In 1990, Tom Cruise told Playboy he wouldn’t make Top Gun 2, for fear it might glorify or gamify war. What changed?
It’s a film about competition and friendship and sacrifice. It was never a film about war. We wanted to give people insight into a world and to experience what it’s like to ride in one of these machines. But the desire was to tell an emotive story about a guy in his 50s. The push was: what’s the audience feeling about that? We were pretty ruthless in making sure that we were always pushing that story, even in an action scene.
Does it feel strange to still be discussing something you shot in 2018?
It is a little weird. The pandemic is a strange, two-year gap we all have. I’m just relieved the movie worked out and was released in the way we wanted. There was a lot of pressure on Tom [Cruise] and Jerry [Bruckheimer, the producer] to put it out on streaming. I’m glad we waited because we made it for the big screen and I think it was the movie that a lot of people came back to cinemas to see.
