Top Gun: Maverick was inspired by a terrifying cartoon you must watch

The medium of animation knows no bounds — which is exactly the kind of limitless possibility cinematographer Claudio Miranda needed to pull off Maverick: Top Gun.How do you make sure your leading actor isn’t Shrek, but an actual human being? Reverse engineering was the answer.

Miranda was awarded a Best Cinematography Award for his film work at the recent New York Film Critics Circle Awards dinner. MaverickDirector of Photography revealed his unexpected inspiration for long-awaited Top GunThe sequel did not feature modern aerial footage, but action animation that defied gravity. Looking back at old stunts, including the revolutionary stunt work in Tony Scott’s original 1983 movie, meant potentially emulating what those movies already did. That’s not the Tom Cruise way, nor was it the goal of Maverick director Joseph Kosinski. But when Miranda discovered Damian Nenow’s 2010 short film Paths of HateHis bar was raised.

The entity Nenow isn’t as well-known as any other involved. Maverick: Top GunBut he’s an innovator. Yet another day of life, an animated documentary/narrative hybrid about the Angolan Civil War that earned a release from GKIDS in 2018. Paths of Hate uses a similar bold-lined style to turn a vicious warplane dogfight into a reflection of anger’s poisonous effect on the human psyche. While introspective, it’s easy to see why Miranda sparked to Nenow’s work. Animations of planes dropping to the ground are captured by the animated camera. Top Gun Academy teachers might find this irresponsible. Ideal for Maverick.

Miranda said to Indiewire: “If he could get planes in, that would be great.” Maverick to look like the dogfight in Nenow’s eviscerating portrait of war, then he’d be putting a live-action movie in front of audiences they’d never seen before. So he did. The cutting-edge, built-into-the-fighter-jets camera work he used to pull off Maverick’s photography is highly technical and well-detailed, but to me, even more fascinating than the micro is the macro: Animation allowed a longtime live-action filmmaker to dream big. Miranda’s storied career is littered with an embrace of digital technology — his work on David Fincher’s Benjamin Button’s Curious CaseHe was the first DP to be nominated in a digital production and he continued shooting the animated film. Tron: Legacy. But in a field that’s constantly at war between digital/animated work and practical or on-film techniques, here’s a guy just looking for pure inspiration. He found inspiration in an animated short movie that you can view right now.

The cherry on top of Miranda’s award-winning moment at the NYFCC dinner: Maverick: Top Gun star Danny Ramirez was on hand to present the award, and revealed that while making the movie, he bunked with the DP, who would spend his nights with headphones on, tablet up, watching YouTube videos that would “make him giggle.” This is how the real masters work, ladies and gentlemen.