Tom Cruise has promised there’s "never been" an aerial scene quite like one in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ – and doesn’t think there will be again.
The 57-year-old actor reprises his role as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in the upcoming sequel and while he’s an experienced pilot, he insisted his co-stars all had flight training so they could do the jet sequences themselves.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said: "What’s different about this movie is that [in ‘Top Gun’] we put the actors in the F-14s and we couldn’t use one frame of it, except some stuff on Tom, because they all threw up.
"It’s hysterical to see their eyes roll back in their heads. So everything was done on a gimbal. But in this movie, Tom wanted to make sure the actors could actually be in the F-18s."
Tom added: "I said to the studio, ‘You don’t know how hard this movie’s going to be. No-one’s ever done this before.’ There’s never been an aerial sequence shot this way. I don’t know if there ever will be again, to be honest."
Tom – who is renowned for doing his own stunt work – agreed to sign up for the sequel if he could tackle the tricky scenes himself, rather than rely on CGI and green screen technology.
Explaining how the movie came about, he told Empire magazine: "We just started talking and I realised that there were things that we could accomplish cinematically. I started getting excited about this big challenge of, ‘How do we do it?’ So I said to Jerry, ‘I’ll do it if…’ meaning, I’m not going to do the CGI stuff."
Tom Cruise teases spectacular flight scenes in Top Gun: Maverick
