The first trailer has been released for the sequel to Top Gun (1986), entitled Top Gun: Maverick.
Looks like the Navy might have reduced the hourly rates they charge for use of their aircraft. Not much indications of what the plot might be yet, but the few clues we’re given make it look a lot like the the previous movie, with a much older Tom Cruise. “Iceman”/Val Kilmer’s in it, although I didn’t notice him in the trailer, as are Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm and Ed Harris.
Saw that trailer earlier today. If I had heard that Topper Gun was being made, I forgot about it.
Cool. Top Gun is one of my shameful faves. As is Sky Fighters - another movie that’s dumb as shit but the flying and dogfighting scenes are just out of this world. No CGI whatsoever either.
Good to see they are keeping the homoerotic undertones of the original.
I presume that Cruise is an instructor now, and they’ll have some new hot young thing to be the pilot who doesn’t play by the rules.
I’m not sure you can assume that any particular scene has real aircraft in it. Except maybe for a scene of a pilot climbing the ladder into the cockpit, it’s probably cheaper now to do that all in computer graphics, and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
I think it would be pretty cool if, in this movie, it turned out that one of the original pilots was gay, probably either “Iceman” or his wingman “Slider”.
First thoughts: Looks a lot better than Emmerich’s Midway, the inflight cinematography looks absolutely gorgeous!
Music is a great call back to the original.
Only negative… F-18’s will never be as cool as the old swingwing Tomcats. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t turn down a ride in a Hornet, they are pretty little airplanes, but the Tomcat, well, I’ll let a better write than I describe it:
They were all gay - in the movie and in real life.
Yup.
My take away from the trailer was what great shape Cruise has kept himself in, compared to what Kilmer and even Meg Ryan look like today.
Looked up and am glad to see Michael Ironside and Tom Skerritt are still alive.
erm didnt the “top gun” academy close down in the 90s ?
It is still around, it was moved to Nevada from San Diego
Not likely; there’s plenty of CGI apparent in the trailer, which was inevitable, but is disappointing. CGI is getting really good these days, but there are still a lot of details that get left out, and some that just seem wrong. Special effects were necessary even in the first movie for a few scenes (most notably the impossible canopy-to-canopy scene), but the vast majority of the flight sequences featured actual aircraft.
Tom Cruise’s demeanor/acting in the trailer is notably different from the original movie. Not sure whether he’s deliberately portraying an aged fighter pilot, or if it’s just that he himself has matured as an actor. He seems a lot closer to his Jack Reacher character than to the original Maverick character.
Gotta keep this one away from the girlfriend she may climax.
If the CGI is detectable, that’s disappointing. They don’t lack the capability to get those details right; if there are details missing, it’s because they didn’t know to include them. Which means that they skimped on the technical consultants.
I don’t get the adoration for Top Gun.
…at all.
I think that (skimping on technical consultants) has almost always been a problem; for example, many movies feature aircraft with ridiculous thrust-to-weight ratios and otherworldly maneuverability. But another part is about using CGI for footage that you would never attempt to produce IRL because it would be too hazardous, in which case you think “that’s gotta be CGI because they would never try to get that footage IRL.” See e.g in the trailer at 0:38; there’s no way they’re going to hover a camera drone and then fly a real aircraft within a few feet of it at a closure rate of several hundred knots.
The scene at 1:42 (three aircraft hustling upriver at treetop level) is questionable, too. They are exhibiting vapor cones indicative of transonic speed, but they don’t appear to be moving that fast. Not only that, but there’s snow and ice all around, so it’s a pretty cold day; there shouldn’t be enough moisture in the air to make the super-dense vapor cones that are visible in this sequence.
In some cases you can have all the right parts and pieces and movements, but something just doesn’t seem right, and it’s really difficult for anyone to say exactly what the problem is. See e.g. in the trailer at 1:00, when the engines are coming up to afterburner and the flight control surfaces are all being checked for movement. Contrast this with the matching sequence in the early moments of the original movie (see here), and you can see what I mean. I can’t articulate the differences, but I’d bet money that that scene in the new trailer is CGI.
Gladwell’s book Blink covers this sort of thing, explaining why people can quickly make assessments like this, even when they can’t explain why.
Do you not like planes at all? Or do you like planes, but just not Top Gun?
Despite using real planes for the flight sequences in the original, I never thought the aerial combat scenes were very good. The planes that were supposed to be fighting each other were way too close together. I always assumed that they did that for cinematography reasons; two planes in a shot, trying to maneuver relative to each other, is more exciting than one plane on its own. From what I’ve read about air combat, though, the planes never get that close to each other, even when using their guns rather than missiles.
There was also a scene, I think it was Maverick’s first dogfight at the school, where they’re (Maverick and the adversary/instructor) flying around the rock outcroppings out in the desert. Then everybody goes way up high, then back down, and Maverick gets dressed down for violating the minimum altitude. As a wise dog once said, it just don’t add up.
There is a brief shot of an F-14 at the end of the trailer.
Does this mean there will be a Hot Shots Trois?! That officially makes fun of all this nostalgia porn?