‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Director Talks Volleyball, F-18 And Tom Cruise

when will it continue Top Gun: MaverickLed by Joseph Kosinski and the film crew, we were told: “We said from the beginning that we didn’t want to be a cover group. best weapon. “

Dissident He sees Tom Cruise return to Title Naval Flight Academy to prepare new footage of the pilots, one of whom is the son of his late partner Goose (Anthony Edwards).

More than three and a half decades have passed since the original film was released in 1986, and due to a delay due to the pandemic, Dissident It waited another two years before it finally hit theaters on May 25th. Previously, the actors and band were on a world tour, filming at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. Premieres in San Diego, impressive screenings in Mexico City and London, plus a cruise line stop for the Cannes Film Festival Arch.

The director spoke before the festival premiere THR About adding women to the cockpit, installing cameras on the F-18s, and a question people keep reading about later (hint: it was volleyball).

What was your personal relationship like before making this movie? best weapon?

I saw it at the theater when I was 12 in Martial Town, Iowa, where I grew up. It was the ideal age to see this movie and I’ve always loved aviation, so it was in my interest. And it didn’t look like any blockbuster movie; Tony Scott had such a distinctive style. German [Bruckheimer, the producer] They took it out of art movies, so it looked different. There was this soundtrack that played all summer and everybody had a bomber jacket and a Ray-Ban.

What should be on your mind best weapon Continue?

The first thing Maverick did was leave here with Tom, who agreed to come back. After that, it’s ridiculous, because when people heard I was working on it, the most common question they asked me was, “Is there going to be a volleyball scene?” It was established from the start that there should be something similar in the movie. It was up to us to figure out how to incorporate that into our story, so we’re not just doing it for the sake of it. Our writing team did a great job solving this with dog football. And the party, Harold Faltermeier’s party, is so cultured to me. war of the galaxies, That’s why I wanted to start a movie like the first movie. Well, everyone says it’s the exact same thing. [start] Like the first movie, but not like that. I added “Men and women” to the opening paragraph. [Top Gun opens with a text card that explains how the Top Gun school was started.] I hope people take notice of this because women are now flying into the top gun.

And then in terms of aerial sequencing, I had to innovate like Tony Scott did. We had to film the flight in a way that had never been done before. The first thought was, “Can I really shoot Tom in an F-18?” What then became: “Can I shoot everyone with F-18s?” So Tom came up with a course that took everyone to “Tom Shape” so they could get into these super wasps and shoot scenes. As it is in all shots, it opens the entire movie.

How did the technology come to be able to shoot planes from the inside?

A script is a history of action sections. The choreography and filming was a 15-month scientific experiment with Claudio [Miranda, the cinematographer] And his team worked closely with the Navy to ensure it was safe to put six cameras there. At first it was said that there was never space, that there was no place. So Claudio and I sat down with them and pointed to each team in the back of the F-18 and asked if they needed that item for the flight, and when they said no, we said, ‘Take it off. So we took up a lot of space to record the recorders and Sony introduced a new camera called Realto which is a very small Imax quality camera. So we took the custom lenses and made the visors, and they met all the parameters required by the Navy, and they passed all the Gs, speed and removal tests, and the lawyers signed up. Tom did the first test flight with the whole camera, and when the footage came in, we thought, “Okay, maybe we’ll do something here.”

How much did you know about the inner workings of planes before making this movie?

As a child I was obsessed with airplanes and then I went to school for aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering. I actually built a real plane after my senior year of college.

What are the aircraft that attracted you to them?

I grew up in Iowa and that was before the internet, in the 80’s. I was building model airplanes and radio controlled rockets, and I was constantly breaking and dropping things in my backyard. I was very lucky to have grown up this time. I was a mad scientist with my projects and I think it’s a lot like what my job is now in a weird way. Just a different scale.

Before starting production, was there a scene or series that you found the most difficult to film?

Probably the most dangerous and daring is in the middle of the movie, where Maverick takes a course to prove that a mission can be accomplished. For this sequence, Tom went through a true low-level Top Gun training course at an altitude of less than 50 feet above the ground at a speed of 500 miles per hour. It was flown by the Navy’s chief pilot, a blue angel pilot named “Wally”. He even got special permission from Nai to try it on. After we fired, they landed and the pilot came up to me and said, “Do you catch it?” I just looked at the pictures and thought, “Oh yeah. This is amazing. And he said, “That’s good, because I’ll never do that again.” Another thing that I laughed at about this sequence is that when I watch it, there are parts where I know Tommy is smiling because he’s having so much fun, but it has to be a very serious scene.

So the pilot flies the plane with Tom in second, with the cameras all around him?

Yes, there are six cameras that he turns on and off because there was no one else with him and we had no communication. We set up a switch that turned all six cameras on and off, so Tommy could operate the camera when it was ready to shoot, or when the light was on and he was running.

Outside of planes, do you have a favorite movie character moment?

What really stands out is the scene between Maverick and Eismen. I’ve always been a big fan of debt. [Kilmer]The reunion of tribe and tribe not only as heroes but also as friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time was a very emotional day.

Was there debt on board from the start?

German [Bruckheimer] And I met Debt too early because we all wanted to hear Eismann in the movie, but we didn’t know what was possible to combat his health. [Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015 and underwent a tracheotomy that permanently damaged his voice.] It’s the debt that came with the idea of ​​how to incorporate Iceman into our story. The whole concept of Iceman was the debt idea, so we wrote those scenes and put together the script.

As a filmmaker, what was it like to sit on a finished film for two years?

It was difficult, but it would be much worse to see a non-theatrical release of the film as it is. best weapon DNA to be a theatrical experience. That’s what we created him for, and that’s what Tom was hoping for. So there was no doubt that we would wait. Simply: How long?