For some people, ‘Top Gun’ is a move that they remember exactly where they were when they first saw it. It was a game-changing film in so many ways. ‘Top Gun’ represents a lot of firsts in Hollywood history; from the way it was filmed to what actually occurred on screen, to the way the actors ended up there in the first place. The intense action of the movie captured your attention because of raw it felt, and because so much of it seemed so real. Well, so much of it was real!
In this ‘Top Gun facts post you will learn about how much it cost the production company to get the U.S. Navy to fly F-14s for the film. You will learn ‘Goose’s’ name in the movie, although it’s never spoken out loud once. You will even learn facts that are so minuscule (like the average time in between the Air Boss spilling his coffee’s) that it seems absurd that we know them. So dive right in, and enjoy learning all the best ‘Top Gun’ facts.
In this ‘Top Gun’ movie facts post you will learn about only the best ‘Top Gun’ facts there are, like how much it cost the production company to get the U.S. Navy to fly F-14s for the film. You will learn ‘Goose’s’ name in the movie, although it’s never spoken out loud once.
You will even learn facts that are so minuscule (like the average time in between the Air Boss spilling his coffee’s) that it seems absurd that we know them. So dive right in, and enjoy learning all the best ‘Top Gun’ facts.
The real-life ‘Top Gun’ school (U.S. Navy Fighter School) is, apparently, not a fan of the movie. Students and staff who quote the film are fined $5 each time they quote it. The reason why doesn’t seem to be public knowledge. Based on the low amount the fine, it isn’t considered a serious punishment.
We can only speculate, but we’re betting the sheer number of ‘Top Gun’ quotes was getting both distracting and annoying. The Navy was actually collaborating with the production of the film, so it isn’t as if there’s some sort of anti-‘Top Gun’ sentiment going around.
Ray Bans were actually in decline before the ‘Top Gun’ movie came out. The iconic sunglasses were actually designed for military pilots – that’s why they’re called ‘Aviators’. The idea was that the shape of the lens covered the entire eye socket while still allowing the helmet and gas mask to be worn. They weren’t especially popular with the public though, until Tom Cruise wore them in ‘Top Gun’.
Ran Bans sales jumped up by 40% that year, and they’ve been in style ever since. Think about it, you see Ray Bans all over the place these days. But those of you old enough to remember – it wasn’t like that at all in the early 1980’s and before.
Director Tony Scott was fired three times during production. Once, he was fired for shooting in slow motion. The second time was for making Kelly McGillis look attractive in a way that the studio deemed inappropriate. The third time was for shooting cockpit footage with the helmet visors down, obscuring the faces of the lead actors.
All three of those seem a little nitpicky, and of course he was hired back each time, so the whole thing is odd. Why fire a guy for something like that instead of asking him to correct it? And, if you’re going to fire him, why hire him back three times? Details on the decision-making process are scarce; we know why he was fired, but we don’t have any confirmation as to why he was hired back each time. It could end up being one of our favorite ‘Top Gun’ facts ever when we find out.
Jerry Bruckheimer pitched the movie as “Star Wars on Earth.” He got the idea for the movie while reading an article in a magazine about the U.S. Navy Fighter School, titled “Top Guns.” The story is that he read the article, looked at the pictures, and thought to himself “That looks like Star Wars on Earth.”
And a film was born. We can only assume he was looking at the pictures of fighter pilots and simulated aerial combat, because there aren’t a whole lot similarities between the Star Wars and ‘Top Gun’ other than those. Bruckheimer is famous for his smash TV and movie hits – but ‘Top Gun’ may just be on his Mount Rushmore of work.
Paramount paid $10,000 per hour of flight for each F-14. So, two F-14s flying for an hour was $20,000. That’s a lot of money, but it’s even more when you realize that in todays dollars that’s $46,853.83 per hour. It makes sense that it would be expensive; those were real U.S Navy F-14s, flown by active-duty U.S. Navy pilots.
The studio was paying for jet fuel, potential repair costs, and pilot salary, like you’d expect, but they were also compensating for the fact that those jets could’ve been flying patrols or used for real training flights during that time. Expensive, sure. A great batch of ‘Top Gun’ facts, sure.
Goose’s real name is never mentioned during the film. He’s always Goose, in every scene, in every line. Even his wife calls him Goose, and he’s Goose in the credits. You could be forgiven for thinking that the writers never bothered to give him a name, but you’d be wrong. His name was Nick Bradshaw.
