Top Gun: Maverick is the highly-anticipated sequel to 1986’s Top Gun. The upcoming movie will see Tom Cruise returning to his role as Navy pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who is now a test pilot and flight instructor. Actor Jon Hamm has also joined the project in the role of Vice Admiral Cyclone. In an interview with Men’s Journal, Hamm explained how Cruise’s presence on the sets of the movie helped make things better for everyone involved.
“I’ll say this about Tom, he is 100 percent movie star and 100 percent a leader. On Mad Men, I learned that if the person at the top of the food chain behaves in a certain way, then that’s how the rest of the folks are going to behave. Tom’s always ready. He’s already prepared. He’s always on time. He’s got 900 things going on that you don’t even know about. But that never comes into the daily work.”
“If there was any pressure to perform and be great, or uphold the legacy of this film, it didn’t show. You could tell that he was having the time of his life, and that enthusiasm completely washed over the rest of the cast. My first day on set, I said to Tom, “This has to be just surreal for you. Like you’re literally in the same hangar, 30 years later. In nearly the same costume. What’s that like?” And he goes, “Man, it’s unreal. How cool is this?”
Tom Cruise is of course well known for his obsessive approach to filmmaking, constantly trying to push the envelope in terms of action sequences, and generally making sure the end product of filming is as good as it can be. There are a lot of expectations from Top Gun: Maverick based on the success of the original movie. For Jon Hamm, getting to be a part of the sequel is a reminder of his own experience watching the original Top Gun decades ago.
“I was probably 15 [When I watched Top Gun], at the dead center of the target demographic. I remember seeing the trailer and thinking, “Yes. That looks awesome.” And it was. As an adult, I’ve seen it in the interim a couple times, and you realize that [director] Tony Scott, who came out of commercials, had an incredible sense how to tell a story, visually. That movie just looked so cool. It didn’t make sense, because every shot was at sunset or sunrise. But who cares?”
Directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, Top Gun: Maverick features Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Val Kilmer, Ed Harris, Jon Hamm, Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Manny Jacinto, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, and Jay Ellis.
The film is set over 30 years after the events of the original. Maverick is now in a position of leadership, as he is assigned a fresh batch of hotshot U.S. Navy pilots to train in a new era of flight combat that sees the military relying more heavily on drone technology for aerial missions. Mensjournal.com was the first to bring forth this news.