The Mach 10 sequence that opens Top Gun: Maverick pays homage to a scene from The Right Stuff, which commercially bombed when it was released in the 1980s. This is in sharp contrast to Top Gun: Maverick’s hugely successful, and still ongoing, box office run as the biggest film of the year so far. Despite being commercially ignored at the time, The Right Stuff became a critical success in its own right and helped to influence the best scene in Top Gun: Maverick.
Top Gun: Maverick reintroduces Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) to the audience as a Navy test pilot, preparing to fly the prototype Darkstar jet at Mach 10–10 times the speed of sound. Maverick faces opposition from Rear Admiral Chester “Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris), who wants to shut down Darkstar in favor of his drone program. Maverick flies the prototype to Mach 10, without permission, to save the program and the careers of the people he works with. Flying at Mach 10 makes Maverick the fastest man alive.
However, Maverick decides to push Darkstar beyond Mach 10 and, as a result, destroys the aircraft. Despite crashing, Maverick emerges from the wreckage, having successfully saved the program from Hammer for now. This scene directly parallels The Right Stuff’s climax.In The Right Stuff, after having been left behind by the pilots in the Mercury test program, the real-life pilot Chuck Yeager (played by Sam Shepard) takes up the Lockheed NF-104A, an aerospace training aircraft.
Yeager attempts to break a record, like Maverick flying Mach 10, by flying higher than anyone before him. When Yeager pushes the plane to the very edge, similar to Maverick going beyond Mach 10, things start to go horrifically wrong and the plane nosedives into a tailspin. Yeager is forced to eject as the plane crashes but emerges victorious from the wreckage, like Maverick, proving that he still has the “right stuff” despite not becoming an astronaut. The parallels between the Mach 10 sequence from Top Gun: Maverick to The Right Stuff’s climax are clear.
How The Right Stuff Became a Hollywood Classic Like Top Gun
Despite bombing at the box office upon its initial release in 1983, Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff received critical acclaim and was even nominated for Best Picture at the 1984 Academy Awards. It is even preserved in the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress and an episodic retelling of The Right Stuff’s story of the Mercury 7 is available for streaming on Disney+. The film’s further influence on Top Gun: Maverick is shown by its casting of Ed Harris, who originally portrayed astronaut John Glenn in the 1983 movie.
The two scenes also share similar themes. Both are about test pilots left behind by the modern world looking to prove that they still have plenty to offer: Maverick has to contest with automation and drones, and Yeager has to contest with the technological boost of the space race. They both show the power of human resilience as both pilots survive what should be fatal circumstances when they push their respective aircraft far beyond their limits. The Right Stuff’s climax serves as a blueprint for Top Gun: Maverick’s opening and lays the groundwork for its major success, as Top Gun: Maverick has grossed $1 billion dollars at the box office. While The Right Stuff did not share the same economic success, its influence did help guide one of the best scenes in one of the most successful recent movies.