You can see it briefly on a flight patch on top of his dresser when Maverick is retrieving his belongings, and you can spot it a few times on the side of his plane when flying. It’s most noticeable during the ejection scene. But the fact that no one ever said his real name is one of the pretty neat ‘Top Gun’ facts.
There were several technical mistakes in the movie that only real plane geeks will notice. For example, on a real F-14, the left engine was Engine 1, and the right engine was Engine 2. In one scene where Maverick is going into a flat spin, a voice on the radio says “Engine 1 is going out,” and the right engine goes out. That is actually Engine 2.
Normally, that isn’t such a big deal; nobody expects a movie studio to get details like that exactly right. What’s odd, though, is that multiple actual F-14 pilots were part of the filming, and no one corrected it.
Every time that Maverick tries to put on the brakes, so to speak, he pushes the throttles forward, and pulls back on the stick. Pushing the throttle forward increases power, speeding the plane up, and pull back on the stick puts the jet into a climb.
In real life, he’d be going into a steep climb will afterburners on full power, not braking the plane. The air brakes on an F-14 are too small to make a difference at that point, too. For a movie that got much military accuracy embedded into it, this error makes it one of our favorite ‘Top Gun’ facts ever.
On January 23, 2011, the Chinese state broadcasting company was reporting in a Chinese Air Force training exercise, and showed footage from ‘Top Gun’. As one of the aerial battles from the movie was playing the background, the reporter told viewers that it was a live exercise and that all targets had been accounted for.
Cleverly, they did not explicitly state that the footage they were showing was actual footage of the exercise, so they technically didn’t try to pass off scenes from ‘Top Gun’ as real life footage, but they came pretty close.
The original script didn’t include a love scene at all. When the movie was screened for a test audience, they complained about the lack of a love scene, and so the famous elevator scene was added. The only problem was, both Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis had already started working on other movies, and their hairstyles were different because of it.
That’s why Charlie is wearing a hat, and most of the scene doesn’t really show either of them clearly. Even though it was a hastily added scene that was filmed long after the rest of the movie, they managed to do a decent job of making it fit seamlessly into the film. Anytime you’ve got a post-production love scene, you’ve got one of the better ‘Top Gun’ facts out there.
If you’ve ever wondered why each missile shot in the movie looks similar, it’s because it’s the same two missile shots, replayed over and over again. The Navy was willing to help out in many ways, but they refused to authorize more than two missiles launches. Missiles are expensive; each AIM-54 Phoenix missile, the primary weapon of the F-14 Tomcat, cost $477,131.
Those two missile launches cost just under a million dollars. Paramount probably paid the Navy for those; but firing off missiles that could be used for military purposes – like training or defensive measures – probably still wouldn’t sit well with the Navy. It makes sense the Navy wouldn’t willingly overuse missiles, and it makes sense that this is one of the all time ‘Top Gun’ facts.
In several flight scenes, we’re shown a radar screen that indicates a 360 degree radar sweep around the plane. In reality, the radar on an F-14 only swept out to the front and sides of the plane. In fact, that’s true for most fighter jets. Radar uses radio waves, which are a form of radiation.
If the radar in an F-14 was directed behind the plane, it would be sending huge amounts of radiation directly through the cockpit. That would cause some health problems, to say the least. It would probably be enough radiation to give the pilot and the RIO a lethal dose.
Most screenwriters write their scripts in an office, at home, or maybe at a coffee shop. Jim Cash and Jack Epps, the screenwriters for ‘Top Gun’, took a slightly different approach. One of them decided to take classes with the U.S. Navy and learn how to fly an F-14.
Epps actually flew F-14s, but Cash had such a profound fear of flying that he actually did all of his writing in Michigan while Epps was in California. The entire screenplay for ‘Top Gun’ was written over the phone and through faxes, with the two writers in different time zones.
The filmmakers wanted support and participation from the Navy. The hope was that having the Navy on board would save them a lot of money and improve the accuracy of the film – as we’ve already seen, the accuracy didn’t exactly work out. The Navy got on board quickly, but only on the condition that they would have some control over the script.
The opening dogfight was originally supposed to happen over Cuba, and the Navy changed it to international waters, fearing that a dogfight over Cuba would send the wrong message. They also toned the language down from the original script.
