TOP GUN 2 in development; Tom Cruise may Return for a Small Role

[Holdfast]

Iran can't fly most of their F-14s. They don't have the spare parts to keep them operational. They have at most, a single squadron active, but they would be no match for a fifth generation fighter, let alone the vast armada of fourth generation fighters still out there. They would be more likely to resist NATO with a Soviet or Chinese design.

Sure, but the plot doesn't have to acknowledge reality too closely. The original didn't care too much about it and worked just fine. A quick off-the-top-of-my-head outline for a possible Top Gun 2:

- Maverick & Charlie married, lived happily, and Charlie ended up working in the UN in some moderately high-level capacity. Their son ended up a USAF pilot, like his grandfather.
- After Gulf War II, Charlie ends up liaising with the US military in Iraq during the insurgency. She gets killed in a kidnapping; make it a failed Special Forces rescue operation or something like that to keep it topical.
- Mav loses the plot after the funeral, like he did after Goose died, and ends up going to the Middle East to see where she died. He ends up working for some mercs out there to keep busy and try to forget her (think of Cruise's character at the start of Lost Samurai)
- Do all the above pre-credits and then bring things to the present day.
- At the start of the movie proper, have the Iranian F-14 squadron taken over by a rogue element in the Iranian military as part of wider coup attempt. Mav's merc operatives get hired by the rogue element, partly to help the coup but also because they know Mav has F14 expertise and want him to train their pilots.
- Meanwhile, his son is part of the US forces in the area. Iran suspects Israeli and US support of the coup. The US doesn't want WWIII to break out just yet and offers military support to Iran, figuring there's a diplomatic opportunity here as well as a crisis.
- Mav and his team ends up having to fly F14s against his son's squadron, without realising who he's up against. As soon as Maverick realises he's up against US forces, he attempts to call his guys back, but they get shot down, fast. Mav attempts some extreme maneouvres to avoid the superior US forces, and almost manages the impossible, just like he did in the old days. Until a mechanical failure forces an eject... and gets killed, like Goose did. All this can be done within the first 20 minutes of the movie.
- Now focus the movie on the son. You could start it off with a series of relatively easy missions quelling the coup, setting up a competitive relationship between him and the new Iceman.
- Then have him discovering (from a captured merc?) that his dad died in the conflict at the USAF's hands
- he struggles to cope, rebels against the USAF for a while... and then the official investigation proves that his main rival and Iceman-analogue in his squadron colleague was the one who shot down and killed his father. Have that guy defect to Iran for a bribe with a few other guys, and MavJr having to shoot him down in the big final showdown to prevent the defection to the Iran
- End with the attempted defection being hushed up to prevent a diplomatic incident, but MavJr being offered the posting of his choice by way of compensation...

Easy box office gold, right there.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Since the two ideas I was going to rush in here to propose: namely fighting Iranian F-14s in a battle of irony or taking on John Travolta's privately funded secret Scientology Air Force trained by the now Scientologist Maverick have already been taken (bastards!), I am left no choice but to suggest a dual reboot and have Top Gun take on Iron Eagle in a battle royale training exercise of the Air Force and Navy's best of the best.

Since they killed off Jason Gedrick in the second Iron Eagle movie, that just leaves Louis Gossett, Jr. For ultimate meta-ness, Louis Gossett's character from Iron Eagle has a long lost twin brother who is the Marine gunnery sergeant that trained the naval aviators in An Officer and a Gentlemen, and is now a consultant at Top Gun.

The two groups initially hate each other, but as the two Louis' first meet and come together as brothers, so do the aviators come to respect each other as comrades in arms. And that's when the USS McGuffin accidentally crosses into Faceless'Enemyistan's territory for a very conveniently timed crisis where the bad guys are nice enough to wait 24 hours before attacking so we can fly all of our best pilots on their mighty wings into the danger zone to play with the boys.

You know what, screw it. Have the bad guys fly a squadron of MiG-31 Firefoxes while we're at it. First rule of Hollywood spending: why reboot one franchise when you can reboot three at thrice the price.

I would also suggest tossing in Airwolf and Blue Thunder trying to hunt the Red October while dodging that rogue drone from Deal of the Century. Anthony Edwards could technically play a completely different person since he looks so different. Perhaps a Navy doctor whose arrogant and rude colleague's arm first gets chopped off by Airwolf's tail rotor before Blue Thunder crashes on top of his head as he's about to be airlifted to the mainland. I'm worried though that more conventional audiences might consider that to be going a little overboard.

