OVER THREE DECADES ON, TOM CRUISE HAS FINALLY RETURNED TO ONE OF HIS MOST ICONIC ROLES. AS TOP GUN: MAVERICK REVS UP, HE AND HIS CO-PILOTS TELL US HOW THEY’VE CHANGED THE GAME ALL OVER AGAIN

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

For someone who feels the need, the need for speed, Tom Cruise has taken his sweet damn time making a sequel to Top Gun. Admittedly, Top Gun: Maverick has been in the can for a couple of years, with Covid delaying the film’s release a number of times. But by the time it’s finally released this summer, it will have been 36 years since Top Gun came out. Back in 1986, director Tony Scott’s high-flying movie became a cultural phenomenon, with its stunning flying sequences, influential visuals, and string of sharp one-liners, but it was Cruise who was at the centre of it all, as cocky aviator Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, deploying the kind of weapons-grade charisma and intensity that saw him quickly become The World’s Biggest Movie Star, a title he has yet to relinquish.

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Top Gun: Maverick finally sees him return as Mitchell, with a few more miles on the clock, to train a new bunch of Top Gun pilots for the mission of their lives. Which, aptly, also describes the attempts to make the movie; a three-decade odyssey which eventually resulted in a shoot that rewrote the rulebook. Here, Cruise, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Joseph Kosinski, writer Christopher McQuarrie and the film’s cast break down how their egos wrote cheques that, thankfully, Paramount could cash.

FIRING UP

Top Gun was the highest-grossing movie of 1986. Predictably, sequel talk began almost immediately. There was one obstacle, though…

Tom Cruise [Maverick, producer]: I don’t make movies just to make movies. Honestly, I never thought I would make Top Gun again. Jerry and I kept talking about, “What are we going to do together?” Jerry was like, “I want to try to make Top Gun.” I was like, “Jerry, it’s never going to happen. I don’t know what to say.”

Jerry Bruckheimer [producer]: After the first one came out, we tried a bunch of different approaches that didn’t quite stick for a number of reasons. I don’t think we ever got close. Cruise: I remember when [Top Gun producing team] Simpson/Bruckheimer left Paramount and went to Disney, Paramount wanted me to make ‘Top Gun 2’. I said, “Look, I’m not going to do it.” Someone even developed a script that I never even read. I would never have made it without [Don] Simpson and Bruckheimer. But everywhere I went, everyone was like, “Dude, ‘Top Gun 2’?” People have been asking for it for decades. And I kept pushing it off, pushing it off, pushing it off.

Christopher McQuarrie [writer]: The first conversation I ever had about Top Gun: Maverick was 11 years ago, when I was called to a meeting with Tom, Jerry Bruckheimer, [producer] David Ellison and Tony Scott. And then, tragically, Tony passed away and the movie went away with it.