Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick is a 2022 American action drama film directed by Joseph Kosinski and written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie, from a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks. In this sequel to the 1986 film Top Gun, Tom Cruise reprises his starring role as the naval aviator Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. The ensemble cast also features Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer. The story involves Maverick confronting his past while training a group of younger Top Gun graduates, including the son of his deceased best friend, for a dangerous mission.
Development of a Top Gun sequel was announced in 2010 by Paramount Pictures. Cruise, along with co-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott, were asked to return. Craig wrote a draft of the screenplay in 2012, but the project stalled when Scott died later that year. Top Gun: Maverick was later dedicated to Scott's memory. Production resumed in 2017, after Kosinski was hired to direct. Principal photography, which involved the use of IMAX-certified 6K full-frame cameras, took place from May 2018 to April 2019 in California, Washington, and Maryland. The film's complex action sequences—and later the COVID-19 pandemic—delayed its release, which was initially scheduled for July 12, 2019. During the pandemic, several streaming companies attempted to purchase the streaming rights to the film from Paramount, but all offers were declined on the orders of Cruise, who insisted that it should be released exclusively in theaters.
Top Gun: Maverick premiered at CinemaCon on April 28, 2022, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 27 by Paramount Pictures. The film was widely praised by critics, with many deeming it superior to its predecessor. It was named one of the top ten films of 2022 by the National Board of Review and by the American Film Institute and nominated for six awards at the 95th Academy Awards, winning Best Sound. Top Gun: Maverick grossed $1.496 billion worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2022 and the highest-grossing film of Cruise's career. A sequel is in development.
Plot
More than 30 years after graduating from the Top Gun training school, United States Navy Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is a decorated test pilot whose insubordination has kept him from flag rank. When Rear Admiral Chester "Hammer" Cain plans to cancel Maverick's "Darkstar" scramjet-powered hypersonic aircraft program, Maverick manages to reach the final target speed, but the prototype is destroyed when he cannot resist pushing beyond Mach 10. Cain tells Maverick that Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Maverick's friend and former Top Gun rival, now commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, has had Maverick assigned to the Top Gun school at NAS North Island, keeping his career alive for now.The Navy has been ordered to destroy an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant in an unnamed foreign country before it becomes operational. The plant, located in an underground bunker at the end of a canyon, is defended by surface-to-air missiles, GPS jammers, fifth-generation Su-57 fighters, and F-14 Tomcats. With the GPS spoofing making an attack by the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II unfeasible, Maverick devises a plan employing two pairs of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets armed with laser-guided bombs. However, instead of participating in and leading the mission himself, Maverick is ordered to train elite Top Gun graduates who will complete the mission, assembled by Air Boss Vice Admiral Beau "Cyclone" Simpson, who barely tolerates Maverick's presence in deference to Iceman.
Maverick dogfights with his skeptical students, winning their respect, while talented but cocky and rude Lieutenant Jake "Hangman" Seresin clashes with likable but cautious Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw—son of Maverick's deceased best friend and radar intercept officer Nick "Goose" Bradshaw. Maverick reunites with former girlfriend Penny Benjamin and reveals his promise to Rooster's dying mother that Rooster would not become an aviator. Rooster, unaware of this, resents Maverick for blocking his Naval Academy application and blames him for Goose's death. Faced with selecting Rooster for the mission, Maverick confides in Iceman, who tells him, "It's time to let go" and reassures him that both the Navy and Rooster need Maverick.
Iceman soon dies from terminal cancer, and Cyclone removes Maverick as instructor. Believing Maverick's plan is impossible to execute, Cyclone relaxes the mission parameters, allowing for theoretically easier execution but predictably resulting in the pilots' deaths. During Cyclone's announcement, Maverick makes an unauthorized flight through the course, completing it in less time than stated in his original mission parameters, proving it can be done. Cyclone reluctantly appoints him as team leader.
