The man who helped Tom Cruise act at 7Gs in Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick has ascended like a graceful jet to become the sixth highest grossing film in US history. Quite some doing given it was only released three months ago.
A mixture of cynicism and wonder drove people back to the cinema: the promise of Tom Cruise flying in real fighter jets at hundreds of miles per hour, trying to act while under the influence of 7.5Gs is tempting even to those who rarely watch films.
On paper the stunts sound frankly unbelievable: it’s fair to say that nothing like this has ever been filmed before.
We’ve all read about the baffling, pioneering technology, from placing IMAX cameras inside real fighter jets to the Cinejet tech developed especially for the film to get fully stabilised in-flight shots for the first time.
But how did it actually feel to take to the sky in pursuit of an Oscar nomination? (One’s not yet come in, but is highly tipped.)
Aerial coordinator Kevin LaRosa was in charge of conducting the fine symphony of the shoots. His job has three elements: helping actors fly, act while flying, and, well, touch back down again alive.
“When we were getting started, Tom said to the crew ‘We’re at a disadvantage because we need [this film] to reach a level of cinematic perfection that’s never been obtained before,’” says LaRosa. “The night before the mission, that’s what resonated with me most. How are we going to make this amazing?”
Thirty-six years after the original Top Gun, Cruise has called Maverick “a love letter to aviation.” Filmed at real US navy bases and using actual F-14 Tomcat jets capable of hitting 2,485 km/h, every flying scene featuring an actor in a plane is actually that actor flying.
It’s entirely, staggeringly real, and it’s obvious when watching the film. Aerial scenes have a visceral quality, like you’re actually there as planes perform tricks and spin in formation, with 80 per cent of the screen the brilliant blue of the sky, the other 20, the actor’s face warped by G-force.
Flying in planes loaned by the US Department of Defence, some reportedly for $11,000 an hour, the actors didn’t actually pilot the jets, but sat behind military pilots. Most of their job was to try to act without barfing, due to the g-force, which frequently hit the upper limit of 7.5G.
“The actors took the F-18 fighter jets to their maximum structural limit”
Aerial coordinator Kevin LaRosa on working with Tom Cruise and the other cast on Top Gun: Maverick
To give some idea of the intensity, during an early test run Cruise actually threw up, and he’s had his pilot licence since the mid-90s. In LaRosa’s words, his biggest challenge was “pushing us right to the very edge of where we didn’t compromise safety so we could come back with the best product possible.”
Despite having a “prep hard, shoot easy” outlook, it was essential to allow spontaneity and the ability to change and adapt shoots. As LaRosa puts it: “To let yourself, as a filmmaker and a creative person, be out there in the elements, flying, open the window of creativity.”
Could it have actually been Cruise flying during the epic, much-hyped final scene when – not to give much away – the planes looked almost as if they were traversing upwards at 90 degrees, skirting a mountainside of jagged coffee-coloured rocks with actors subjected to “hard pulls” which made them experience the 7.5G force?
LaRosa laughs at the suggestion Cruise was subbed out for a stunt man during these scenes, or that they could have been CGI: “They took the F-18 to its maximum structural limit,” he says. “The actors did those types of gradients and climbs and inverts and all those hard pulls all the time, every day, sometimes twice a day. That’s absolutely what they were doing.”
Three months of intense training – “lots of preparation mentally, tons of briefs” – made these shots possible. When they were ready to film, fixed cameras around the aircraft captured actors in their new roles as pilots.
LaRosa worked with naval coordinator Ryan Ferguson to help them act as they flew: “Ryan would give the actors tips on what a fighter pilot would be doing at any particular time, and I would give tips on where an eye line might be in formation somewhere.”
There are bonus features available on the digital copy, now available in the UK, galvanising some of the 800 hours of leftover aerial footage. With all that left over, what about another movie? There haven’t been conversations yet according to LaRosa but he hints he’d be keen. “I don’t know how it’d be applied. Absolutely, if there’s a project to be had in the future, I think the world would take kindly to that.”
Mostly Top Gun Maverick’s legacy, at least in LaRosa’s view, is to inspire other filmmakers to step outside more often and use “real” environments to film in rather than relying on computer generated imagery. “CGI is great when used properly, but when we can use real practical stunts, I think people like seeing that.”
There’s just one final pressing question, the answer to which is probably as unbelievable as those hairbrained stunts. What on Earth did the insurance cost to send Cruise hurtling through the air?
LaRosa normally gives me lengthy answers but on this topic he’s tight-lipped. “That’d be above my pay grade,” he says, smiling.
- Top Gun: Maverick is available to stream and own on digital devices now