Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski explains Tom Cruise’s dangerous and near-impossible aerial stunt in the long-awaited aviation sequel. More so than any of this year’s releases, Top Gun: Maverick has gone through an incredibly long and difficult journey to finally get to the big screen. The movie was originally scheduled to be released in July 2019, but was first delayed to give Kosinski and his production team more time to choreograph and shoot Top Gun 2’s stunts and complex dogfight sequences. After that, Maverick suffered a multitude of delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, the long-awaited sequel to Tony Scott’s 1986 classic Top Gun is finally hitting theaters this Memorial Day weekend. In addition to seeing Cruise reprise his iconic role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell alongside a star-studded cast that includes Val Kilmer, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, and Ed Harris, one of Top Gun 2’s biggest draws is its high-flying action. Many of the film’s aerial sequences were filmed practically without the use of CGI, which has become a defining aspect of Cruise’s tentpoles.
During an interview with ComicBook.com, Kosinski talks about one near-impossible aerial stunt from the film that he wasn’t sure Cruise could pull off. The scene occurs about mid-way through the movie and sees Maverick “run the low-level course by himself.” The Top Gun 2 director says they had to get special permission from the Navy to film the sequence, which required Cruise to fly below 50 feet at a whopping 600 miles-per-hour, a feat Kosinski doesn’t think will ever be done in a movie again. Read his full explanation below:
There’s a sequence in the middle of the film where Maverick runs the low level course by himself. For that sequence we got special permission from the Navy to fly under 50 ft at about 600 miles per hour. So that’s one of those things that I don’t think will ever be done again.
One doesn’t have to be an aviation expert to understand how dangerous flying a fighter jet at such a low altitude can be. Generally, aircraft are never flown lower than 500 feet above ground level, even in rural areas, and low-flying military training usually doesn’t require pilots to go below 100 feet. The fact that the US Navy permitted Cruise to fly so absurdly close to the ground is a wonder in and of itself, let alone the fact he pulled it off flawlessly.
This near-impossible aerial stunt can be added to the long list of death-defying feats Cruise has performed throughout his career. While it seems at this point like Cruise enjoys attempting various unprecedented stunts merely for his own enjoyment, his commitment to realism does absolutely benefit his movies. Top Gun: Maverick reviews have been praising the film as a pulse-pounding thrill ride, which audiences will be able to experience themselves on May 27.