Top Gun: Maverick Producer Admits Everyone Threw Up When Filming Jet Scenes
Top Gun: Maverick was released earlier this year and was a huge hit at the box office. The long-awaited Tom Cruise sequel is currently the highest-grossing movie of the year, passing $1 billion worldwide and recently becoming the fifth highest-grossing movie ever domestically. Earlier this month, the movie was finally released on Blu-ray with a whole lot of exciting special features to enjoy. The filmmakers are probably quite relieved by the movie's success considering some of the difficulties that went into the production. Recently, director Joseph Kosinski was joined by producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Miles Teller (Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw), and Jennifer Connelly (Penny Benjamin) for an awards season panel hosted by Deadline. During the conversation, it was revealed that everyone got sick while filming the jet scenes.
"Tony Scott set the bar very high with the first film and the aerial photography," Kosinski shared. "I had seen some videos that Navy aviators had done of their own training sequences by putting little GoPro cameras in their cockpit, and even though it was very low res and just one angle, it was more compelling to me than anything I had seen in any action film."
"Joe pitched the idea of Goose's son, named Rooster, and Tom said to him 'I like the idea but you gotta promise me one thing – that we shoot everything for real,' " Bruckheimer explained. "First movie, we put the actors in the F14s and they all threw up and we couldn't use any of the footage."
"We started with baby steps, and we had three and a half months of flight training before we ever started rolling camera," Teller explained. "From there we were flying all the time, constantly."
Why Did Top Gun: Maverick Do So Well at the Box Office?
Bruckheimer previously spoke with Entertainment Weekly about why Top Gun: Maverick crushed the box office, and even made some Marvel comparisons.
"I think audiences have been seeing so much CGI, which is wonderful, I go see the same movies, but it's also nice to see the real deal and to be part of a camaraderie of characters that get up in the sky and have to be as good as they can be," Bruckheimer explained. "The audiences love the Marvel, they love the DC stuff. They're beautifully made by really talented people. Sometimes you want to see something that's real, and that's what Top Gun gave us… These aviators are out there protecting our country right now, flying around the world, and you're taking a ride with them. You're seeing what they do, you're seeing what their life is like, and the trials and tribulations that they have to go through. You're actually experiencing it with our actors."
Top Gun: Maverick is now available on 4K UHD+Digital Blu-ray.