We can call it:

Top Chaff vs Iron Chaff: America or
Iron-Mav or
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny,
unless someone beat me to the punch on those too.

The F-14 is still in use by the Islamic Republic of Iran's Air Force.

There's your movie right there, it writes itself.

And they get shot down by the USAF's F-22's very quickly, with the movie becoming controversial due to it's use of Iran as an antagonist.

Since the Navy doesn't use F-22s, the USAF doesn't have Top Gun, and the possibility of an incident involving air and naval combat between the US and the world's internet troll Iran is not at all far-fetched, somehow I doubt that would be a huge issue. The biggest problem is that it would be totally one-sided unless you gave the Iranians deus ex machthree upgrades to weapons, performance, and avionics from the Russians in sort of a dramatic conceit version of the real Russian upgrades mentioned above.

The only potential enemy who could even pose a remote air to air threat is China, and even then it would have to require a reason for us to get close enough to the mainland for them to strike en masse with their Air Force unless we set it in the near future and their hypothetical aircraft carriers get finished. Even then they'd get creamed pretty quickly unless we had orders to only engage hostile incoming aircraft in order to avoid a full-scale war. You could make the crisis revolve around North Korea having a civil war which South Korea intervenes in; which brings China into the mix, or have it be about Taiwan.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Calling it now... Shia LaBeouf as Maverick and Charlie's son who has become aimless since Charlie died (she died so they don't have to bring Kelly McGillis back who doesn't look like Kelly McGillis anymore).

How do you know what Kelly McGillis looks like these days? For all you know, she's still sexy.

Googled up this pic from last year.

She's aged reasonably well, all told, but still sexy? Well, put it this way, she's no Helen Mirren, that's for sure.

She definitely looked sexy in The Monkey's Mask... Definitely did not look like that pic, BTW.

 

[lennier1]

Since the two ideas I was going to rush in here to propose: namely fighting Iranian F-14s in a battle of irony or taking on John Travolta's privately funded secret Scientology Air Force trained by the now Scientologist Maverick have already been taken (bastards!), I am left no choice but to suggest a dual reboot and have Top Gun take on Iron Eagle in a battle royale training exercise of the Air Force and Navy's best of the best.

Since they killed off Jason Gedrick in the second Iron Eagle movie, that just leaves Louis Gossett, Jr. For ultimate meta-ness, Louis Gossett's character from Iron Eagle has a long lost twin brother who is the Marine gunnery sergeant that trained the naval aviators in An Officer and a Gentlemen, and is now a consultant at Top Gun.

The two groups initially hate each other, but as the two Louis' first meet and come together as brothers, so do the aviators come to respect each other as comrades in arms. And that's when the USS McGuffin accidentally crosses into Faceless'Enemyistan's territory for a very conveniently timed crisis where the bad guys are nice enough to wait 24 hours before attacking so we can fly all of our best pilots on their mighty wings into the danger zone to play with the boys.

You know what, screw it. Have the bad guys fly a squadron of MiG-31 Firefoxes while we're at it. First rule of Hollywood spending: why reboot one franchise when you can reboot three at thrice the price.

I would also suggest tossing in Airwolf and Blue Thunder trying to hunt the Red October while dodging that rogue drone from Deal of the Century. Anthony Edwards could technically play a completely different person since he looks so different. Perhaps a Navy doctor whose arrogant and rude colleague's arm first gets chopped off by Airwolf's tail rotor before Blue Thunder crashes on top of his head as he's about to be airlifted to the mainland. I'm worried though that more conventional audiences might consider that to be going a little overboard.

We can call it:

Top Chaff vs Iron Chaff: America or
Iron-Mav or
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny,
unless someone beat me to the punch on those too.

You forgot to throw in Danny Glover's character from Flight of the Intruder.

 

[Aragorn]

Jason Gedrick's character who died in Iron Eagle II was miraculously brought back in Iron Eagle IV (he actually ejected and was taken prisoner) played by a completely different actor who looked remarkably a lot like him.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Jason Gedrick's character who died in Iron Eagle II was miraculously brought back in Iron Eagle IV (he actually ejected and was taken prisoner) played by a completely different actor who looked remarkably a lot like him.

