Deep Intel on TOP GUN MAVERICK

so the release of top gun maverick the sequel to the classic released in 1986 top gun has been slid once again the original release date was june of 2020 of course that didn't happen because of the pandemic so it was slid to basically the holidays of last year and then because things weren't changing much it was slid by paramount the studio that is releasing the movie once again to fourth of july this coming fourth of july and now paramount just announced that they're sliding it again to november 19th so i know from what i've seen that tom cruise is very insistent that everything be perfect this is very much a labor of love for him he's put a lot into it to put it mildly and he said at comic-con he characterized top gun maverick as a love letter to aviation and from what i'm seeing with the trailers and other things i'm hearing i think that's by and large true so i have some experience dealing with hollywood i worked in la for a couple of years on a military website and the first time i dealt with paramount studios i was actually a lieutenant working at the naval safety center i was the editor of the aviation safety magazine called approach and in that capacity i made this video that i produced myself using an old school vhs to vhs editing machine and i used some rock and roll songs i didn't have the copyright for them this is before the internet and when somebody would have flagged me for that but this was mishap footage that i put to songs like welcome to the jungle and cold sweat by the sugar cubes and and some others so this was a very popular video and we premiered it at the tail hook convention which was in las vegas back in those days in 1989 so there was a rep from paramount who was there because at the time they were shooting for october and flight of the intruder a novel written by my good friend stephen coons who was very influential and a mentor of mine when i was starting to write punk's war so i get a call from paramount a rep who said hey i saw the the mishap footage video can i get a copy because we're doing hunt for october and in hunt for october this f-14 crashes and we want to use some of that footage and so i my first response was i don't think i'm authorized to release this footage so this rep called the commander public affairs officer in la who worked at a command called nav info west so every branch of the military and the pentagon have offices that have the mission to deal with hollywood and navinfo west was doing the script reviews and other things and i will say it's not easy necessarily to have the military in this case the u.s navy support your project they get script approval they get to decide whether or not you're going to use real hardware have access to military personnel active duty personnel and in fact top gun the original script had to be modified a little bit so i get a call from navinfo west and they're like please give paramount this footage the script for hunt for red october and flight of the intruder is approved so go for it and so i gave him the footage and i assumed they would use f14 an f-14 mishap but in fact if you look at this scene and the scene is the one where the alec baldwin character has just come aboard the aircraft carrier and um fred thompson plays the admiral and behind him on the plat the the ship's tv you can see an f-14 coming in and you hear some power calls and then an airplane hits the ramp and tumbles so if you look closely that airplane is not in fact a tomcat and this is the part where fred thompson the animal says this business will get out of control it will get out of control and will be lucky to live through it so that's actually a korean war vintage f9 that tumbles there and the back story is that pilot actually got out of that wreckage as dramatic as it is with only burned wrists where his flight suit sleeves didn't cover so that was my first lesson in accuracy and getting a script approved and getting approval so just so you understand top gun maverick has the approval of the us navy they filmed aboard the uss theodore roosevelt they're using real super hornets they the flying scenes were flown by real top gun crews and also strike you crews not just guys at top gun but also pilots from strike u remember as i said in previous episodes top gun moved from miramar to fallon nevada the high sierras and you can see in the footage that this is a completely different uh you know landscape than in top gun the original top gun so let's look at some of the footage here and some of the elements and see if we can't uh you know figure out what top gun maverick is is all about and and compare and contrast it with with the first one so as i said i i worked in hollywood um i was the editor-in-chief of a military website and when i was out there i actually did a meeting with jerry bruckheimer so jerry is one of the co-producers of the original one and this is in 2015 so i got to talk about where we are where we were with the development of top gun maverick because we heard rumors when i lived down in southern maryland that tom cruise actually visited the ceo of the test pilot school and so you're like oh you're doing something about test pilots so this is way back in like 2011 2012 time frame so i see jerry i'm like so what's going on and he says well it's happening that's that's all he would say it's it's happening so this is 2015. so fast forward to the tail hook convention in 2019 and the director joseph kosinski came out and he actually debuted the trailer and they got us all in the auditorium there at the nugget in in reno they made us put our phones at the front of the room so it's really mysterious and they said you cannot talk about this and and they showed us the trailer the the first one that came out and if you haven't seen that go up youtube and check it out it's it's it's an amazing travel so imagine seeing that not just on your laptop but on a big screen so we got chills now while we were there we also talked to many of the crews who flew the scenes and who flew the actors including tom cruise so at one point during the q a one of the aviators who was not part of the filming asked kasinsky did tom cruise get air sick and kaczynski said no he absolutely did not and the guy sitting next to me is the pilot who flew tom cruise and he actually snickered and kind of shook his head and so i i'm interpreting that to mean that maybe in fact tom cruise did get airsick but whatever so they used navy crews as advisors and they filmed a board the carrier scenes aboard the uss theodore roosevelt off the west coast in the west coast southern california operating areas and as you can see from this photo here that's quite an involved evolution and i remember hearing stories