Tom Cruise also flew on a jet for the original “Top Song”. (File)
The US Navy has lent Tom Cruise F / A-18 Super Hornet for the new “Top Gun” movie. The only catch: the studio pays as much as 11,374 per hour to use advanced fighter planes – and cruise controls didn’t touch.
The “Mission Impossible” star, famous for his stunts, insisted that all the actors who played the pilots in the long-awaited “Top Song: Maverick” fly in one of the Boeing Company-built fighter jets to realize whether it was under the pressure of a huge gravitational force. Working is like being a pilot.
Cruz, 59, also flew a jet for the 1986 smash hit original “Top Gun”.
According to Glenn Roberts, head of the Pentagon’s entertainment media office, Cruz completed more than a dozen flights for the new movie, but a Pentagon regulation prevents non-military personnel from controlling the Department of Defense’s resources without small arms in training situations. . Instead, the actors boarded the F / A-18 pilots after completing the necessary training on how to get out of the plane in an emergency and how to survive at sea.
Roberts said the navy allowed production to use planes, aircraft carriers and military bases, although he said the real top gun pilots were not the rule-benders portrayed in the film, who would “never be in naval aviation.” Instead, they study Air Nord who work long hours in the classroom and participate in intense training flights at the Nevada Naval Air Station Fallon, the site of the original Top Gun School.
Roberts said a film “does not have to be a love letter to the military” to win the Pentagon’s cooperation. However, it does say that “the integrity of the military must be maintained.” Filmmakers must have funding and distribution for their projects and be willing to submit their scripts for military review. Although the Pentagon may request a change, Roberts said he was not aware of any of the “Top Guns: Mavericks.”
Roberts said that in his years working in the Pentagon’s media office, he had not seen the level of excitement surrounding “Top Song: Maverick.”
The movie is expected to earn Cruz its first $ 100 million domestic opening income. Box Office Pro estimates that it could generate around $ 130 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales over the weekend, not including Memorial Day holidays. This will make it one of the biggest movies of the last two years.
Paramount Pictures said in a production note to the film that Cruz has created its own demanding flight training program for young actors in the film so that they can withstand the nauseating rigors of aerial tactics and “play their part in the journey of real Navy pilots. Their lives.”
The movie is set to release this week after a delay due to the coronavirus epidemic. Scenes were shot on the USS Abraham Lincoln in August 2018 during a training exercise involving an Army F-35C Lightning II fighter jet, Roberts said. The production has also been filmed at Lemore, a naval air station in Central California.
According to Roberts, the Jet Super Hornet, known as the “Rhinoceros,” received higher billing than the more advanced F-35C manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corporation because of the movie’s script. He also mentioned that the F-35 is a single seat aircraft, so the actors could not board it.
Filmmakers return to the Pentagon for any aircraft unless they are used in a pre-arranged training exercise or the pilot’s required time in flight control can be calculated. In 2018, when most of the “Top Song: Maverick” was filmed, the jet departure rate was $ 11,374.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published from a syndicated feed.)
