It’s a well established fact that Tom Cruise is a loon (and no, that’s not a dig at scientology). The 50-year old actor has repeatedly shown that when it comes to stunts in his movies, he will do practically anything himself, no matter how dangerous. Case in point: For Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, he is actually hanging on the side of a real plane hundreds of feet in the air. And for the planned, long-gestating Top Gun sequel, he wants to do the same. Well, inside a real plane, at least.
Speaking to ExtraTV at the press junket for Mission: Impossible, Cruise revealed that he would be willing to reprise his iconic role again as ace fighter pilot “Maverick” if they could do everything for real.
“If I can figure it out, if all of us can figure it out, it’d be fun to do, I’d like to fly those jets again, but we got to do all the jets practical, no CGI on the jets… I’m saying right now no CGI on the jets. If we can figure all that out, and the Department of Defense will allow us to do it, that would be fun.”
You may recall that when producer David Ellison – whose Skydance Pictures are developing this sequel to the late Tony Scott’s 1986 classic – updated recently on the development of the film, he echoed the same sentiment.
“I think this is a movie that should be in 3-D and in IMAX, and again something that you can shoot practically. As everyone knows with Tom, he is 100% going to want to be in those airplanes shooting it practically.”
Irrespective of what you think about Tom Cruise sometimes torrid personal life choices, there’s no denying that he’s an incredible actor with major Hollywood pull. If anybody could some real fighter jets up in the air, it would be him. And I would actually love to see it happen. The last real big budget fighter pilot movie we saw on the big-screen was Stealth, and that very much had a video game feel to it because of all the CGI. Keeping things practical would certainly elevate the action considerably.
Top Gun 2 – or whatever it will called – is currently in pre-production as Justin Marks pens the script. Marks is of course the man who wrote Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, so make of that what you will.
Last Updated: July 28, 2015
Skyblue
July 28, 2015 at 13:43
I think a practical approach to this would be amazing if they could pull it off. Real jets screaming in HD with modern sound… I’d pay to see that.