Maverick’s love story was another problem for the Navy. Charlie was originally meant to be a Navy officer as well. The Navy has strict policies against romantic relationships between Navy personnel though, and they changed Charlie’s character to a civilian contractor. They didn’t want to send the wrong message about what Navy life was like.
At least, they didn’t want to send the wrong message about what romantic life in the Navy was like; they seemed perfectly OK with showing Navy pilots in all sorts of other breeches of conduct (wearing a cowboy hat to a briefing would not go over well in real life.)
Charlie is based on Christine Fox, a Navy defense tactician in real life. Her nickname is “Legs.” She developed a reputation for keeping her male colleagues in line; just the sound of her heels coming down the hall could shut down a conversation.
She worked at the Center for Naval Analyses, where she trained other Naval officers. As you might expect, most of her colleagues and trainees weren’t used to working with women — one of them was quoted saying, “She’s the smartest woman I’ve ever met. I like women for a lot of things and being smart isn’t usually one of them.”
One of the reasons that the Navy was so willing to collaborate with film makers on ‘Top Gun’ was that the military’s public image had suffered a lot in the wake of the Vietnam War. A lot of people didn’t think very highly of the military, and the Navy saw the movie as a way to restore their public image.
That also probably explains why they were OK with the film taking some liberties in terms of pilot behavior and the like: they were all about making the Navy look cool. This was the first time in history that Hollywood and the U.S. military actively collaborated on a film.
The Navy wasn’t exactly subtle about its role in making the film, either. In fact, they set up recruitment booths at a lot of the theaters showing the movie. It’s not clear how many people actually enlisted in the Navy as they walked out of ‘Top Gun’, and it’s a little hard to believe that anyone would do that, but it’s also hard to believe that the Navy would’ve set the booth up there in the first place, so who knows?
In any case, the Navy never really tried to hide that they were heavily involved in the film and that they wanted to use it as a recruitment tool. Fortunately for them, the movie was good enough that nobody cared.
The part of Lieutenant Charles “Chipper” Piper wasn’t originally in the script. Director Tony Scott wrote the part just for Adrian Pasdar when he thoroughly impressed Scott during his audition. Pasdar was, at the time, a complete unknown.
He was only nineteen, and he’d had to pay for his acting classes with money he got as compensation for an accident that partially severed his thumb. It was money well spent, apparently, because ‘Top Gun’ launched his acting career. He went on to have major roles in Heroes, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and several voice acting roles in animated TV shows and video games.
Tom Cruise is famous for performing all his own stunts, and he wasn’t going to make an exception for ‘Top Gun’. He and several of the other actors wanted to be in the planes during all the flight scenes. They couldn’t actually fly the planes, of course, but they wanted to sit in the RIO seat.
They did it for a little bit, but there was a problem: the actors, Cruise included, kept throwing up. Cruise was in a plane flown by Lieutenant Commander Lloyd “Bozo” Abel. At one point, just as Cruise was reaching for his sick bag, Bozo performed a maneuver that slammed Cruise’s head into the floor of the cockpit.
When he leveled the plane, Cruise asked him if he’d noticed that he couldn’t see him in the rear-view mirror. His reply was “Sorry, but then again, they don’t call me Bozo for nothing.” All the actors except one puked in the plane. The one actor who didn’t? Anthony Edwards, who played Goose.
Tom Cruise claims to have come up with the idea for international film premieres while on a promotional tour for ‘Top Gun’. That movie only premiered in the US, but the cast spent four months traveling the world, which was a first for Cruise.
They’d spend weeks at a time in each city they stopped in, which gave Cruise the idea to simply have film premieres in all of those cities. Cruise described this in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, though he said it took him “a few years to get it going.”
Cruise initially didn’t want to be in the movie. The filmmakers were convinced that he was perfect for the role of Maverick, though, and they didn’t give up. Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer, managed to convince Cruise do a ride-along with The Blue Angels.
Apparently he still had a ponytail from filming Legend with Ridley Scott, who’s the brother of ‘Top Gun’ director Tony Scott, and the pilots were making fun of him for it. It didn’t phase him though- he found the closest payphone the second they landed and called to accept the role. That plane ride, apparently, did not make him sick.
One of the best parts of the movie are the aerial shots of the planes. They don’t look staged at all and there’s a sort of gritty, realistic quality to them. That’s no accident; Tony Scott wanted to make the flight scenes as realistic-looking as possible, so in addition to having real Navy pilots (and several stunt pilots) handling the flying, he also changed out the film crew for those scenes.
