It has emerged that in order to rent out real fighter jets for filming, the studio behind the highly anticipated Top Gun: Maverick spent a ridiculous amount of money.
Now, after a very long wait, Top Gun: Maverick finally lands in cinemas this week and already, critics have been raving about it.
Have a look at the trailer:
There's no doubt that compared to the first Top Gun movie, this one has a much higher budget and ultimately, access to some pretty cool special effects.
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And it's also no secret that the star of the show, Tom Cruise, likes to make his films as realistic as possible, often doing his own stunts and spending a lot of money in the process.
And he certainly carried on in the same vein with the long-awaited sequel to the 80s classic.
It's been revealed that the production company rented out jet fighters from the US Navy to make sure actors could experience the immense power of the gravitational force and the 'nausea-inducing rigors of aerial manoeuvres'.
According to Bloomberg, Cruise insisted on his co-stars hopping in advanced F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets ahead of the shoot, to make sure they were fully prepared.
And it cost Paramount Pictures a pretty penny to do so, with the studio paying the Navy a whopping $11,374 an hour to take the jets up into the skies.
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However, while they did get the chance to take a spin in the jet fighters, neither Cruise nor any of the other actors actually got behind the steering wheel during filming.
An official from the Pentagon confirmed that non-military personnel are strictly prohibited from operating any military vehicle. Instead, after completing their pre-shoot training programme, Cruise et al sat behind F/A-18 pilots.
Discussing the film and what it was like actually filming from inside a real jet, Glen Powell, who plays one of the pilots trained by Maverick in the film, said: "It's the craziest idea. You kind of don't believe it. It was like: Okay, this is a really cool idea but it's never going to work."
And understandably, it wasn't easy.
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Director Joseph Kosinski said: "It was a lot of work. It was very tedious and difficult at times, but the footage speaks for itself."
Tony Scott, who directed the original 1986 Top Gun, said he had hoped of doing something similar, but claimed the cast just couldn't stomach it.
And writing in his 2020 memoir I'm Your Huckleberry, Val Kilmer, who played the cocky Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky in the film, said he was one of the only ones who didn't bring up his breakfast.
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He said: "Though I was never really doing it, I learned the mechanics of operating the plane. We went up in the jets several times and... I have to report that I was the only one who didn't regurgitate, which, given the gut-wrenching drops and spins of those ferocious flights, was no mean feat."
Kilmer recently admitted that he asked to be part of the new film despite not having been cast.
Speaking about his return to the Top Gun franchise, he said: "Tom was Maverick, but Maverick's nemesis was Iceman. The two went together like salt and pepper.
“It didn't matter that the producers didn't contact me. As The Temptations sang in the heyday of Motown soul, 'Ain't too proud to beg'."
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Topics: Tom Cruise, US News