With Top Gun: Maverick doing well at the box office, interest in its predecessor has also gone up. In particular, folks are wondering if Top Gun was based on a true story.
Top Gun is inspired by the real-life US Fighter Weapons School but it is not specifically based on a true story or event. Its protagonist Maverick is not based on a real-life person either.
So, no, none of the characters, events, or even missions in Top Gun have occurred in real life. But don’t be disappointed, because it doesn’t mean all of it is created out of thin air, either!
I really enjoyed digging into how Top Gun came to be, and I found there to be three interesting points to the journey. Read on:
The Article
In 1983, Ehud Yona wrote an article called “Top Guns” for the May issue of the California magazine. This went into great detail about the US Navy’s pilot school, Fighter Weapons School, which was fondly called TOPGUN by its pilots.
Reading about the exciting lives of these elite pilots is what inspired producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to create the same magic on the screen. In the following years, many scriptwriters turned down the film until it was finally taken up by Jack Epps Jr. and Jim Cash.
The film would go on to popularize the values and aesthetics of Navy pilots, blowing a niche that never existed before. This would also contribute to Tom Cruise’s notoriety for action films.
The Interviews
Like every good writer, Epps Jr. did his due diligence and in-depth research. As the US Department of Defense had invested in the film, the writers had access to the Navy and conducted several extensive interviews with Top Gun pilots, giving them a safe space where they could talk about their private lives.
Although Top Gun is not singularly based on any real-life person or event, the writers did state that the film was a tapestry woven from all the stories they heard.
The Top Gun production team also chose to go to some declassified classes and training sessions at the Navy school. Not all were pleasant—one lesson even involved learning how to hold your breath underwater to survive a helicopter crash in the dark.
While scary, I have a feeling that even if Google existed back then, the writers would’ve preferred writing from experience.
The Hook
The stories the writers collected from Top Gun were really interesting, but it wasn’t dramatic enough for cinema. One thing that really stood out is that most of the pilots got along with each other and always followed orders. If the movie wanted to add any tension or conflict, they had to change this.
Thus, was born Maverick—a person who is perhaps not meant to lead, but not meant to follow the herd either. The writers sought to explore what kind of problems Maverick could create at Top Gun and whether there would be scope for the situation to remedy itself.
This is the hook that would get the audience to come to see a movie about Navy pilots that has never been attempted before in any major way. As we see, it worked!
About Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick is a Paramount film (and sequel) starring Tom Cruise who reprises his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell from the 1986 Top Gun. It is directed by Joseph Kosinski, with a screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie and a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks.
Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer are part of the cast.
The film sees Maverick’s return to the US Navy pilots as he trains a new squad of aviators, preparing them for a dangerous mission. Upon release, the movie was a massive success and became the highest grossing film of Tom Cruise so far.
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