10 Behind-the-Scenes Facts You Might Not Know About ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

The Flight Scenes Were Shot Around Real Navy Operations

To get A-lister/notorious daredevil Cruise onboard, Kosinski agreed to shoot “Top Gun: Maverick” using real jets. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda discussed the aerodynamic challenges of “Top Gun: Maverick” with IndieWire, and said, “Since my Navy technical guys had all seen the original ‘Top Gun,’ they got behind the idea of pulling out a lot of gear. We ended up fitting six cameras in the cockpit, including one that had about two-and-a-half inches clearance.”

During pre-production, Miranda and a small crew joined the USS Abraham Lincoln on a training mission. They captured jet take-offs and landings, as well as the flight deck and other ship details. Miranda consulted extensively with original “Top Gun” cinematographer Jeffrey L. Kimball to better understand the obstacles facing him aboard an aircraft carrier. 

“Kimball had issues where he couldn’t turn his carrier around,” Miranda explained. “I found the right people to talk to, and they would just spin the boat around for me. It doesn’t cost them anything. To be super clear, we were shooting around their missions — they weren’t launching jets for us. And I couldn’t aim towards the sun. But we could turn it this way or that way to get our shots.”

Shooting High-Speed Jets Required Predicting Weather Up to 50 Miles Away

Not only did Miranda have to account for Navy scheduling and the extreme physics of flight, but he also had to contend with changing coastal weather. To get those flight sequences, Miranda had to set his camera exposures before takeoff, and hope they’d prove the right choice in the air.

“I had to guess what the weather was 50 miles down the road,” he said. “I would look to the east where they were flying and see some clouds and maybe open up a third. Then wait, hold on, they’re going away. Or are the jets going 50 feet down into a canyon? Then go with this exposure. I have to say, I didn’t miss.”

Miranda also needed three days to capture the shot of Maverick on his motorcycle, racing down the runway, because it was “too overcast.” 

“We got one in the can,” the Academy Award winner said. “But we decided to go back. It had to be at a certain time of day so the jet crosses right through the sun.”

Another scene, in which Penny and Maverick go sailing, presented problems too when there wasn’t enough wind. Two attempts were made in San Diego and San Pedro, before the final version was captured in San Francisco.

“I was just sitting on the boat rocking with Tom,” Miranda laughed of the failed shoots. “The third time in San Francisco was great. I had one camera on the side of the boat in the front, I operated another camera on the boat next to them, and we had a helicopter as well… I was operating, and [Kosinski] was hanging onto the seat. It was a pretty massive day. We blew a spinnaker. We flooded the Libra head. We had the camera department running out panicking.”

The Darkstar Flyover Scene Was Shot Just Once and Destroyed a Set

In the scene where Maverick reaches Mach 10 in the Darkstar, he flies over Ed Harris’ Hammer right as he’s pulling up to the base gate. As the jet takes off, you can see the roof fly off the guard station: a perfect middle-finger moment that wasn’t planned. The stunt destroyed the set, and the only take Kosinski got is the one used in the film. 

“That’s kind of the entire point of what we did,” VFX production designer Ryan Tudhope told IndieWire of the film’s largely practical approach. “If you look at the other pathway, with probably a group of really talented visual effects designers, who are creating all of the shots in the computer, it ends up lacking a little bit of the happy accidents because it’s overly designed.”

He continued, “There’s all kinds of pitfalls to going down that methodology. Whereas by the very nature of having a real pilot in a real jet being filmed by another real pilot and a real camera operator and another real jet…you end up with these beautiful imperfections.”

Val Kilmer Had the Idea for Iceman to Share His Illness

Val Kilmer’s Iceman is an intrinsic and unforgettable part of the original “Top Gun,” and a sequel wouldn’t have been the same without him. Kilmer has battled complications from throat cancer for some time, and it was the actor’s idea to have the character share his illness onscreen. An AI-generated voice was used for his dialogue, and was fed hours of old footage of Kilmer to capture his tone and speaking cadence.

“Obviously, the idea of Iceman being an important part of Maverick’s journey was something we all wanted, but didn’t know what Val’s health struggles were,” Kosinski told IndieWire. “This was five years ago, so this was before the documentary [‘Val’].”

Kosinski explained, “[Producer] Jerry [Bruckheimer] and I met with Val. He came over to Jerry’s office and we sat down with him and just told him of our desire to figure out a way to get Iceman into the film. It was Val who came up with the idea that Iceman was sick too, so he could integrate into the story in a way that felt authentic and not something that we were trying to hide. And then this notion of Iceman being a guardian angel for Maverick, from the moment they have that handshake at the end of the first film, this idea that Iceman would rise through the ranks as the ideal Navy officer, which he was.”

Tom Cruise Regularly Consulted on Sound

Doubling as producer and star, Cruise consulted heavily across “Top Gun: Maverick” but spent extra time sharing his insights on the mixing stage. Supervising sound editor James Mather, who also works with Cruise on the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, told IndieWire that the actor’s lived stunt experience played a critical role in shaping how they layered the sounds pilots hear — from their own breath to the clicking of joystick manipulation — with explosive jet engine booms.

