Not really seeing it. However trying to see it led me to notice something heinous at 1:08 : he’s got the standard pair of Sidewinders on the wingtips, fine, but what are those hanging off the external pylons ? Are those… those are Paveways, aren’t they. Maverick’s become a ground pounder ?! shakes head shameful shit.
The back seat of an F-18 flying 1v2 against F-16s makes every carnival ride I’ve ever been on combined feel tame. One of the best experiences of my life. I’ll watch this for the same reason I watched the first one, Airplanes going fast!
From and old SDMB thread:
One thing I saw that I doubt anyone else here will be as excited about as me…
Midway through the trailer, Maverick pulls the sheet off his old GPZ900R Ninja, and I felt like I should stand and put my hand over my heard in salute to one of the old titans of the sportbike world. Then, in the very next shot, where he’s recreating the ride along the runway, he’s riding a new Kawasaki H2. 250MPH supercharged madness!
What’s with the scenes featuring a high-altitude pressure suit (see and 0:53 and 1:58 in which you can see the suit’s collar, at 1:23 with helmet on)? Other people are wondering, too. Here’s more photos of the suit. Are they putting him in a U2?
Not a U2, maybe the Navy answer to a A-12
I guess the Tomcats must be CGI, as all of ours were crushed and melted so that a certain non-friendly adversary would be lacking for spare parts.
Whenever I hear that music I’m back playing the Nintendo game, trying to dock with that damned flying tanker.
PTSD intensifies
I feel the need, the need for Motrin
Judging from all those snow-capped mountains I think those no-goodnik Swiss are at it again.
There might be a little bit of interest in the movie, already about 13.5 million hits on the trailer.
And according to Tom Cruise (apparently he premiered this the other day at Comi-Con) all of the flying shots are real. No CGI.
The problem with CGI is that, because everyone knows it is very good, if they don’t know how a shot could be produced with real objects, they assume it is CGI.
The way I would shoot the scene you are talking about is out the back of a C130 with a fair amount of zoom on the camera. No need for camera drones or extreme closure rates.
Japanese and Taiwanese flags were present on Maverick’s jacket in the original movie. They have been removed for this one.
So based on his rank (O-6/Captain), Maverick is one of a handful of things on the carrier. The captain of the ship, the XO of the ship, the CAG (commander of the Carrier Air Group), or the Deputy CAG. All of them are typically O-6 billets, and the CAG/DCAG fly fairly regularly.
But Maverick’s age is the real problematic thing… Tom Cruise is 57, which made him the right age (maybe even a tad young) for Maverick in 1986. But it makes him positively ancient for an O-6 in the real world- and Ed Harris’ character points that out. If you look at real-world things- the O-6es in charge of carriers are typically in their mid-late 40s. THe OLDEST officers in the military are Cruise’s age- the USN Chief of Staff is 59, and is a 4 star Admiral, for example.
Meanwhile, they have Jon Hamm wearing 3 stars; that’s quite a bit higher rank than a 48 year old would typically hold in today’s military.
I’m curious how they resolve/explain this.
[Moderating]
Walken After Midnight, while NSFW links are allowed here, they must comply with the two-click rule: A reader must have to click at least twice before seeing the NSFW material. The easiest way to do this is to put the link in a spoiler box, as I have done.
To be fair, Tom Skerritt was, what, 52 and, James Tolkan 54, when TOP GUN came out with them playing O-5, right?
Sure, but we don’t know how old their characters were supposed to be.
Maverick pretty much had to be Cruise’s age, more or less when the movie came out, which means that his character is 33 years older.
I mean, had they decided to cast another mid-50s actor and say he was an O-6 in charge of the carrier, it wouldn’t matter; you could hand wave that away and say he just looks old.
But Maverick has 33 years of interim time between the movie and now, and I wouldn’t think that could be waved away easily.
Did the story in the original Top Gun take place in the year the movie was released? Will the story in the sequel take place in the year it’ll be released?
I’m wondering what airplane type they’re using as the foreign aggressor type. It needs to be something obscure enough to be unknown to 90% of the viewing public, but common enough to arrange for an American studio to be flyable for all of the movie shots (e.g. we ain’t getting an SU-xx planes).
I’m putting my money on JAS39 Gripens, painted brick red with yellow tiger stripes to look fierce. 
How much latitude could there really be? To squeeze it in, you’d have to have it set in 1989 and 2014.
I get the distinct impression from the first trailer that it’s present-day, and the original was probably not set 5 years in the future.