Top Gun:Maverick
- Thread starter Jedi Marso
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I stand corrected!
Cruise actually did fly the P-51 at the end of the movie. I believe it is actually something he personally owns and has had a pilots license since the 90s.
All the F-18's were flown by navy pilots. They were two-seat F-18s with the cast member in the back-seat.
I did see some articles saying Tom Cruise flew a helicopter in the movie, but I'm not sure that is confirmed.
Kilmer has throat cancer in real life, so he had to quit acting and it is the reason for his very limited but also very moving and emotional scene.
That's true, there is enough promo material for the movie on Youtube and also exactly this and Cruise had to teach the actors how to film themselves since obviously no one else was up there with them to do it ( and the actual pilot had some pilot shit to do).
Yes, that is his own P-51 and him actually flying it.
I actually enjoyed it - the movie is of course predictable as all his action blockbusters but that's not the point. It is a very good blend of callbacks to the first movie but just the right amount and bringing in new blood and a new story. Loved his scene with Iceman/Val Kilmer though it makes me sad to see Kilmer in that state.
What really got my out of my seat though was when Maverick was shot down and then Rooster, Goose's son. I knew from the trailer that an F-14 would make an appearance so i put two and two together in a second and just went no way!
Maverick and the son of his best friend together in an F-14 dogfighting! 
That i really didn't expect but it was the most awesome part of the entire movie. Realistically absolute bullshit but who cares
All considered as sequels go this wasn't bad.
Saw it again tonight for the second time. Every bit as awesome as the first time, and I caught more of the dialogue since I wasn't dialed up to level 11 like I was on the first viewing. 
That would be my guess too for the F35 but also in a real world setting with the exact parameters i think the Navy would have still chosen the F18. The F35 isn't as nimble as the F18 and Fat Amy's strengths are not close in bombing missions. Given that they would have been fired at once they exit the crater the pilots would be dead in an F35.
Second is while well made special effects make them near indistinguishable from the real thing nowadays ( especially in fast action scenes) you can't SFX the actual G-Force effects on the pilots ( and actors), it was really cool to see the actors actually use special breathing techniques while being at high G - that's how you sell a movie.
Absolute greatest part was the end though - while the mission itself was tense and very engaging the real payoff came afterwards. Maverick down and as soon as Rooster went down and they met it took me just a second to go No Way! In the trailer they have an F14, the enemy clearly was Iran which currently has the last airworthy F14s in the world ( the US completely scrapped theirs so spare parts couldn't reach Iran) and it was now Maverick and Goose's son on the ground looking for a way to escape.
That scene launched me out of my seat - the F14 get's one last hurrah with Maverick at the controls and his best friend's son in the backseat - it can't get much better than that. The dogfights in the F14 were cool and i am more than happy to ignore the fact that an F14 would be smoked by an SU-57 Felon, no matter who's at the helm ( it's simple physics and and about 40-50 years of engineering later). However i didn't care and i was grinning for 10 minutes straight.
As summer blockbusters go this one is an A.
Best time I’ve had at the movies for a LONG time. This was a perfect, throwback action drama. It looked and sounded amazing and it was a delight from start to finish. It’s nice to see a big movie that isn’t Marvel or Star Wars, isn’t cynical or self-conscious, and just lets itself have fun.
10/10
Genuinely think it’s my favorite movie in 10 years.
And the fact that the F-14 makes a legit appearance in this movie is just icing on an already awesome cake. LOVE IT
10/10
Genuinely think it’s my favorite movie in 10 years.
And the fact that the F-14 makes a legit appearance in this movie is just icing on an already awesome cake. LOVE IT
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Kilmer's been cancer-free for a few years now but he has to plug a voice box into his trachea to speak. He's been in several movies, most of them direct-to-video, where he doesn't speak (Jay and Silent Bob Reboot) or gets dubbed over (The Snowman). Looks like he did use the voice box in a movie called The Birthday Cake.
Saw it tonight and loved it. It's pretty amazing what they achieved, particularly for a sequel made so long after the original. I liked the fact that while there are a lot of callbacks, it doesn't lean too heavily into the nostalgia and instead lets the movie breathe.
I rewatched the original in anticipation of this and the movie still looks really great all these years later. The color grading is excellent on it.
I rewatched the original in anticipation of this and the movie still looks really great all these years later. The color grading is excellent on it.
Lots of little accuracies in the new one, to counter-balance the hollywood stuff.
1. The laser code Bob dials in is actually a real one, but the default one used in DCS. Clever easter egg.
2. The manual wing sweep handle in the Tomcat cockpit was legit, right up to the plastic cover. The rest of the cockpit looked righteous as well.
3. The air cart, needing it to crank the F-14's motors, stowing the cockpit ladder, and pulling the pins on the weapons- all realistic stuff, and nice little touches.
4. This movie actually had the NATOPS manual in it! (Until it went in the trash)
Not so accurate:
1. The strike might as well have been a full alpha strike, if it was that critical. Tomahawks and JDAMS on the SAM sites as well as the airfield, F-35's flying backup on the ground strike and air cover, full TARCAP, plus everything we saw. The carrier carries 80 planes. Use 'em if you mean business- if you want to kick some ass, you better bring some ass.
2. The Tomcat wouldn't have made that takeoff roll with a full bag of gas, I don't think. But actual numbers were never given, so whatever.
3. GPS blackout or not, the F-35 could have flown the strike. We all get why that didn't happen in this feature. No worries.