from the original top gun filmed aboard ranger and enterprise both aircraft care is decommissioned now but how they had to get the sun right and and tony scott was really insistent and and so forth and so on and uh so obviously you have to have some understanding of how we're going to do this and and some patients so we the technology is much better now obviously and so you can see here that they have these imax cameras that they bolted onto the glare shield to look back at the rear cockpit and this is an f-18f two-seat super hornet and so the other thing you need to understand is you can't just bolt cameras on a navy airplane so this had to have navy naval air systems command engineer approval that's a very involved process to get them to approve a rig like this and they had these cool chase jets that you can see here and you see this uh super hornet zorch away there that's sped up but you can't go that fast but very impressive cinematography and so at tail hook the director lady claimed this is these are the most amazing flying scenes ever filmed and and i don't have any reason to believe that's not true because you can see here in in in this scene as the super hornet is raging across uh one of the ranges at fallon i'm guessing probably bravo 20 you know low level just just moving transonic so you get that shock wave that that's knocking the sand up and then he does this really cool impulse pull kind of like what the blue angels do at the beginning of their show and pulls into the vertical so they're flying super horns you can tell by the square intakes there there's a nice aileron roll away from the camera and incredible footage this is obviously sped up low level very exciting beautiful these airplanes are vaping there you can see the condensation here we're going low level nice pull over the top so it is really amazing footage gorgeous gave me chills the first time i saw it there at that that premiere of the of the trailer at tail hook now as i said this is a passion project for tom cruise and he has taken a real strain on getting it right a love letter to aviation as he said obviously his career was forged by playing maverick it took him to the next level in terms of his uh his visibility as an actor so he wants to give back in myriad ways including trying to get this right insofar as a hollywood movie an entertainment vehicle can get it right so he owns a p-51 which is badass that's a really cool world war ii fighter he owns one and here's a picture of him taking one of his co-stars jennifer conley for a ride and he put his actors through this syllabus he came up with this hybrid syllabus it started with flying in the p-51 with him feeling the g going inverted and then he put him in these l-39s which is a jet used by uh european countries for for training that can go fast and pull g's and it's an ejection seat so got them used to that and so they got used to pulling g's and and getting air sick and he wanted to get him adapted so when they got in the back seat of the super hornet that they'd kind of know what they were getting into but in spite of that as you can see from this footage here you know if you've never flown a tactical airplane at in tactical conditions inverted six and a half plus seven eight g on the airplane for extended periods of time it's gonna get your attention and you can see here that even tom cruise kind of had his ass kicked and here's this one uh segment here you can see that he's he's kind of having trouble keeping his eyes open uh which is you know for fighter guys it's kind of bad to put your eye to close your eyes while you're fighting a bogey because you're going to lose sight and you can see here after that he's he's got his is it's a good workout right as we all know anybody who's done that so the other thing is on in carrier ops they want to give you the illusion that he's in the front seat so here he does this cat shot you can see he's kind of got his hand up as i've described before with the carrier ops episode the secrets of the tomcat carrier ops episode tomcat pilots had their hands on the stick during a cat shot hornet super hornet pilots do not so they salute the shooter and then put their hand up here on a handle but you can see here he's got his hand kind of low so he's trying to simulate in the back seat the idea of putting your hand up there but actually his hand is a little bit low okay it looks like top gun maverick has a lot of nods to the original top gun specifically in the trailer you can see maverick is still riding on the taxiway with his motorcycle we're still briefing in hangar bays although this one is aboard the ship instead of at the field there as i said in the 21 crinsworthy errors episode not practical in terms of classified information looks like they're briefing some sort of target imagery there on the the big blow up picture and they also have for some reason members of the ship's crew in attendance maverick is still manning up by himself and and relatively quiet although flight ops are going on and he's still giving a thumbs up before he salutes the cat officer for some reason we're dumping fuel again going into the merge the dump mast on the super hornet is at the top of the vertical stabs and we have some really visually intriguing aerobatics aerial moves but these things are tactically impractical if not violations of the training rules of engagement somebody loses a motor although probably doesn't go into a flat spin because the superman doesn't flat spin like the tomcat used to beach football has replaced beach volleyball the eye bar has replaced the miramar oak club and not sure what song has replaced you've lost that loving feeling and rooster must have his dad's piano playing jeans because he's taken up the piano let's try to figure out the plot sort of roughly based on the trailers and the other behind the scenes images that that we've seen here so first off maverick has this killer man cave with a p-51 a handful of motorcycles and all kinds of other stuff so he is a a captain of no six he must have some other sideline to make some money because you can't have these kinds of hobbies on captain's pay i'm sorry you just can't his significant other let's assume it's his wife is peggy benjamin the admiral's daughter who's referenced in the first movie as one of the flybys that he did an unauthorized flyby so i'm thinking the trailer chronology is 180 out meaning it ends with him flying this sr-72 but based on what i know about the site surveys and different places that tom cruise and the producers went i'm thinking it starts with him being a test pilot so he visited patuxent river naval air station about 2011 2012 time frame and asked questions of the ceo of of the test pilot school