Top Gun Maverick Star Tom Cruise Explains Why the Sequel Needed Val Kilmer

Tom Cruise will reunite with Val Kilmer in Top Gun: Maverick, and the star says he never considered leaving his old screen nemesis out of the fun. While Kilmer is doing less acting these days due to health concerns, Cruise said in a recent interview that he pushed producers to make sure the Batman Forever and Jay & Silent Bob Reboot star made his way into the long-awaited Top Gun sequel. The character’s role is not huge — the movie centers on Maverick working with the next generation of top gun pilots — but what there is, is apparently pretty powerful stuff, and Cruise feels vindicated that he did the right thing by pushing for Kilmer.

“I really rallied hard for him to make the movie,” Cruise told People, calling out a specific scene the two shared. “The kind of talent that he has, and you see that scene, it’s very special, it’s just very special.” 

Kilmer had written in  his autobiography last year that producers had not reached out to him about the film, but that he was determined to be a part of it, showing that he and Cruise were on the same page. 

“[Cruise] said, ‘We have to have Val, we have to have him back. We have to have him in the film,’” producer Jerry Bruckheimer previously told People. “And he was the driving force. We all wanted him, but Tom was really adamant that if he’s going to make another Top Gun, Val had to be in it.”

Bruckheimer agreed, saying, “[Kilmer is] such a fine actor, and he’s such a good individual. We had such a good time on the first one and wanted to bring some of the gang back together again.”

You can see the film’s official synopsis below.

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: ‘Rooster,’ the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka ‘Goose.’ Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.

Top Gun: Maverick will be in theaters on May 27.