‘The Dunker’. For this training, actors were blindfolded and entered a device shaped like the cockpit of an airplane, strapped to their seats, submerged to the bottom of a pool, and turned around in the machine. The goal: to unbuckle, open the door and swim to the surface, simulating what they would have to do if they needed to evacuate their planes at sea. The reason? In this film CGI would not be used to recreate scenarios, they were going to film in the air.

A demanding shoot

That is why another important part of Cruise’s strategy was to teach the actors to resist the so-called G-forces, which make a fighter pilot feel that his weight multiplies between 7 and 9 times more in flight. There are several stories of the cast of “Top Gun: Maverick” throwing up and passing out for this reason, but they had to get strong for the next part of Tom’s plan: teach them how to operate cameras and understand how to light and edit a scene. Once upstairs, they would be his own directors and cameramen.

For Monica Barbaro, who is the first woman to join the “Top Gun” team, the training Cruise devised forever changed the way she views her work as an actress. “Tom really took us to another level, one that we didn’t even know was possible. He taught us a lot about how movies are made, he taught us how to study them, and he also taught us how to fly. He has this quality of seeing your potential and taking it out of you in a way that generates very positive growth, ”the actress told us in a connection via Zoom.

“In the three years that have passed since we finished filming, we have all done projects that we are very passionate about and I think that we also share ourselves in a different way on set now,” added the actress who plays ‘Phoenix’, a character she hopes will also generate more interest in female aviators.

be or seem

The story of “Top Gun: Maverick” has many similarities with the original. There are, in fact, many nods to this one: the beginning with a “Star Wars”-style opening text, a sequence with Tom Cruise riding his classic Kawasaki while wearing the characteristic leather jacket with eighties tape patches and even a scene at the bar singing Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire,” this time with Miles Teller on piano. But as Joseph Kosinski, the film’s director, said, they didn’t want this movie to become “a ‘Top Gun’ cover band,” so there are also elements that freshen it up and give it its own personality.

In addition to characters like Barbaro, the action sequences of “Top Gun” are superior to the original. If you see it on the big screen, like the author of this note, you will feel all the vertigo of flying and the surround sound of the machines that make the body paralyze during risky maneuvers, such as the Mach 10 scene, in which the veteran Maverick decides to take the speed of his plane to the extreme, or the one in which, disobeying Admiral ‘Cyclone’, his new superior, he decides to show that he can do very easily what costs young pilots sweat and tears.

For Jon Hamm, the remembered Don Drapper from “Mad Men”, who is in charge of the role of ‘Cyclone’ in this sequel, the realism that Tom Cruise has opted for is something he is grateful for. “You don’t see that kind of thing anymore. I think we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t see stories of real people in this style. If they are done, usually those people are wearing a cape or they are throwing a hammer at someone”, told us the Emmy winner, who believes that precisely for this reason “Top Gun: Maverick” is a film that will remind the audience “ how great it can still be to make Hollywood movies.”

A boss like few

And although a shoot in these conditions seems very complicated and demanding, everyone agrees that one person made everything more bearable: “Tom is a wonderful guy, a generous person and actor, he loves his job, he loves making movies, he is tremendously enthusiastic and that enthusiasm is contagious. All Tom wants is for everyone to be excellent and you know that he will work as hard as you to achieve it and that’s great,” explained Hamm, who, like many eighties teenagers, dreamed of being a part of “Top Gun” that summer. 1986, so being part of this film is still hard for him to believe, more so because of the participation of his famous colleague.

“Tom has this quality of seeing your potential and taking it out of you in a way that creates very positive growth”

Monica Barbaro Actress of “Top Gun: Maverick”

“Tom is the first on set and the last to leave, he works harder than anyone and that work ethic carries over from top to bottom, from cast to crew and to everyone; everyone wants to do the best job they can because they know how important it is to this guy and no one wants to let a leader like him down,” Hamm reflects on that commitment felt in the final edition. It is not often that in sequels there is no taste of weariness or that novelty is offered without betraying the essence, but “Top Gun: Maverick” puts up a fight and shows that Tom is still the type of impossible missions.

You’ll be able to read and watch the full interviews with Jon Hamm and Monica Barbaro on “Top Gun: Maverick” on video next week on Skip Intro.

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