It has been nearly four years since Top Gun: Maverick swooped in and supercharged the box office with the biggest movie since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The movie, which saw the return of Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell while also introducing instantly iconic characters played by Miles Teller and Glen Powell, was a crowd-pleaser in every sense of the word with its drama, intensity, and those amazing flying sequences.
Well, I recently learned about what the Top Gun: Maverick cast had to go through whenever they filmed those visually stunning and heartpounding midair scenes, and it was honestly much more intensive (and procedural) than I was expecting. I mean, I had a feeling they went through a lot to capture those dogfights and exhilarating moments, but I didn’t expect all that paperwork.
The Top Gun: Maverick Crew Had To Give Daily Briefs To The Navy
In a somewhat recent episode of The Rewatchables podcast, Hollywood A-lister Glen Powell came on as a guest to discuss the 1998 dramedy The Truman Show. In the episode, which is a must for fans of movie podcasts, iconic Jim Carrey movies, and the Running Man and How to Make a Killing star, Powell was asked about working on projects with a lot of people involved, and he shared a great and surprising story from Top Gun: Maverick:
We would have to give briefs in front of the actual Navy every day before we flew. Like, I had to tell them altitude. Here's my airspace, Here's gonna be my coordinates. Here's the sun position. If this plane's moving at this, you know, like, and I had to give a brief every morning of exactly what we were doing.
Considering the cast and crew were flying in real fighter jets while making the movie (in the ballpark of $80 million apiece) and were flying them how they weren’t normally flown, it makes total sense why they’d have to do this each day. But this is just part of it…
Glen Powell And Company Also Had To Map It All Out With The Production Heads
On top of working with the real-life Navy to clear all the flight plans for each day of filming, the actors and pilots also had to have similar meetings with the production crew so that everything was in sync when the planes got in the air. Powell would go on to explain how meticulous they had to be in order to pull it off seamlessly:
So you're saying, ‘Hey, if I'm looking, you know, at 3 o'clock, is the plane gonna be there, or is it 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock, so it all cuts together? Or am I looking down on this plane?’ … But you have to remember, they’re not fake planes. Like, we're recording civilians flying like 100 feet off the ground at 500 miles an hour. It’s a big deal.
Getting everyone on the same page makes total sense, especially when you’re working on a big-budget picture with so many moving parts, but I was honestly surprised to hear there was so much paperwork that had to be taken care of to make it all happen.
Top Gun: Maverick, which is streaming for anyone with a Paramount+ subscription, is one of the most intense, exciting, and unforgettable movie experiences of the past decade, and I guess it’s thanks to the attention to detail by everyone involved.
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