If 2022 has been defined by one film, it has been the runaway critical and box-office success of “Top Gun: Maverick”.
A big part of that success was filmmaker Joseph Kosinski and actor/producer Tom Cruise’s insistence on doing whatever they could practice with the actors really in cockpits flying through the various locations at high speeds.
In a new piece just published by Empire who is looking back at the year so far, Kosinski revealed that the most dangerous scene they shot for the film was the fast flight through the mountains during training.
Specifically, the scene required the pilots to go through a low and curvy path very fast, and it was agreed early on these flights would be practical. As a result, real-life Navy pilot Frank ‘Walleye’ Weisser flew the course with Cruise in the backseat. How difficult was it? It sounds like they were lucky to get it on the first take:
“That was the most extreme thing we shot in the film, just in terms of the practicality of what you’re actually seeing on screen. It’s all in-camera, it’s Tom Cruise at 550 knots, going 30 feet above ground through the Toiyabe [Canyon] low-level training grounds.
That’s a real Top Gun training thing, but they never fly as low as he does. After they landed, Walleye came up to me and said, ‘Did you get it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think we did.’ He said, ‘Good because I’m never doing that again.'”
In other words, what they did was a highly dangerous challenge physically and mentally to those involved. Cruise may be an exception to that rule, as Kosinski explained he was loving it:
“He would have done it 100 more times! In fact, I smile because when I watch that sequence, he’s wincing through the Gs, but I know under the mask he’s smiling for most of it because he’s having the time of his life.”
The results paid off with cinematic scenes that will never be recreated on film again. Cruise ain’t slowing down on the action though, with “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One” on the way next Summer.
