Val Kilmer Came Up With Top Gun Maverick’s Most Emotional Storyline

Top Gun: Maverick‘s big Iceman moment came from Val Kilmer himself. The sequel’s director Joseph Kosinski sat down with Deadline to share all kinds of behind-the-scenes stories from the film. In his comments, he pointed toward the first time that Kilmer walked into that room. The filmmaker could immediately feel the bond between he and Tom Cruise. As they shared stories about the old days, the actor said that they should have Iceman be sick like he was. Kosinski called that a true gift because he didn’t have to do volunteer that idea up. From there, the creative team was able to weave one of the most emotional moments from the entire film. People seemed to agree as the tender interaction between two friends comes up a lot in the discussion around Maverick. Read what he had to say down below.

“It was his idea to make it feel as authentic as possible. Once he had that idea, it opened up that whole storyline and just allowed us to tell this story in a better way. I was blown away when he offered that up,” Kosinski revealed. “The scene was intense and very emotional, but when the camera wasn’t running, hearing him and Tom talk about the hijinks of making the first film and how much fun they had and the tricks they were pulling on each other, and just the craziness of that time and that era, was really fun to listen in on. You really felt that connective tissue to the past.”

What Didn’t Make It Into Maverick?

The movie’s editor says that there’s more footage of this movie than you could possibly believe. Deadline talked to Eddie Hamilton about fashioning this crowd-pleaser for the big screen. In that interview, he says there’s weeks of footage that just didn’t make it into the final cut.

“800 to 814 hours,” Hamilton explained. “It was quite honestly very overwhelming at times. There was one day in March, 2019 when they had 27 cameras running because there were four jets up in the air with various cameras on them, and two units filming on the ground, which added up to 27 cameras. And I remember getting so much footage the next morning and just thinking this was going to be very difficult. Also, the days were very long when we were filming the aerial sequences, it was just really intense. And the thing is, when you’ve got a lot of footage like that and a movie like Top Gun, it has to be awesome from beginning to end, because the whole audience wants it to be awesome.”

Hamilton added, “So, I have all the footage broken down and labeled so I can find stuff super fast. But the main thing is to try and stay calm and not get overwhelmed. But, honestly, there were months where I didn’t sleep very well and I was just dreaming of closeups of Hangman and Phoenix and Rooster and Maverick. Literally every night I’d go to sleep and all I would see is their faces in my dreams. That’s just how engrossed you get in the raw material and in the project that you are doing. Plus, the immense pressure of delivering this sequel after 30 years and wanting it to be brilliant.”

What did you love most about Top Gun: Maverick‘s story? Let us know down in the comments!