It would become one of the most important flights in movie history. When a young, 5-foot-7 actor with long hair and a ponytail showed up on a motorcycle, a group of US Navy pilots were more than happy to test his need for speed.
“They look at him and they don’t know who Tom Cruise is,” recalls screenwriter Jack Epps Jr. “They do what they like to do: they took him up, they shook him around, he threw up on himself, and he came out and said, ‘I love this.’ From that moment, he was in.”
Cruise’s experience that day with the Blue Angels, the US Navy’s top flight demonstration team, would inspire him to become a licensed pilot. He also took the role of Maverick in Top Gun, a movie about Cold War flying aces that redefined the modern blockbuster. Co-written by Epps and Jim Cash, directed by Tony Scott, and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the film turns 40 on Saturday.
Top Gun follows reckless Navy pilot Maverick as he competes with rival Iceman (Val Kilmer), falls for instructor Charlie (Kelly McGillis), and deals with guilt over the death of his co-pilot Goose (Anthony Edwards) in a training accident. He goes on a dangerous rescue mission, saves Iceman, and finds redemption, with Iceman telling him: “You can be my wingman anytime.”
This testosterone-heavy slice of Ronald Reagan-era Americana—complete with a homoerotic beach volleyball game—made 23-year-old Cruise a star and boosted military enlistment; the Navy even set up recruitment tables in movie theaters. It eventually led to a hit sequel in 2022, with a third movie now in the works.
It all started in 1983 when Bruckheimer was flipping through the May issue of California magazine. “Top Guns” read the headline, with a big photo from inside the cockpit of an F-14 fighter jet. The article began: “At Mach 2 and 40,000 feet over California, it’s always high noon.”
Speaking from Los Angeles, Bruckheimer, now 82, recalls: “I saw the magazine article and it looked like Star Wars on Earth. I threw it to my partner, Don Simpson, and he called in one of our executives and said, ‘Let’s get the rights to this,’ and that’s how it started.”
The pair pitched the idea to producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, then head of production at Paramount, and he was impressed. When Katzenberg mentioned five or six ideas to screenwriters Cash and Epps over breakfast one day, Top Gun was among them. Epps, who had a private pilot’s license, jumped on it.
The 76-year-old, based in Santa Monica, recalls: “I said, ‘Wow, this will be great, I get to fly in a jet plane!’ We didn’t even have a movie made yet. Even if it didn’t get made, I’d get a jet ride out of it, so that’s pretty special. My partner didn’t like to fly, so I had to talk him into it, but that was no problem.
“We met with the producer Simpson. Bruckheimer and I said my concern is if we’re going to do this project, we have to go up in real planes. We can’t use special effects for the planes; it has to be the real thing.”
This requirement was key to the pitch made to the Pentagon to get military support. “I pitched the idea of how we see these young American heroes, and they said, ‘Sounds interesting, and we’ll let you use our equipment. You know, you’ll have to fly in a Navy jet?’ I said, ‘Oh, no, really?! How fast can I get down there?'”
Epps was sent to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to dive into the closed-off, elite world of naval aviators. He interviewed 30 pilots, but the real eye-opener came when he was strapped into the back of a jet at full throttle.
“I had to go through training, which gave me a lot of ideas,” he says. “Before I could go up, I had to know how to eject and go through what’s called the helo dunker, where they put you underwater and you have to get out in a very systematic way.”All those crazy experiences were amazing because they gave me a full sense of what it was really like.
“We got up in the air, and they told me, ‘We shouldn’t be doing this, but we’re going to do it anyway.’ So they did a lot of close passes. We pulled six G’s, and I learned that when you’re pulling G’s, even though you have a special suit that compresses your legs, you have to grunt to keep the blood flowing to your brain.”
Kelly McGillis and Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Photograph: Paramount/Sportsphoto/Allstar
Epps continues: “It was incredible, and the speed was amazing. I had never felt anything like it in my life. The skill of those pilots to pull off those hard-G turns, come up over the top, cross each other, do a barrel roll, then come back and make high-speed passes was just fabulous.
“When I landed, I called my partner and said, ‘Jim, this isn’t what we thought it was. These guys are athletes. They’re strong. This is about speed we’ve never seen before in our lives.’ We were both athletes—Jim played football in high school, and I played ice hockey until my 30s—so we looked at it from an athlete’s perspective. These guys were very special, and athletes love to compete with each other.”
But as Epps watched F-14s take off and land, he realized there was still a big plot hole at the center of the project. Drama needs conflict, but the pilots at Miramar were completely united. “I’m looking at these guys, and they all get along because they’re all about teamwork. And I’m thinking, ‘What am I going to write about? What’s the story here? Where’s the conflict?’
