In 1983, producer Jerry Bruckheimer was flipping through the May issue of California magazine when he was struck by a story. “Top Guns” read the headline, with a large photograph from inside the cockpit of an F-14 fighter jet. The story opened: “At Mach 2 and 40,000 feet over California, it’s always high noon.”
“I saw that cover and I said, ‘We gotta do this. This looks great,‘” recalls Bruckheimer. “It’s ‘Star Wars’ on Earth.”
