Tom Cruise unveiled the world’s first screening of “Top Gun: Maverick” at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday, introducing the long-awaited sequel as he balances atop a flying biplane.
The new “Top Gun,” which picks up the story of Maverick and his fighter pilot friends some three decades after the original blockbuster, was slated for a 2020 release but was repeatedly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cruise, famous for doing many of his own stunts, introduced the screening to the film industry convention with a video message shot in typically lurid style, perched on the moving plane’s fuselage from the skies of South Africa.
“Hi everyone. Wish I could be up there with you. Sorry about the extra noise,” Cruise, 59, shouted over the roar of a plane engine and high winds.
“As you can see, we’re shooting the final installment of Mission: Impossible.”
“Tom does everything at full speed all the time … and you can’t stop him. He’s going to do it no matter what,” joked producer Jerry Bruckheimer, also returning from the first film, at CinemaCon. .
While plot details and reviews are embargoed before the film officially opens at Cannes next month, “Top Gun: Maverick” received immediate praise on social media from journalists in attendance. Paramount’s CinemaCon presentation.
It combines adrenaline-pumping action sequences largely filmed on actual US Navy fighter planes with emotional references to the original.
Bruckheimer said it took a long time before he followed up because “all of our careers took off from that point” and Cruise “had a lot of stories he wanted to tell.”
Tony Scott, who directed the original, died in 2012, but new director Joseph Kosinski “devised a way to make Tom so emotional.”
Kosinski said he was inspired by stunning footage on YouTube of US Navy pilots filming on GoPro cameras during their training.
“I showed it to Tom and said ‘this is available on the internet for free, if we can’t get over it, there’s no point in making this movie’. So he agreed.”
With the help of Navy engineers, the filmmakers found ways to insert six cameras into aircraft cockpits.