Instead of a normal Hollywood film crew, he hired documentary cameramen to film the flight scenes, since they were better trained for capturing live events like that while still getting the shot just right. The result is that the flight scenes in ‘Top Gun’ are some of the best looking flight scenes ever filmed.
1986 was right at the height of the Cold War. Naturally, the movie needed to show some American pilots messing with their Soviet counterparts. So, we get that great scene with American and Russian planes flying close together, and the American pilot giving the finger to the Russians. In real life, the pilots were usually a lot friendlier.
They really would fly close to each other like that, but instead of flipping each other off, they’d hold up a glass of vodka, or even adult magazines. Technical advisor Mike McCabe said, “They’re doing their job, we’re doing our job, we don’t set the policy, we just execute it.”
Maverick’s character was written specifically for Tom Cruise. His performance in “All the Right Moves” had given the writers inspiration for the part.
That’s a big part of why they were so persistent in trying to convince him to take the part; literally no one else could play Maverick, because they’d envisioned and written the part just for him. There were back up options, but they were more of a last resort if Cruise just couldn’t be convinced.
Cruise and Val Kilmer never associated off-set. Either Cruise would join the cast after hours, or Kilmer would, but the two never hung out together. Some people say that the two genuinely didn’t like each other and were avoiding each other for that reason.
Others say that it was just a way to stay in character and keep the on-screen animosity as genuine as possible. Either way, the tension between the two on screen was genuine, and they worked to keep it up at all times. In fact, Cruise and Anthony Edwards even stayed at a different hotel from the rest of the cast to help keep their distance.
We’ve already mentioned that Epps, one of the screenwriters, really did learn to fly with the Navy as part of his writing process. After one of the first rides he took in the plane, he decided that ‘Top Gun’ was really more of a sports movie than a war movie. “Things happen with such force,” he said after experience six Gs of force in mid-flight.
“This was one of the greatest athletic things that I’ve ever been involved with in my life.” That’s why the movie has such a different look and feel from more typical war movies – it wasn’t written or filmed as a war movie, but as a sports movie.
The Navy recruitment booths at theaters, along with the general boost in public image from the film, really paid off. The Navy reported a 500 percent increase in applicants to its aviation program after ‘Top Gun’ came out, according to “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies.”
Their overall recruitment numbers spiked up that year, too. So, it wouldn’t be too surprising after all if they picked up a few recruits outside those theaters.
Tom Cruise had never ridden a motorcycle before filming ‘Top Gun’. He learned to do it just for the movie. The motorcycle he rides in the film is a Kawasaki Ninja 900/GPz900R. At the time, it was the fastest motorcycle ever made, with a top speed of 151 miles per hour.
In fact, the motorcycle that Cruise is riding is the very first Kawasaki Ninja 900/GPz900R that was ever made. His use of it in ‘Top Gun’ helped to make it a cultural icon. We’re excited to see which motorcycle will be used in ‘Top Gun 2’!
The soundtrack went nine times platinum, in the U.S. the U.K., Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand. It also hit the top of the US Billboard charts, and number four on the U.K. charts. “Danger Zone” made it to number 2 on the Billboard charts, “Take My Breath Away” hit number 1.
Originally, Toto was going to perform “Danger Zone,” but a series of legal disputes caused the studio to switch to Kenny Loggins. Judas Priest was also approached for the soundtrack, but declined because they thought it would be a flop.
The film grossed $353 million dollars at the box office, and only cost $15 million to make. It was the highest grossing film of 1986, despite the incredible expense of filming. The $10,000 per hour per plane flight scenes were apparently well worth it, since the film was astonishingly profitable.
Crocodile Dundee was the next highest-grossing film, and Platoon came in third. Aliens, the only one of those three that still rivals ‘Top Gun’ in popularity, was way down in seventh place.
The opening scene alone cost $25,000. More accurately, it cost more than that. The $25,000 was only part of it. Tony Scott asked the captain of the aircraft carrier to turn the ship so keep the sun in the position he liked for filming, and the captain told him that turning the ship again cost $25,000.
Scott wrote him a check for the money on the spot, although he said in a later interview that the check bounced. We’re sure the studio ended up paying the money though; it’s hard to imagine the Navy letting them get away with a bad check.
