Tom Cruise refused to allow CGI in Top Gun 2 which means ALL the actors who played pilots had to be get used to flying at top speeds in an F-18
Tom Cruise ‘never thought’ a Top Gun sequel would happen.
The 57-year-old actor reprises his role as pilot Peter ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in the upcoming sequel Top Gun: Maverick, 34 years after starring in the original.
However, Tom admits that at first he struggled to envisage making a second movie. He told Empire: ‘Everywhere I went, people would be like, “Do Top Gun”, and I’m like, “Guys, I don’t know how to do it.”
He’s back: Tom Cruise ‘never thought’ a Top Gun sequel would happen but he agreed when they decided to use no CGI, he told Empire
Back for more: The 57-year-old actor reprises his role as pilot Peter ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in the upcoming sequel Top Gun: Maverick, 34 years after starring in the original
‘I don’t know what the story is. I don’t make movies just to make movies. I was like, Jerry (Bruckheimer, producer), it’s never going to happen. I honestly never thought I would make it.’
The Mission: Impossible star wanted to make the movie cinematically authentic and avoid using CGI.
Tom explained: ‘We just started talking. And I realized that there were things that we could accomplish cinematically.
How to do it? Tom admits that at first he struggled to envisage making a second movie. He told Empire: ‘Everywhere I went, people would be like, “Do Top Gun”, and I’m like, “Guys, I don’t know how to do it”‘
‘And I started getting excited about this big challenge of, How do we do it? So I said to Jerry, “I’ll do it if…” meaning, I’m not going to do the CGI stuff.’
Jerry Bruckheimer also returns to produce the motion picture having served in the same role for the original and has said Tom wanted his co-stars, including Miles Teller and Glen Powell, to experience piloting the planes.
The 76-year-old producer said: ‘What’s different about this movie is that [in the original Top Gun] we put the actors in the F-14s and we couldn’t use one frame of it, except some stuff on Tom, because they all threw up.
He had to suffer: All the actors, even Glen Powell, had to learn to act while at top speeds in an F-18 plane
‘It’s hysterical to see their eyes roll back in their heads. So everything was done on a gimbal. But in this movie, Tom wanted to make sure the actors could actually be in the F-18s.’
The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is a twin-engine, supersonic, all-weather, carrier-capable, multirole combat jet, designed as both a fighter and attack aircraft. One plane costs around $50M.
Tom added he warned the studio about how challenging the film would be to make.
He remarked: ‘I said to the studio, “You don’t know how hard this movie’s going to be. No-one’s ever done this before.” There’s never been an aerial sequence shot this way. I don’t know if there ever will be again, to be honest.’
The film is scheduled for release in the US on June 24.
Cruise is currently filming another Mission: Impossible movie in the UK.
He sure has a need for speed: Cruise is currently filming another Mission: Impossible movie in the UK; seen in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth film in the Mission Impossible franchise