who i know about what is it like to be a test pilot so i'm thinking he's here at test pilot he's a test pilot and he does this fly by he blows the roof off of the guard shack and he gets caught on the carpet by ed harris who plays a two-star not sure exactly what his job is and ed harris lays out sort of his career path how many years he's been in how many migs he's killed et cetera et cetera and says yet you're just a captain and he asked him why is that and tom cruise says one of life's mysteries good line so this franchise is known for its one-liners as we know i feel the need for speed do some of that pilot [ __ ] you can be my wingman anytime these kinds of one-liners that have become part of pop culture so i'm thinking he leaves test pilot community and heads to top gun again we can see from some of the footage and images that were taken on set here's one of the cast talking to tom cruise and they're wearing their flight suits it looks like they got the patch assortment right so this would be correct if you were talking about a top gun class strike fighter weapons tactics instructors swifty so now when you go through top gun it's not just six weeks long it's 10 weeks long you actually get an official warfare especially sub code and uh it becomes actually something that informs your career path after that and they're also wearing the top gun patch talk about the patchwares that circular patch on your sleeve so you remember in the first movie there was all these patch assortments and grab bag of stuff that kind of made it ridiculous and now it looks like they got that right in in this one which is great and one of the plot lines is the tension between rooster goose's son and maverick and rooster says my dad believed in you i'm not going to make the same mistake and so they have obviously a little scuffle here in the ready room the hangman character played by actor glenn powell has some tension with rooster kind of like maverick and iceman from the first movie hangman is allegedly the son of iceman or maybe maverick so it's kind of like a darth vader who's his father thing and then some of the other folks we have we have fanboy payback and just plain bob so what you notice with the helmets is they're wearing hgu55s which are not the most cutting edge that they wear these days so if you look at a picture of a modern helmet it has this big housing it's it's kind of ugly to be honest but it it's good for night vision goggles and the different glass cockpits that they they have now and they and for the f-35 you know the the helmet and the visor are actually the hud now your visor is your hud so that's a that's a big unwieldy piece of gear and i guess the directors thought or the director thought that that's not that does that's not a good look so they also have clear visors so they're not wearing dark visors which they would be but you can't see a person's expression if he has a dark visor on her he or she has a duck advisor and so they're wearing clear visors so you can see their eyes and everything like that and also for some reason they have their call signs as if it's football tryouts like you had your last name taped to the front of your helmet they have their call signs in in on the front of their helmet that's not where your call sign would be it would be in small letters on the back your helmet uh in in real world so they leave the training environment at some point and things get real world and by this footage somebody gets shot at by i'm guessing it's a you know ir sam and they shoot flares and eventually this person must get shot down because there's a memorial service mission may information jennifer connolly peggy benjamin is there so did she know the person or she's just there because she's maverick's wife maverick does this pound the wings in which i've never seen before at a aviation memorial service and i've been to a number of them that's more of a seal thing but it's good look dramatic and so that's kind of what we know except the x factor and the x factor is the involvement of the f-14 as you know we've teased out before so what role does the tomcat play well we have seen some shots that were taken like with long-range cameras on the set up in the lake tahoe area which is near fallon and so here we see this picture of an f-14 and it's got some weird insignia on it not sure what country that's supposed to be looks like some you know eastern european country and there are photos of here's tom cruise getting in the front seat and then the miles teller character is getting in the rear cockpit so the rooster character gets in in the backseat so is there a plot line where maverick and rooster man up a tomcat like rooster is like be my real like your dad kind of a thing that seems kind of intriguing obviously sort of hokey but you know kind of cool and then there's another set image that was taken that shows tom cruise running away through the snow after apparently being shot down so it's kind of a behind enemy lines kind of a thing right so that's all we know we'll have to wait till hopefully no later than november 18th but it's looking like it's going to be a good one i know i'm looking forward to it as we get closer if i find out anymore we'll be talking about it here on the channel obviously when i see it for the first time i'll definitely be talking about it here at the channel so top gun maverick looks like it's going to be a good one and no surprise all right that'll do it for this episode thank you again to all the new subscribers we have hit 10 000 subscribers that's a big deal in terms of visibility of the channel the other thing that matters a lot is likes so if this is the first episode you've watched please ring the bell if you're returning subscriber hit those likes comments are awesome i love the comments getting the community going here as you've seen i try to answer each and every one very much appreciate the effort there and share the videos on the other social channels that you're part of so again thanks for the support and i look forward to talking to you again soon

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 227,534

Rating: 4.9132495 out of 5

Keywords: Top Gun Maverick, Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer, Joseph Kosinski, Paramount Pictures, Top Gun, F/A-18 Super Hornet, aircraft carriers, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Goose, Rooster, Hangman, Maverick, Peggy Benjamin, USS Theodore Roosevelt, Naval Aviation, IMAX, Ward Carroll, Stephen Coonts, Hunt for Red October, Flight of the Intruder, Tailhook Convention, Tailhook Association, Miramar, Fallon, Nevada, flat spin, DCS

Id: hzn0JTNNdWE

Length: 25min 39sec (1539 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021