Paramount thought there was too much flying in the movie. That was, at one point, the only note that they had. Ironically, some film critics would later say that the flight scenes were the best part of the movie – one even said they were only part of the movie worth watching.
No one from Paramount has explained why they thought there was too much flying, though, so we’re left wondering. Really, we’re left confused; it’s hard to imagine anyone watching ‘Top Gun’ and complaining about the all the flying.
The bar that Maverick and Goose hang out in in the movie was a real bar in San Diego. Actually, it still is a real bar in San Diego. It’s called Kansas City Barbecue, and the iconic piano is still there. The building was severely damaged by a fire at one point, but it’s been rebuilt and it’s still up and running.
They’ve really capitalized on the bars appearance in the movie, too, as they sell a lot of ‘Top Gun’ memorabilia. Next time you’re in San Diego, stop by for a beer and a ‘Top Gun’ t-shirt.
Adrian Pasdar wasn’t the only actor whose career was launched by ‘Top Gun’. It was Meg Ryan’s feature film debut, as well. Her performance as Carole launched one of the most iconic acting careers of a generation. Kelly McGillis, meanwhile, eventually left acting for charitable work.
While it wasn’t Tom Cruise’s debut, it was, arguably, the film that elevated him to true superstar status. When ‘Top Gun’ came out, a significant portion of the cast were actors who were either entirely unknown or still relatively new on the Hollywood scene.
Charlie’s date at the officer’s club is the real-life “Viper”, Pete Pettigrew. He’s a retired Navy pilot who saw combat and shot down a MiG during the Vietnam War. He was also a real ‘Top Gun’ instructor.
He was a technical consultant on the film, and his real-life flight and combat experience, as well as his time at the actual U.S. Navy Fighter School were invaluable to the making of the film. He was one of several Navy pilots who participated in the filming in one way or another.
The F-14 pilot who “flipped the bird” at the MiG pilot was Scott Altman of squadron VF-51. When he retired from the Navy, he went on to become an astronaut. He would be on four Space Shuttle missions, including STS-151, which was the last mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
He was also one of the pilots who buzzed the tower; that scene required nine takes, so he buzzed the tower nine times. He said in an interview that was the most exciting thing he did for the movie, because normally buzzing the tower would get you grounded, with no chance of flying again.
Paramount Pictures wanted real, point of view camera shots from the F-14s while in flight. At the time, there was no way to do this with the level of video quality that they wanted, so they commissioned Grumman, the company that made the F-14, to make special cameras that would allow them to get the shot they wanted.
This allowed the filmmakers to use real aerial point-of-view footage from the planes in flight, which hadn’t been done before. Most planes had “gun cameras,” to allow for detailed debriefings, but these couldn’t provide the quality of video needed for a feature film.
No one had ever “buzzed the tower” at Miramar before. The Navy pilots, who were flying the scenes for the film, drew straws to see who would get to do it. One of the winners was Lieutenant Commander Lloyd “Bozo” Abel, the same pilot who had taken Cruise on a ride that made him sick. Michael Ironside was at the hangar that day, and when the plane flew by it was so low he could see into the cockpit.
Scott Altman stated that he flew all nine flights that buzzed the tower, though, so either Abel backed out, Altman misremembered, or there were more than nine takes of that scene. Either way, it was an exciting moment for the Navy pilots.
The “MiG 28s” were really just American F-5s that were painted black. Unsurprisingly, no actual MiGs were available for Paramount to use. After production ended, the F-5s that had been used for the movie were then used as the aggressor aircraft by the U.S. Navy Fighter School in real life. In other words, pilots in the real ‘Top Gun’ school were simulating an aerial battle agains the planes that had simulated a fake aerial battle in the ‘Top Gun’ movie.
Given the way that Navy recruitment spiked after ‘Top Gun’, at least some of those pilots had to have recognized the planes they were flying against as the planes from the movie that had inspired them to become Navy pilots.
In the scene when Maverick gets his orders sending him to the carrier after graduation, we see a pilot with a mustache and sunglasses standing behind him. That’s not an actor, but a real pilot. His name is C.J. Heatley, callsign “Heater,” and he was an F-14 pilot and a real life ‘Top Gun’ instructor.
As we’ll see, there were lots of real pilots and ‘Top Gun’ instructors who made cameos in the film. Many of them were technical advisors, others were just there as a courtesy.