“On this one, in particular, it was such a personal project for him,” said Mather. “The responsibility and the pressure, I guess, for the success of it was pretty heavy on his shoulders. And I think he came to see us every other day. He’d be training in the day doing jumps and motorbike stunts for ‘Mission: Impossible,’ and then he’d come and sit with us [to edit ‘Top Gun: Maverick’]. He can use his memory of what it was like in [the cockpit], and so there are probably certain nuances, sounds that for him were important that maybe he wants to focus on. When he hears or feels the sound, depending on the volume of it, he has to trigger the same response that reminds him of that experience at the time.”

There Were Multiple Versions of the Beginning and Ending

Though the flight sequences were undeniably challenging, both Kosinski and Miranda told IndieWire another proved more difficult to get. The opening scene in Penny’s bar was filmed twice to establish a stronger relationship between Cruise and Jennifer Connelly’s characters. 

“[Joseph Kosinski] wanted a little bit more history between Penny and Maverick,” Miranda explained. “I wasn’t happy about my lighting on the first one. Instead of a bar packed with extras, for the second we could take people away. That let me use a little more side light and move it differently.” 

The ending was shot multiple times as well. In the final version, Maverick returns to his desert hangar and is joined by Rooster, Penny, and Amelia. 

“I actually shot a version where Phoenix was there too, and Phoenix is talking to Amelia about airplanes, and they’re looking at plane models and having this nice moment together,” Kosinski told IndieWire. “We had versions where Hondo [Bashir Salahuddin] was there, so it was more like a big family. At the end, we narrowed it down to just Rooster and Amelia.”

He continued, “At first, Maverick goes to the bar and Penny’s [Connolly] not there, which was a scene we played with both in and out [of the film]. I’m so glad we put it in, because it’s a great way to reveal Penny at the end of the film with Maverick. It just felt like the right ending. We open the film in the hangar and Maverick is alone, and we end with him in the hangar and he’s surrounded by family, a new family. That’s the journey we wanted to take Maverick on.”

Glen Powell Injured Himself Playing Football

Asked about his most memorable day on-set at the Critics’ Choice Awards, Kosinski told IndieWire, “One that I get asked about a lot, which was a very memorable day, was when we shot the beach football scene,” Kosinski said. The fan-favorite scene is an homage to the original’s campy beach volleyball sequence. 

“The actors were in a very kind of stressed out state, they’d all been working so hard to get ready for that scene,” he continued. “They were under pressure, the weight of the original scene being so iconic. I remember Glen went out 110 percent on the first play and hurt himself, but he was able to recover quickly and we were able to get a great version of it.”

The football scene was also reportedly shot twice at Cruise’s insistence. Powell was also in the running for Rooster (Miles Teller’s part), before getting cast as cocky fighter pilot, Hangman.

Miles Teller Got Sick from Jet Fuel in His Bloodstream

“Top Gun: Maverick” was so intense to shoot that Glen Powell told IndieWire he left out certain details about his training and filming out when talking to his mom. But it was Miles Teller’s family who were given serious reason to worry when the film’s second-lead suffered from blood poisoning after a flight. 

“We landed, and I thought, ‘Man, I’m not feeling too good,’” Teller revealed on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” in June 2022. “I was really hot and I just started itching like crazy. So I got out of the jet. I’m just covered in hives. Head to toe. I go to a doctor. I do a blood analysis. I’m in an oatmeal bath that night. I have sensitive skin anyway, truth be told, Irish-Scottish skin. No dyes, no nothing.”

Teller continued, “I go to set the next day and Tom‘s like, ‘How did it go Miles? What did they find?’” Teller continued. “I was like, ‘Well, Tom, it turns out I have jet fuel in my blood.’ And without even skipping a beat Tom goes ‘Yeah, I was born with it, kid. So that was a very Tom moment for me.”

Joseph Kosinski Claims the Unnamed Enemy to the U.S. Was… Canada?

“The answer is it’s Canada,” Kosinski joked with IndieWire, when asked about the film’s unnamed foreign adversary. “We didn’t want to make this a movie about geopolitics. It’s a competition film. It’s a film about friendship, about sacrifice. It’s a rite-of-passage story. It’s all those things. It’s not a movie about the current state of world events which, by the way, have changed so much from when we made the film. If we had even decided [a country when we made it], it probably would’ve been outdated. The idea was always to make the enemy faceless and nameless.”

The director continued, “That’s why in designing this third act, I put it in a world that was not identifiable as, I think, any of the places people are guessing. I liked the idea of putting it in a snowy region, so we shot it in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state to also invert the ‘Top Gun’ aesthetic, to get away from the San Diego sunsets and flip it on its head. To me, that was an exciting way to really change the feeling of the film and make it feel like we were somewhere far away. I know people look at the F-14 [enemy fighter jets] or the fifth-generation fighter jets or the landscape and try to piece it together, but it really is nowhere.”

Test Audiences Didn’t Have to See “Top Gun” to Love Its Sequel

In the same interview with IndieWire, Kosinski said he was relieved to learn audiences unfamiliar with the 1986 original were as onboard with its decades-in-the-making sequel as longterm fans. 

“We did a little bit of audience testing,” he said. “What was a surprise to us was, whether or not you had seen the first film, people were rating the film exactly the same. There was no difference between ‘Top Gun’ fans and non-‘Top Gun’ fans. I could have never anticipated that, but I do think people could potentially get more out of it if they’ve seen the first film.”