4. When Rooster finally reset the CB in the Tomcat, he turned on the AWG-9, not the radios.
5. TOPGUN is at Fallon, not North Island. North Island is a helo base these days. Fighter Weapons School is not even TOPGUN anymore, although dogfighting is part of the overall graduate Strike Warfare syllabus. San Diego is way more sexy than Fallon, however, so there you have it. I Iived at NAS Fallon in 9th grade and it was a dusty nowhere of 3000 people, but that was before the Strike Warfare Center was established there.
Anyway, I have the benefit of real world experience, but I didn't let that ruin it for me. LOVED the movie, just like I LOVED the original despite it having very little real-world connection to Naval Aviation. You don't get to buzz the tower even once, much less 5 times plus Penny Benjamin. Tell you what, though, Jack- the original did more for Navy recruiting during the Reagan era than every penny spent in the recruiting budget that year. In 1986 I already had my NROTC scholarship in hand, but the entire class showed up with Ray Bans, wanting to fly F-14's. God, I wish I could do it all over again.
1. The laser code Bob dials in is actually a real one, but the default one used in DCS. Clever easter egg.
2. The manual wing sweep handle in the Tomcat cockpit was legit, right up to the plastic cover. The rest of the cockpit looked righteous as well.
3. The air cart, needing it to crank the F-14's motors, stowing the cockpit ladder, and pulling the pins on the weapons- all realistic stuff, and nice little touches.
4. This movie actually had the NATOPS manual in it! (Until it went in the trash)
Not so accurate:
1. The strike might as well have been a full alpha strike, if it was that critical. Tomahawks and JDAMS on the SAM sites as well as the airfield, F-35's flying backup on the ground strike and air cover, full TARCAP, plus everything we saw. The carrier carries 80 planes. Use 'em if you mean business- if you want to kick some ass, you better bring some ass.
2. The Tomcat wouldn't have made that takeoff roll with a full bag of gas, I don't think. But actual numbers were never given, so whatever.
3. GPS blackout or not, the F-35 could have flown the strike. We all get why that didn't happen in this feature. No worries.
4. When Rooster finally reset the CB in the Tomcat, he turned on the AWG-9, not the radios.
5. TOPGUN is at Fallon, not North Island. North Island is a helo base these days. Fighter Weapons School is not even TOPGUN anymore, although dogfighting is part of the overall graduate Strike Warfare syllabus. San Diego is way more sexy than Fallon, however, so there you have it. I Iived at NAS Fallon in 9th grade and it was a dusty nowhere of 3000 people, but that was before the Strike Warfare Center was established there.
Anyway, I have the benefit of real world experience, but I didn't let that ruin it for me. LOVED the movie, just like I LOVED the original despite it having very little real-world connection to Naval Aviation. You don't get to buzz the tower even once, much less 5 times plus Penny Benjamin.
Tell you what, though, Jack- the original did more for Navy recruiting during the Reagan era than every penny spent in the recruiting budget that year. In 1986 I already had my NROTC scholarship in hand, but the entire class showed up with Ray Bans, wanting to fly F-14's. God, I wish I could do it all over again.
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This movie is strictly Hollywood.
The U.S. military has an "up or out" policy (either you get promoted or you leave).
A friend of mine is a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel. Once you get to full-bird Colonel and above, there's a lot of politicking involved. She left after deciding that she didn't want to play that game.
You don't stay a Captain for thirty-six years.
The U.S. military has an "up or out" policy (either you get promoted or you leave).
A friend of mine is a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel. Once you get to full-bird Colonel and above, there's a lot of politicking involved. She left after deciding that she didn't want to play that game.
You don't stay a Captain for thirty-six years.
True. And no commissioned officer of any rank can pull someone's application to a service academy. System doesn't work like that.
The odd thing to me is that they let it be in the present day. This story could have been told in any timeframe after the original, so why not have it be 2006 instead of 2022? That would have been right in the wheelhouse for Mav to be a captain and put Rooster at about 25 years old or so.
Hell, the way they actually did it, Rooster would probably have outranked Maverick!
Still loved it, though.
Hell, the way they actually did it, Rooster would probably have outranked Maverick!
Still loved it, though.
The movie was in development Hell?
There was an interesting discussion I heard that proposed that you could actually see segments from the film's earlier incarnations in the final product; the opening sequence, with the "Drone Ranger" Admiral who never shows up again would be from the first version of Top Gun 2 from the mid-2000s, where Cruise was expected to have little more than a cameo, then the middle section was from the 2010s "passing the torch" version of the film, focusing more on the younger cast, and then finally we had the movie they actually made at the end, where Maverick gets back in the saddle and shows all those kids how its done for real.
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Yeah, baby! Who buys the movie tickets and takes the kids? DAD. That's right! All us Gen-X dads were pumping our fists at the screen, hootin' and hollerin', and yelling at those $#%*%$*# Millennials and Gen-Zr's to get off our lawns!
This is the perfect time to make Iron Eagle V, especially since Iron Eagle IV retconned the beginning of Iron Eagle II and brought Doug Masters back from the dead.
Surprised Fire Birds was the only attempt to copy Top Gun in the wake of Top Gun's success. There was that short-lived TV show Supercarrier too.
Surprised Fire Birds was the only attempt to copy Top Gun in the wake of Top Gun's success. There was that short-lived TV show Supercarrier too.
