Tom Cruise went through intense training for Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise is not your average human. We know this from the many death-defying stunts he has pulled off in his movies and the seemingly unending energy that he brings to every production that he has starred in despite being 57 years old. While many of his peers are getting cast as grandfather’s in their different film roles, Cruise is still getting roles that make him look even younger than when he first rose to fame almost 40 years ago.

It’s that remarkable determination and fitness that has made him such a great action star and what keeps him pushing to do continually bigger stunts in each movie, including soon going into space to film one too. Before we get to see Cruise blast off to the final frontier, we will have Top Gun: Maverick coming to the big screen in December if the current release schedule comes to fruition.

For the return of fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the film decided to forego the usual use of CGI to replicate much of their fighter jet antics and instead made use of liveaction dog fights with the actors filming scenes from the actual cockpits (with pilots in the other seat). Even if they aren’t flying the jets themselves, just being able to withstand the amount of G-force that is required is a huge physical achievement and one which producer Jerry Bruckheimer revealed in an interview with Yahoo! took an intense amount of training for the film’s cast, including Cruise himself, to get ready for:

He put the actors through this gruelling process over three months so they could take the G-forces when we put them in the F/A-18s. It was really a tough slog for these young actors because they also had to go through water survival training, where they are blindfolded and put in a water tank that’s turned upside down and they have to figure out how to get out. And Tom went through all the same stuff! They told me he went through that training just like a 22-year-old would — that’s how good he is.

I guess it should come as no surprise that Cruise was able to keep up with his young cast (which included Jon Hamm, Jake Picking, Jay Ellis, Glen Powell, and Miles Teller) and probably teach them a thing or two about how to train and prepare for a role. There seems to be no lengths that Cruise will not be prepared to go through to get film studios to pay for his daredevil fix and make the rest of us who are far younger than him, feel completely inadequate.

Last Updated: May 18, 2020