Trailer
Plot summary
Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell flies F-14 Tomcats for the U.S. Navy with his radar intercept officer, Nick "Goose" Bradshaw. A run-in with two MiGs leaves a fellow aviator so shaken that Maverick, low on fuel, defies his landing order to shepherd him back to the carrier. The wingman turns in his wings, and Maverick and Goose take his place at Top Gun, the Navy's fighter weapons school at Miramar. At the school Maverick clashes with the other pilots and with an old story about his father's death in combat, and he struggles to be the best pilot in the class. He is drawn at the same time to Charlie Blackwood, a civilian instructor.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Top Gun (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Aerobatic pilot Art Scholl was hired to do in-flight camera work, but while performing the flat spin the script called for he radioed, "I have a problem... I have a real problem" and could not recover; his Pitts Special biplane crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Carlsbad on September 16, 1985.
- While filming, director Tony Scott wanted aircraft landing and taking off back-lit by the sun; when the carrier's commanding officer changed course, Scott was told it cost $25,000 to turn the ship, and he wrote the captain a check so he could keep shooting for five more minutes.
- Matthew Modine turned down the role of Maverick because he felt the film's pro-military stance went against his politics and chose Full Metal Jacket instead, while Tom Cruise, whom the producers wanted after Risky Business, was reluctant until Ridley Scott convinced him to take it.
- Val Kilmer was reluctant to play Iceman Kazansky, finding the script "silly" and disliking warmongering in films, but took the role because he was under contractual obligations with the studio and because of Tony Scott's enthusiasm for the project.
- The U.S. Navy's influence over script approval moved the film's opening dogfight from Cuba to international waters, toned down the language, and scrapped a scene involving a crash on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
- Scott Altman, later a NASA astronaut, flew an F-14 for many of the film's stunt sequences and was the pilot "flipping the bird" in the opening sequence; his "buzzing the tower" worried residents who called the base and news media to report a "berserk pilot".
- Toto was originally meant to record "Danger Zone" and had written "Only You" for the soundtrack, but a dispute between the band's lawyers and the producers paved the way for Loggins to record "Danger Zone" while "Only You" was omitted from the film entirely.
- Top Gun was the first new-release blockbuster on VHS to be priced as low as $26.95, and with an $8 million marketing campaign that included a Top Gun-themed Diet Pepsi commercial it became the best-selling VHS in the industry's history on pre-orders alone, with over 1.9 million units ordered.
