Top Gun: Maverick Director Reveals Actual Navy Airmen Conceived of Film's Big Finale
According to Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, the film's big finish spun directly out of conversations with real naval airmen, many of whom were of the right age to have grown up watching the original Top Gun. In a new interview, Kosinski explained that he asked his military consultants what the scariest, most difficult mission they could thing of, might look like. The only big difference between the answer, and what ended up on screen, is that the pilots suggested the mission should be done at night, but Kosinski thought it would look better with a little bit of light, and so it was shot in the low light of dawn.
"On the first movie, I think they struggled a little bit to get that participation [from the Navy]," Kosinski told Collider. "On this one, yes, the people that are in power at the Navy, the admirals and people of that level, a lot of them joined the Navy because of Top Gun. So, yes, once we described the movie we wanted to make and how we were going to make it, how we wanted to make it, they were very, very helpful and instrumental and invaluable. I mean, the whole third act sequence, actually the whole movie, the structure of the movie, the whole mission that they go on, all came from a conversation we had with them about what is the most difficult, gnarliest, scariest mission you could ever imagine being put on as an aviator?
"And that is it. The one thing they added, which I didn't put in the film, was they said, 'And you do it at night,' which would've been all with night vision goggles, which I like not to do. I said, 'We'll do it at dawn. It'll look much better.' But yeah, without the Navy helping us not only in the script and providing us with all the fun toys, every sequence that you see in there is flown by a Naval aviator or real Top Gun pilots are flying the jets. So, what you're seeing is real Naval aviation, which is pretty amazing."
According to Top Gun: Maverick's official synopsis, After more than 30 years of service as one of the Navy's top aviators, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. Training a detachment of graduates for a special assignment, Maverick must confront the ghosts of his past and his deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who choose to fly it.
Joseph Kosinski directed Top Gun: Maverick from a screenplay written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie. The film stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer.