Top Gun: Maverick’s director on how he lured Tom Cruise back for a sequel

It was almost 40 years ago. Top Gun made moviegoers feel a small fraction of the thrill that comes with being a fighter pilot — in part thanks to Kenny Loggins’ anthem “Danger Zone,” but also largely due to the talents of the cast and crew, under the direction of the late Tony Scott. It was released in cinemas more than a decade later. Maverick: Top Gun has to do right not just by the fans, but by the first film’s creators. How do you make audiences accustomed to the casual magic of CGI feel like they’re in the cockpit with these pilots in 2022 the way Top GunDid it in 1986? Joe Kosinski was the director. This is how you do it.

Similar to his earlier films Tron: Legacy And Oblivion Kosinski has the ability to make unexpected sequels and blockbuster action with Tom Cruise, as evidenced by his work. Maverick: Top GunThe director shows how they combine these talents in a classic summer blockbuster. Real in a way big-budget movies haven’t in some time.

Kosinski delved deep into the subject during a Polygon phone call Maverick: Top Gun makes viewers feel like they’re in those jets, how he convinced Tom Cruise to star, and how the right villain for a Top Gun movie might just be no one.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

Polygon: Let’s start with your connection to Top Gun. Was it a positive experience?

Joseph Kosinski:It was my first movie as a 12 year-old child. I loved it. This movie made Tom Cruise an international star. [producer Jerry]Bruckheimer and [producer Don] Simpson had done Beverly Hills CopAnd Flashdance At that moment. You knew you would enjoy the movie if there was a dual lightning strike.

It was, however, not a film I revisited often until Jerry gave me a 2017 script to review. I’d made [Oblivion]Tom and I were there, and it was undoubtedly an unforgettable experience.

Did everyone get onboard? Maverick Do you want to start from the beginning?

After I’d read through the script, Jerry loved my ideas. He said, “You know what, you gotta go pitch this to Tom directly.” So we flew to Paris, where Tom was shooting Mission: ImpossibleWe only got about one and a half hours of each other’s time in between sets. And I basically had 30 minutes to pitch this film, which I didn’t realize when we were flying over. But when I got there, I found that Tom really didn’t want to make another Top Gun.

It’s one of those moments as a director, you have one on every film, where you’re on the spot to make a case for why this movie should be made. I had 30 minutes to do it. And at the end of the pitch, he picked up the phone, he called the head of Paramount Pictures and said, “We’re making another Top Gun.” It’s pretty impressive to see the power of a real movie star in that moment.

Tom Cruise: How did it go? What convinced Tom Cruise?

Tom and I were good friends, so I was familiar with the importance of character and emotion. This idea was just about Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), growing up and becoming a Naval Aviator. Maverick and Bradley had a fractured and strained relationship. Maverick was called back by Maverick to help train the students for a very dangerous mission.

The conflict [is about] the difference between being an aviator who goes in and risks his own life, and someone who’s in a more senior position that has to send others in to risk their lives. I was able to talk with Navy admirals about the difference. It’s a different sort of pressure, it’s almost harder to send others in rather than go yourself. I felt that it took all the emotional energy from the previous film, and our relationships, and took it to a different direction. So that’s where I started.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

It was the most compelling element for Tom. He felt a strong emotional connection to his character. The second thing was, what’s Maverick been doing? I mean, how do we locate him? This is my passion. I love pitching Darkstar. [in the beginning]Just being someone who loves airplanes and has studied mechanical engineering. What’s the right stuff?. So the idea of finding him as a test pilot on the bleeding edge of what’s possible seemed to me like the perfect way to find him, and Tom loved that.

He also must’ve loved how you planned to shoot this.

I showed him some videos of Navy pilots who put GoPros in their cockpits, and I said, “You know, this is out on the internet for free. If we can’t beat this, there’s no point in making this.” And he agreed. Finally, I had to come up with the title. It summarised it pretty well. “We aren’t going to call it Top Gun 2, we’re going to call it Maverick: Top Gun.” It’s a character-driven story, a drama with this giant action film around it. That was to me what I loved about the movie. Top Gun movie is.

Let’s talk a little bit about that Darkstar sequence. Jerry Bruckheimer said you were involved heavily in its creation.

Yes, that was it. Skunk Works (a Lockheed subsidiary) is responsible for making these top-secret planes. Because they fly at night no one can tell that they are there. They are discovered by us 20-30 years later.

Fred Smith (founder of FedEx) had just financed a film I was about to do. He told me that he knew someone at Lockheed. He had just done a tour there — it helps to have friends in high places. Jerry and I met up at Skunk Works and drove to Palmdale where we met their senior staff. And I just said, “Listen, I want to put an airplane in This film that does This, thisAnd This. It’s obvious that you have some knowledge in the area. We’re gonna give people a glimpse of something they’ve never seen before.”

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

They said yes. They helped us make the experience as realistic as possible. TooIt is real. We changed a couple of details so we’re not giving any secrets away, but it has a lot of features and details for people who really are into this world. I think they’ll get a kick out of it.

Is it possible to inspire people about the pilots and planes? Like other people I’ve talked to about it, I had an experience watching this, like, “Apparently I really like planes. Have I always been this way?”

This is the classic movie method. The only thing they could do in the ’80s was capture this stuff, at least the exterior shots, for real. You just can’t fake what it feels like to be in one of these jets, the forces, the way the light changes, the vibration, the sense of speed, all of that. There’s just no replacement for that.

I’ve noticed that people see this movie, and they just keep saying the same thing over and over: “It just feels so real.” And it’s funny, because maybe we’ve lost track of that a little bit with fantasy films or superhero films, where they’re creating images that you can’t capture for real. CGI can be relied upon. But there’s just something different about capturing it for real. This film was made in a very simple way. It just feels completely different.

The original Top Gun, the villains aren’t really named. You can find the In Maverick, the pilots are training for a mission against a vague “shadow state.” What went into that decision?

This film was created to portray an enemy with no name and face, much like the original. Just like the first movie, it is a film about friendship, sacrifice, teamwork and competition. It’s not a movie about geopolitics. We didn’t want it to be. So we designed it that way — the jets are fictional, they’re faceless enemies. This mission is to keep the world safe.

We wanted to keep the movie’s focus on Maverick and his relationships with the characters. The movie was made in 2018. The filming started in 2018. You know that the world constantly changes. It’s really hard to make something that feels relevant, because the world is always changing.