A couple days ago, we got a new trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, and now we’ve got a featurette that details some of the technical aspects that went into making the movie. This being a Tom Cruise vehicle, he’s going to demand that everyone gets pushed to the limit to make it a unique theatrical experience, and I really respect that. Cruise recognizes how much the marketplace has changed and in the age of constant CGI, a powerful selling point is making it real. Yes, they could have built some cockpits and surrounded them with green screen, but they chose to push the boundaries of aviation to tell this story.

As this video shows, there’s real flying going on and these actors are under the weight of real G-forces that can go up to 1600 pounds of pressure (obviously that pressure is dispersed and shielded so you don’t, you know, die, but still). I don’t know if this makes for a better Top Gun story, but I certainly appreciate the craft involved and that Cruise is using his A-list status to push for this kind of filmmaking when everyone else is moving to digital effects.

Check out the video below. Top Gun: Maverick opens June 26, 2020.

Here’s the official synopsis for Top Gun: Maverick:

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose.”

 

Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.