A new behind-the-scenes featurette from the Tom Cruise-starrer Top Gun: Maverick is out and shows the Hollywood superstar along with his co-actors in the film going through intense fighter jet pilot training sessions in order to present the best realism when audiences watch the film. Set to open in theatres on May 27, the upcoming film is a sequel to the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, which was directed by the late Tony Scott and has Cruise reprising his role as Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.
In the nearly three-minute video, we see Cruise and his co-stars open up about their flying experiences in fighter jets and the preparation they had undertaken for the film. The Mission: Impossible star says, "I wasn’t ready to make a sequel until we had a special story, worthy of a sequel, and until technology evolved so that we could delve deeper into the experience of a fighter pilot… We worked with the Navy and the Top Gun school to formulate how to shoot it practically. Because if we’re going to do it, we’re going to fly in the F-18s."
Cruise is known to be a proponent of indulging in hands-on action on the sets of his films and the efforts for the aerial footage for Top Gun: Maverick once again show him to maintain a high priority in capturing sequences as real as possible. The footage also shows actors experiencing intense gravitational force when they are inside the fighter jets, while also undergoing underwater exercises apart from their pilot training. Cruise, who played an instrumental role in designing the training module said, "I started them out in single-engine airplanes, to build out their spacial awareness inside the aircraft. Next, we took them to the L-39, and they went and flew aerobatics to feel what it’s like in a jet."
Top Gun: Maverick is set to be screened first at CinemaCon and the Cannes Film Festival before its hits theatres and has Tom Cruise sharing screen space alongside Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis with Ed Harris and Val Kilmer.
Below is the official synopsis for Top Gun: Maverick:
"After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose.” Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it."
Watch the Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick - Most Intense Film Training Ever featurette below:
