THE SKY’S THE LIMIT
For a sequel to a film built around the need for speed, Top Gun: Maverick has been a long time coming. Recent additional delays caused by the pandemic mean that this sequel is finally touching down 35 years (almost to the date) after the original. That’s a long wait for fans who’ve been clamouring for more since Tony Scott’s fighter-pilot drama took their breath away in 1986. But, Maverick, true to his call sign, has never played by the rules.
“Originally, I wasn’t interested in doing a sequel,” star and producer Tom Cruise tells Total Film, speaking from South Africa where he’s readying his next Mission: Impossible (a franchise for which he’s managed five sequels and counting since 1996). Top Gun was the highest-grossing film of 1986, and confirmed Cruise’s movie-star status, but despite the demand, he was hesitant. “All over the whole world, people were asking for it, and asking for it. [Producers Don] Simpson and [Jerry] Bruckheimer – I remember back in ’87, they had an idea. It was the germ of the idea, actually, that ended up with the concept of [Top Gun: Maverick].”
That kernel was the relationship between Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell and Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, the son of Mav’s former Radar Intercept Officer, Nick Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), better known as Goose. Goose died in the first film during an ejection gone wrong, sending Maverick into a guilt-ridden crisis. But, explains Cruise, “Just through time, the story was never right. I don’t do things just to do it.”
Cruise was also waiting for the technology to reach a certain point to enable him to bring the audience into the cockpit, “to put the audience inside that F/A-18”.
The sequel idea never really went away. “I had lots of discussions for years with Tony, with Jerry, with McQ [Christopher McQuarrie] about it, and when I was doing Oblivion, talking to Joe [Kosinski, director],” continues Cruise. “I just had to wait for that right moment. And I realised it was either going to be now or never. And basically, I liked the concept of the idea. And I was like, ‘Alright…’”
“We certainly played around with it,” says producer Bruckheimer of the decades-long development process. “But we never solved the problem of how to make another film.” Things kicked up a notch when Bruckheimer and Cruise met with Joseph Kosinski in Paris, during the shooting of Mission: Impossible – Fallout. “Joe had an idea for the movie,” explains Bruckheimer matter-of-factly. “And Tom loved the idea. And we loved it. So that’s where it all started.”
Joseph Kosinski (, ) was perhaps fated to direct ; the crew t-shirts on his first Cruise collaboration, , featured a spin on the logo. “It definitely must have been in the back of the mind,” smiles Kosinski.