Awesome. I ducked out on the series after I saw that the third one was about Louis Gossett fighting drug cartels with WW2 fighters or something.

 

[Aragorn]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHP24dSM9ZM[/yt]

They even reshot the Iron Eagle II opening scene, only it was totally different.

I watched the first three movies, but I couldn't sit through this fourth one. It was straight-to-DVD and must've had the budget of Iron Eagle I's catering.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Get Samuel Jackson and you get Snakes on A Fighter Plane

 

[Mr. Adventure]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHP24dSM9ZM[/yt]

They even reshot the Iron Eagle II opening scene, only it was totally different.

I watched the first three movies, but I couldn't sit through this fourth one. It was straight-to-DVD and must've had the budget of Iron Eagle I's catering.

Which one had those turrets they had to take out?

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Iron Eagle II was a mess, I liked I and III. Didn't even know about a fourth one and by the looks of it, I didn't miss anything.

if IE II did anything wrong it was killing off the kid from IE I right at the beginning in an F-4... my god.

 

[T'Girl]

[You forgot to throw in Danny Glover's character from Flight of the Intruder.

Since Marine Corp pilots fly off of Navy carriers, can we include Pappy Boyington too? Robert Conrad might like the work.

 

[Aragorn]

Which one had those turrets they had to take out?

I watched the first three movies when I was a kid, so I don't really remember them, but I think Iron Eagle II's climatic mission had a joint ground and aerial assault... and I think Chappy was leading the ground team? Or maybe that was the third one because I know they had a combat chick character who didn't fly. And since they were flying WWII planes against modern aircraft, they probably needed a ground team.

 

[Star Wolf]

Which one had those turrets they had to take out?

I watched the first three movies when I was a kid, so I don't really remember them, but I think Iron Eagle II's climatic mission had a joint ground and aerial assault... and I think Chappy was leading the ground team? Or maybe that was the third one because I know they had a combat chick character who didn't fly. And since they were flying WWII planes against modern aircraft, they probably needed a ground team.

II had a US Soviet team ground and air assualt. With Israeli F4s standing in for some MIG providing top cap and Israeli F16 standing in for USAF doing the bombing

 

[Captaindemotion]

This movie has snagged some X-Men: First Class writers

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=83213

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ They also wrote "Thor" I believe. I would only be interested in this if Tom Cruise agrees to do the Maverick cameo. It would be great if he were an instructor but I can't really see Maverick as an instructor even in his later years.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Mav is sitting at the bar in Fightertown when the two new instructors enter the bar and walk up to him:

"We need you to come back an..."

"Fuck off."

 

[Admiral_Young]

LOL.

 

[Broccoli]

So, will this movie ignore Top Gun: The Last Stand?

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ I bet that will be the title

 

[BoxWhatBox]

My quick plot. Relations between China and the United States and have degenerated following the global economic collapse. Instead of using the its economic might to influence the world, a diminished China has started to expand militarily. The United States, of course, sends carriers in to dissuade China from its course. Tension is high.

Simultaneously, the first squadron of F-35 B/C fighters are finishing up advance flight combat school before being deployed. Lots training flights showing off the advance features of the jet against UAF F-22s and Navy F/A-18s. Included in the squadron is a young female pilot named "Mother Goose" who arrived a few months after her father's death. My first choice would be an Amanda Bines/Anne Hathaway type, not the typical Jessica Beil model.

Midway through, a Chinese missile boat explodes and sinks, apparently, due to faulty missile system. America denies any involvement despite having fighters in the general area of the ship. China retaliates by using their stealth aircraft to kill a frigate and boom a bad situation has become a shooting war.

The F-35s are deployed forward to the USS Ronald Reagan to help counter the stealth threat from China while the state department does it thing. Ice Man or Maverick would be the Admiral in charge of the carrier group.

Mother Goose and her wing-man/love interest "Grimmy" catch a squadron of Chinese stealth fighters crossing over international waters on a possible attack run against the Gipper. They engage... missile flies and our heroes win the engagement.

They land, much celebrating, at the very end we find out the carrier Stennis was nearly sank and all out war with China is very likely. Credits & Sequel.

Another option for Maverick - have him flying a 747 that is shot down by a Chinese missile boat because an F/A-18 pilot was shadowing it (killing civilians) as the catalyst for the 35s being moved.