Flicking through a magazine one day in 1983, Jerry Bruckheimer found himself transfixed by a photo. “It was a picture of this helmet with a visor down and a plane reflected in the visor, and then two airplanes beside the helmet, and the guy’s in a cockpit,” the Hollywood producer later recalled.
Three years later, the movie pitch that Bruckheimer dreamed up in that moment – “Star Wars on Earth” – became Top Gun, a blockbuster that grossed $350m from a $15m budget, sent Berlin’s Take My Breath Away to No 1 in six countries, turned a young Tom Cruise into the biggest movie star in the world, and made Ray-Ban’s Aviator sunglasses into a bulletproof summer style icon.
