Top Gun: Maverick/Trivia

Trivia about Top Gun: Maverick includes:

The Cast Showoff:
- The P-51 Mustang Maverick owns and pilots is Cruise's own, and that's actually him piloting it.
- Teller learnt how to play "Great Balls of Fire" for real.
Doing It for the Art: Cruise calls the film a love letter to aviation, and the extents gone to reflect that. All the aerial sequences were done with real planes, with VFX overlay only for the types that couldn't be obtained in actuality. While the cast didn't actually fly F/A-18s, they were indeed serving as passengers experiencing real G-forces, unlike the first film where only Cruise could pull it off. All in the service of maximum practical effects in a day and age where most other filmmakers would have phoned it in with CGI. Ironically, director Kosinski was mostly known for CGI-heavy work before this.
Dyeing for Your Art: The flying cast had to undergo flight and water survival training in preparation for taking to the air.
Production Posse: This film reunites Kosinski with Cruise from Oblivion, as well as with Only the Brave alumni Connelly, Teller, and Jake Picking.
What Could Have Been:
- A fair bit of footage was left on the cutting room floor, some of which is mentioned by Kosinski in this Indiewire article.
- Glen Powell (who eventually became Hangman) and Nicholas Hoult competed with Teller to become Rooster.
- Phoenix and Bob were originally meant to be mutually antagonistic.

Back to Top Gun: Maverick