When Maverick and Goose give the finger to a pilot, the person their flipping off is Admiral Robert Willard, the lead flight choreographer for the film. While he was flying one of “MiGs” in the movie, in real life he was an F-14 pilot.
He went on to have a distinguished military career, and would retire as an admiral. He served as Commander of the United States Pacific Fleet from 2007 to 2009 before transferring to United States Pacific Command. He retired from the Navy in 2012.
Rick Rossovich, Slider, stated in the DVD commentary, that he was kicked off of the ship used for filming when he smarted off to an officer. Rossovich had gone to sleep in his assigned bunk, but his bunk was close to the nuclear reactors, which made him uncomfortable, so he moved.
Unfortunately, the bunk he moved to belonged to one of the ships officers, who was unhappy to have his bunk stolen from him. When he told Rossovich to move, he smarted off to him and Rossovich was told to report to the Captain, who ordered him thrown off the ship for disrespect.
Michael Ironside was apparently very convincing as an officer. In the DVD commentary he says that he heard a sailor running below decks, and got on his case about it. He was in costume at the time, which meant he certainly looked like a real officer, and it seems that he had the officers command voice down pretty well, too.
The sailor saluted him and actually slowed down, although he started running again as soon as he was out of sight. He never found out that Ironside was an actor, and not a real officer.
The Pentagon charged Paramount Pictures 1.8 million dollars to use all of their planes and aircraft carriers for the film. As previously mentioned, they also demanded some level of control over the filming and the script. For instance, they didn’t want lots of plane scenes that ended poorly, and that changed several key moments in the film.
Goose’s ejection scene, for instance, was originally supposed to be a mid-air collision, but the Navy didn’t like it. Still, that $1.8 million was a small part of the $15 million dollar budget. It’s actually surprising that it was such a small part of the overall expenses.
The ship that Viper served on with Maverick’s father, the U.S.S. Oriskany, was a real ship, and the first Navy warship to become an artificial reef under authority granted by the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 108-136). It was sunk 24 miles south of Pensacola, Florida on May 17, 2006, using several controlled internal explosions.
It’s now called the Great Carrier Reef, and it’s become one of the most popular diving destinations in the United States. It was one of the only Essex-class aircraft carriers built after World War 2, when that class was first designed and launched.
An original draft of the script specified that the final showdown involved North Korean aircraft. As with the opening scene, which was originally supposed to be over Cuba, this was changed and the nationality of the planes and their pilots was left unmentioned.
Presumably this was at the request of the Navy to prevent any potential international incidents. At no point did the writers ever intend to show Russian and American planes in combat on screen – even they seemed to think that could be too provocative.
Overall, the movie does a good job of using accurate military and pilot lingo. One mistake really stands out, though.
The term “going ballistic” is a real phrase that was incorrectly used to describe a pilot reaching maximum speed, when what it actually means in real life is that the pilot is going too slow to maintain control of his aircraft; the aircraft is on a purely ballistic trajectory like a glider or even a ball thrown through the air, and the control surfaces have too little airflow over them to work. The call is used to warn other pilots that the plane cannot maneuver.
‘Top Gun’ was one of the first films to be selected for the Cinema 52 project, in which a subject watches a film 52 times in twelve months. Things that the subject noted about ‘Top Gun’ were Tom Cruise blinks 469 times, the word “the” is spoken 223 times, and the average time between Air Boss Johnson coffee spills is 27 minutes and 23 seconds.
The goal of the people involved in the project was actually to choose movies they hated, and see if watching them 52 times would change their opinion of the film. The guy who watched ‘Top Gun’ says his feelings about the movie are actually more negative than when he started, although he finds himself quoting it often.
The sequel was supposed to be made a long time ago. Paramount had the script shortly after the first movie came out. They decided, though, that it would be too expensive to make. The sequel scheduled for 2020 appears to be a different film from the first script, so it’s possible that the filming is going to be cheaper.
It’s also possible that they’ve simply decided it will be worth the money, much like the original. We’ll have to wait to hear about how cooperative the Navy is being this time, though we’d expect them to be just as excited as they were for the first one. Keep an eye for the recruitment booths outside the theaters this time.
That’s the end of the list! Thank you for reading through it all, we hope you enjoyed learning more about this iconic film. Now, go check out these 50 Scale RC Jets that look just like the real thing. There’s even some fighter jets you saw in ‘Top Gun’ in the list.