The success of Top Gun: Maverick runs headlong against a number of Hollywood conventions, not the least of which is the age of its star. The perennially boyish Tom Cruise is currently in his sixties: well past the age of expiration for most action movie heroes. Yet, not only does he make it work, but Maverick fits the paradox into its story, as Cruise’s Pete Mitchell remains an active captain when his peers have gone on to senior command positions. It helped the film become a colossal critical and commercial hit.
It does beggar the question of Maverick’s age, however. The new movie doesn’t specify how old he is, nor does the old one. The most agreed-upon answer is both simpler and more complicated than it appears. The short version is that he shares a birth year with the actor playing him. But that also encompasses a key part of his background, as well as the two movies’ respective plots.
Maverick’s Age Plays into Top Gun’s Story
The original Top Gun reveals one of Maverick’s biggest character motivations: unresolved issues surrounding his father. His dad was a combat pilot in Vietnam, shot down under classified circumstances that leave him with a sullied name. Late in the film, Maverick’s mentor Viper confirms that the senior Mitchell died a hero, which lets Maverick put his father’s memory to rest. That also means that Maverick needs to be old enough to remember his father, but young enough to have few lasting memories of him. That would put his birth year somewhere close to the start of the Vietnam War, but before his father shipped out.
His age also matters in terms of the Top Gun program that he attends. Navy pilots need a four-year college degree, plus specialized training in order to become pilots. According to a 2022 article in Skies Magazine, the real-world TOPGUN school’s pilots often apply after their first tour of duty, which typically lasts six months. That likely puts Maverick in his mid-twenties when the events of the film take place, which roughly matches the timeline regarding his father.
That comes into play in the sequel as well. At a certain point, age catches up to fighter pilots, whose job often entails considerable physical strain and requires razor-sharp reflexes. Yet, Maverick is still at the job in Top Gun: Maverick — largely by piloting experimental planes — well past the age where either promotion or retirement should have caught up with him. Both movies presume a contemporary setting, putting 2022’s Maverick 36 years after 1986’s Top Gun.
Tom Cruise Fits the Age in Top Gun: Maverick
Fitting Maverick into the needs of both movies — and his own backstory with his father — is key to the character’s development. It gives him an organic history, as well as a few demons to overcome, which has helped make the two Top Gun films more than just empty pinball games. While the movies are purely fiction, Maverick’s age does loosely correspond to the real-world requirements for someone in his position. Cruise’s own physical fitness and current status as an action star make it easier to believe that Maverick might stay in the pilot’s seat all these years, and Maverick is clear that his superiors think he’s decades past the time to be put out to seed.
After all that, with the needs of the character and the film’s respective plots in the forefront, the best answer is still the easiest. Cruise was born in 1962, which is the ideal fit for Maverick’s timeline. It would put the loss of his father sometime between the age of 3 and 13. This would also make him 24 during his first stint in Top Gun school, and just tickling 60 during the events of Top Gun: Maverick. Both films were written with Cruise in mind, and have added his age to the character’s story accordingly.