Maverick flies the lead F/A-18E, accompanied by a buddy-lasing F/A-18F flown by Lieutenant Natasha "Phoenix" Trace and weapon systems officer Lieutenant Robert "Bob" Floyd. Rooster leads the second strike pair, which includes Lieutenant Reuben "Payback" Fitch and WSO Lieutenant Mickey "Fanboy" Garcia. The four jets launch from an aircraft carrier, and Tomahawk cruise missiles destroy the enemy air base. The teams destroy the plant, but the SAMs open fire during their escape. Rooster runs out of countermeasures, and Maverick sacrifices his plane to protect him. Believing Maverick dead, all jets are ordered back to the carrier, but Rooster disobeys and returns to find Maverick on the ground being pursued by an Mi-24 attack helicopter. After destroying the gunship, Rooster is shot down by a SAM and ejects. The two rendezvous and commandeer an F-14 from the damaged air base, destroying the landing gear in the process. Maverick and Rooster destroy two intercepting Su-57s, but a third attacks as they run out of ammunition and countermeasures. Hangman, who was the mission's emergency action pilot, unexpectedly arrives in time to shoot it down, and the planes return safely to a jubilant flight deck.
Later, Rooster helps Maverick work on his P-51 Mustang. Afterward, Rooster looks at a photo of their mission's success, pinned alongside a photo of his late father and a young Maverick, as Penny and Maverick fly off in the P-51.
Cast
, Meg Ryan, as well as Aaron and Adam Weis appear as the Bradshaw family in archive footage from Top Gun, along with Kelly McGillis as Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood.Production
Development
In 1990, during the promotion of Born on the Fourth of July, Tom Cruise dismissed the notion of a sequel to Top Gun as "irresponsible". Paramount Pictures began development on the film in 2010 after making offers to Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott to create a sequel to Top Gun with Cruise reprising his role. When asked about his idea for a new Top Gun film, Scott replied, "This world fascinated me, because it's so different from what it was originally. But I don't want to do a remake. I don't want to do a reinvention. I want to do a new movie." It was reported that the film would focus on the end of the dogfighting era, the role of drones in modern aerial warfare, and would see Cruise's character, Maverick, fly an F/A-18E Super Hornet. Following Scott's death in 2012, the sequel's future became uncertain, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer remained committed to the project, especially given interest expressed by Cruise and Val Kilmer.Cruise revealed in June 2017 that the sequel would be titled Top Gun: Maverick, noting that he did not want a number in the title. He added that the film is "going to be a competition film, similar to the first one", but clarified it as "a progression for Maverick". By July 2017, Joseph Kosinski was announced as the director, after previously collaborating with Cruise on Oblivion. Kosinski met with Cruise on the set of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, providing a lookbook, a poster, and a title, Top Gun: Maverick, prior to his hiring. Cruise then contacted Jim Gianopulos and requested to make the film.
On June 19, 2019, at CineEurope in Barcelona, attendees were given a first look at some early footage of the film from a special Paramount presentation which ended with the Paramount President of International Theatrical Distribution Mark Viane and co-president of Worldwide Marketing and Distribution Mary Daily appearing in full flight gear. In 2019, China's Tencent invested 12.5% of the film but later pulled out of the project at the end of that year over concerns that the film's themes could anger the Chinese government.
Writing
By mid-2010, Christopher McQuarrie received an offer to write the sequel's screenplay, which was rumored to have Cruise's character Maverick in a smaller role. The following year, Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz were credited as screenwriters on the project. The studio would later move onto Peter Craig to draft a new script under Scott's direction in March 2012. However, the project unexpectedly stalled due to Scott's suicide in August of that year. Scott had apparently finalized the script and begun scouting locations with him and Cruise touring Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, a week before his death. The Hollywood Reporter said the Top Gun sequel was one of three directing projects in "advanced development". In March 2014, Bruckheimer said the filmmakers were taking a new approach, which involved pilots being rendered obsolete by drones.In September 2014, the sequel was officially revived. Justin Marks entered negotiations to write the screenplay. Marks said that the sequel to Top Gun was his "dream project" and that the original was "an iconic film in his memory" that inspired him to write screenplays. He researched the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to gain insight into "how Top Gun would be represented in the current period".
During scripting discussions in Paris in 2017, where Cruise was shooting for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Kosinski pitched two ideas to Cruise. The first focused on the severed relationship between Maverick and Goose's son, set against a dangerous combat mission. The second focused on Maverick's current place in the Navy as part of the "Darkstar" program and the secrecy surrounding it. With Kosinski in place as director, Only the Brave screenwriter Eric Warren Singer boarded the film to rewrite the script by August 2017. In October 2018, McQuarrie, a frequent collaborator of Cruise, was brought in for rewrites during production. McQuarrie opted to mostly ignore the first film during the writing process in order to make a film that could stand on its own merits without trying to outdo the original. He also flew with the Blue Angels in preparation. By January 2020, final screenplay credits were given to Ehren Kruger, Singer, and McQuarrie, while story credit was attributed to Craig and Marks.