Tom Cruise is doing his own stunts again for Top Gun: Maverick, and the aerial stunts involved could make this movie his riskiest yet, outdoing the many complicated ones he’s built his later career on. The first Top Gun used practical effects to film the flying and aerial stunt work, but the actors themselves weren't involved with them. The sequel is taking things up a notch from the original by requiring the actors to really be a part of the air stunts, and Cruise most of all. The new Top Gun uses no green screens, continuing the practical legacy of the original. However, this time Cruise is front and center, prepared to take on the most complicated stunts of his career.

During the first Top Gun, Cruise was new to action movies and not yet known for his daring moves. While all the shots in the movie were real, none of the actors could handle actually being in the air. When they tried to film the cast in real F-14 fighter jets, almost everyone vomited, including Cruise, unable to handle the physical effects of flying at that speed. The scenes of the actors in the planes were reshot on a gimbal because that footage was clearly unusable. But now, Cruise is a trained aerobatic pilot with the stunt-heavy Mission: Impossible series under his belt, and he’s planned aerial stunts that he never could have handled in his early action movie foray.

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A movie featurette revealed that Tom Cruise flew a jet himself for the movie, experiencing 8G’s, enough force to distort his face and make him lightheaded. In order to avoid repeating the original’s vomiting incidents, all of Cruise’s co-stars had to go through months of flight training to get them used to the effects of the jets, though some of the actors still got sick in training. Cruise also got to do extreme low-altitude flying, which required the film to get special permission from the Navy. Unfortunately, the Navy denied Cruise’s request to fly an F-18, but this film still allowed him to complete many of the aerial stunts of his dreams.

A lineup of Superhornet jets in Top Gun Maverick

Although Cruise has performed seemingly death-defying stunts for other movies, including hanging onto the side of a plane during takeoff and climbing the world’s tallest building, the stunts he is performing in fighter jets are extremely risky. The effects of that speed of flight on the actors’ bodies are evident, even for a more experienced flier like Cruise, and it’s not uncommon for fatalities to occur in the air. During the filming of the original Top Gun, stunt pilot Art Scholl experienced unknown problems during a scene in the air and failed to recover from a spin over the Pacific Ocean, leading to a fatal crash. Aerial stunt work is nothing to take lightly, but it wouldn’t be the first time Cruise’s co-stars didn’t know if he would survive the stunts.

Once again, Tom Cruise is taking his life in his hands to film the movie exactly the way he wants. The actors taking on the real experience of flying will certainly add an incredible sense of realism to the movie, but there was also incredible risk involved in creating those shots. Cruise has never shied away from dangerous stunts, but the ones he’s taking on for Top Gun: Maverick may top them all.

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