The cast for original Top Gun was released to mixed reviews, it was well-received by audiences and became the year's highest-grossing film.
Tom Cruise is back as Maverick, training a group of Top Gun graduates for a special mission. One of his trainees is Lt. Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, played by Whiplash star Miles Teller, the son of Maverick's former wingman Goose (Anthony Edwards). Rounding out the cast in the high-flying action film are Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, and Val Kilmer, returning in his role as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky. The film was initially scheduled to be released in the summer of 2019, but due to the complex nature of the flight scenes and the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was pushed further back to 2022.
'Tom Cruise' boot camp to prepare for their film. Known for giving his all to make stunts in his movies as realistic as possible, the veteran actor wanted to shoot inside real Boeing F/A-18 Superhornet fighter jets. According to Cruise, this regimen was also used to remove any ego that actors tend to bring to a new film and build a rapport amongst the team. Read what Maverick star Miles Teller had to say about his experience in Cruise's training program below:
"We were all mini Toms making this movie. He put us through... I’ll just call it a 'Tom Cruise boot camp'. We were getting in killer shape. And also for the stunts and stuff that Tom does in movies, it’s usually a very specific type of training. You’re not just going into the gym and lifting some weights. We did flight training for three months before we started filming... We got put through the wringer."
Cruise further explained that the experience on Top Gun: Maverick differed significantly from his experience in the original 1986 film. According to the actor, the cast was put inside of actual F-14 Tomcat fighter jets for training and filming purposes, but not nearly as much time as Cruise believes they all needed. Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer recalled that the cast went up in the sky for certain shots, but nearly all of it was unusable, explaining, "On the first movie, we put all the actors in an F-14, and we couldn't use a frame of it, except for some stuff on Tom – that was it. Their eyes were rolling back into their heads. They were throwing up. So Tom ed that, and since he's an avid pilot, he said, 'We've got to train them to be able to handle the g-forces.'"
Tom Cruise is well known for attempting his own stunts and giving his all for every one of his action films. Cruise's popular spy franchise Mission: Impossible is structured around bombastic action set pieces that must top the ones that came before it. The actor has thrown himself off of the tallest building in the world, hung from the side of an airplane, and famously broke his ankle during a daring leap in MI: Fallout. Cruise even intends to bring himself, a film crew, and his bold ideas to outer space in an attempt to shoot a movie in zero gravity. With Tom Cruise's attention to detail and commitment to realism with every film that he does, there is no doubt that Top Gun: Maverick will benefit from the extra work Cruise put the cast through.
Source: GamesRadar+
