Open Post: Hosted By The New “Top Gun: Maverick” Recruits
As if we needed more proof that Top Gun 2: Bottoms Up is anything more than a very expensive video of Tom Cruise fapping into the wind, the film’s director, Joseph Kosinski, was interviewed for Entertainment Weekly and detailed the staggering lengths the production went to in order to make Tom feel good about himself. EW also revealed some new sepia toned cast photos which I guess are supposed to evoke feelings of nostalgia but really just expose the fact that the production of Top Gun 2: Rear Viewz has depleted the world’s supply of bronzer.
What with the constant reminders, it’s easy to forget that this movie doesn’t even come out until June, a full year later than it was originally scheduled to be released. That’s usually a bad sign. Another bad sign, Joseph’s only previous directing credits are that Tron reboot and Oblivion starring, you guessed it, America’s Ego, Tom Cruise.
There’s still no sign of Val Kilmer who is back as Iceman, or even a peek at Jon Hamm‘s thigh ham. But Joseph reveals that in Top Gun 2: Rock Bottom, the new pilots are all previous graduates of the Top Gun Academy instead of new recruits like they were in the original. The new gang featured here includes Danny Ramirez as “Fanboy,” Glen Powell as “Hangman,” Jay Ellis as “Payback,” Monica Barbaro as “Phoenix,” Lewis Pullman as “BOB,” and of course, Miles Teller as “Rooster”, Goose’s son from the original. And if all that isn’t manly enough for you, Maverick’s relationship with Rooster “forms the emotional core and spine of the film,” so while there may not be crying, I’m guessing there will be locker punching. Here are the Top Gun 2: Cheek2Cheek newbies.
As for the stunts, Joseph says that “Tom got to fulfill every kind of aviation dream that he had.” Joseph did not specifically mention if one of Tom’s dreams was the one he had about waking up mid-flight and seeing a gremlin outside the window, only the gremlin had his own face and was reading a copy of Dianetics, and when he called the flight attendant over to tell her, it was Leah Remini and she handed him an academy award and whispered “soon” in his ear, and he wasn’t sure if that meant he’d get an academy award soon, or if she was threatening him.
They all had to go through months of aerial training. We put them through a training course that Tom actually designed himself. He’s a licensed aerobatic pilot, and he was thrown into deep end when he did the first Top Gun without any training. So he knew that they would need to kind of work up to that level. So they started in Cessnas and then worked their way up aerobatic airplanes then into small single-engine jets before they were in the Super Hornet. Occasionally it made some of the actors sick and that even happens to experienced fighter pilots.”
One stunt, the one from the teaser trailer where Tom flies at super low altitude, required special permission from The US Navy, shattering the myth at the core of Maverick’s identity. Maverick is not supposed to ask for permission! It says so right there in his name. Joseph also says that Tom’s dream of “getting to do a real launch off a carrier and a real landing on a carrier” is a first in cinematic history. That’s ridiculous because Cher already did that, in heels AND fishnets! Tom only did his in heels, I’m sure. But I’d still like to see Tom try to pull off a stunt like this:
Pic: Paramount Pictures via Instagram