Warning! Spoilers ahead for Top Gun: Maverick.
Director Joseph Kosinski reveals a Top Gun: Maverick deep-cut Easter egg that hardcore fans will love. The filmmaker teamed up with Tom Cruise for the Top Gun sequel that was more than three decades in the making. With Top Gun: Maverick now released in cinemas, Kosinski is sharing a fun tidbit that long-time followers of the franchise will truly appreciate.
Cruise reprises arguably his most iconic role as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. The sequel sees the fighter pilot suspiciously still a Navy captain despite his obvious flying skills. In Top Gun: Maverick, he is called back to TOPGUN to train an elite squad for a dangerous mission. The batch includes Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of his former RIO (Radar Intercept Officer), Nick "Goose" Bradshaw. Top Gun: Maverick is shaping up to be a massive blockbuster hit for Cruise and Paramount. That makes sense considering the glowing reviews for Top Gun: Maverick. The film, however, also has the nostalgia factor — something that Kosinski leaned on with the inclusion of numerous callbacks and references.
One particular the Easter egg is reserved for long-time fans of Top Gun. In a new interview with Games Radar's Inside Total Film podcast, Kosinski reveals a particular line in Top Gun: Maverick that's almost exactly copied from the original film. On top of that, they also tried mimicking how Maverick maneuvred his F/A-14 right after despite not being exactly real-life accurate.
"There's a moment where Maverick in this film says, 'Too close for missiles, switching to guns,' which is almost an exact copy from the first film. We cut to an insert of Maverick switching the switch on the thumbstick from missiles to guns – which is totally fictional. That's not how the F/A-14 is set up."
"So we actually copied the insert from the original movie to the point that we even put a very visible sticker on the stick that says missiles and guns, which is very 'movie.'But we actually copied it anyway to make it look fake, like the first movie. So that was a very insidery, very quick Easter egg for the hardcore Top Gun fans."
For context, Kosinski is talking about the particular moment in the movie where Maverick and Goose were training with Viper (Tom Skerritt) at TOPGUN. While the exercise was done in a safe space as part of their course in the flying school, it was still thrilling to see the aerial stunts; the fact that the film was shot in the mid-80s and it holds up pretty well after all these years makes it all the more impressive. Meanwhile, in Top Gun: Maverick, Mitchell pulls the same move but in a more dangerous situation as he and Rooster try to get back to the ship following a small hiccup in their mission. It is a brief moment that can easily be missed, but it being a deep-cut reference is why it's special for die-hard fans.
The great thing about Top Gun: Maverick is that Kosinski found the delicate balance between fan service and moving the narrative forward. Unlike other sequels, it openly embraced Top Gun and its legacy with all kinds of callbacks — some explicit, while others not so much like this one. But each is done tastefully and in a way that organically blends into the story. Considering both the critical and commercial success of Top Gun: Maverick, it's difficult to imagine that Paramount won't be doing Top Gun 3 now.
Source: Games Radar