“I was racking my brain, and then I thought, ‘Oh, what if one guy doesn’t fit in? What if one guy is out to be the star? It’s all about him, and now you’ve got this bump in the situation.’ That’s where the character Maverick came from. We said, ‘Okay, here’s where the conflict comes from internally. Someone wants to be the best at Top Gun school.'”
The emotional heart of the film—the shocking mid-point death of Maverick’s radar intercept officer, Goose—was a risky narrative choice directly inspired by the deep grief Epps had seen in real-life pilots.
“We went out for coffee, and I was sitting with about six or seven guys. They started talking about friends they had lost in Vietnam. This was 15 years later, and I could see they were still deeply mourning the loss of their colleagues and fellow pilots. I was really struck by how sincere their emotions were.
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“As a writer, I thought to myself: if I could make the audience feel what they feel—that sense of loss—I would have achieved something. That’s when I got the idea to lose Goose in the middle of the story. It would bring the audience in, make them feel a sense of loss, like what it means to lose a pilot, lose a friend. So we went with that, and it’s quite a moment.”
With the script taking shape, the big question of casting came up. The role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell needed an actor with unique charisma and confidence. For Epps, there was only one choice. “I was a Tom Cruise fan at the time—still am—so we wrote this with Tom Cruise in mind as Maverick. I loved his movies. He’s such an energetic actor, and he connects with the audience.
“We were finishing the script, and I handed it over to Jerry Bruckheimer at the gates of Bel Air on a Saturday night. I said, ‘Jerry, think Tom Cruise when you read this.’ He read it, and so did Don, and they both said, ‘Yeah, love the script. Tom Cruise: great idea.'”
Bruckheimer agrees, confirming that Cruise was their first choice. However, getting the young star—who had grown his hair long for Ridley Scott’s fantasy film—wasn’t easy.Making the film Legend wasn’t easy. Bruckheimer recalls: “We couldn’t get him to commit, so I arranged for him to fly with the Blue Angels in El Centro, California. He had long hair and a ponytail, and when they saw him walk up, they said, ‘We’ll give this hippie a real ride.’ And they did. He got out of the plane, walked to a phone booth—since there were no cell phones back then—called me, and said, ‘I’m in.'”
Pete Pettigrew, a former Top Gun instructor, served as a key technical advisor. Once production began under Tony Scott’s visionary direction, the film had to balance its stunning visuals with emotional depth. Bruckheimer admits that editing Top Gun was a delicate balance between visual spectacle and storytelling.
“We watched it at different stages. Some early cuts leaned too much on style over substance—that’s Tony’s background. He’s an amazing artist and commercial director, a brilliant visualist, and he went overboard in that area. So we sat down with him and the editor, went through every scene together, and brought it back to the movie you see today.”
After initial hesitation, the U.S. military saw Top Gun‘s potential to boost its image and encourage enlistment. But this partnership has sparked ongoing criticism from the left, who argue the film is a jingoistic, pro-war recruitment tool wrapped in a pop soundtrack.
Epps disagrees, preferring to view the film through the personal stories of the service members he interviewed. “These are great American heroes who risk their lives every day for America. They love the country and are there to protect us, so it’s a bit silly not to honor our veterans and military personnel who basically keep us safe.”
“These are heroes. You’ll always hear someone say otherwise, but the film never suggested they’re starting wars. They’re there to protect. They’re the tip of the spear, out there every day risking their lives for us.”
Despite the filmmakers’ confidence, the path to release was full of unknowns. An early test screening in Houston, right after the Challenger space shuttle explosion, left the team nervous. Bruckheimer admits: “There was no laughter, nothing. It was dead silent, and we thought it was a disaster. But when the scores came back, they were high, and we were shocked.”
Epps remembers the first time he saw the film at a private screening. “It was sensational. What made Tony Scott’s direction so great was his understanding of speed and G-forces, and he captured and edited it perfectly. It made the audience feel like they were flying in a jet. Tom’s performance was excellent, and the music was fantastic.”
Though critic Pauline Kael called it a “shiny homoerotic commercial,” Top Gun earned $357 million worldwide, becoming the top film of 1986. Its soundtrack was the best-selling of the year, and the song “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin won the Oscar for Best Original Song.
As Bruckheimer works on the highly anticipated third film, he points to one key reason Top Gun endures. “Tom Cruise,” the producer says firmly. “He’s the hardest-working actor in Hollywood with amazing instincts. He won’t let anything slide unless it’s perfect. He makes movies for the audience, and that’s exactly what he does.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about It Looked Like Star Wars on Earth The Making of Top Gun at 40 written in a natural conversational tone
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What is It Looked Like Star Wars on Earth
Its a documentary or featurelength article that celebrates the 40th anniversary of the movie Top Gun It goes behind the scenes to show how they made the film especially the incredible aerial dogfight scenes
2 Why is it called Star Wars on Earth
The filmmakers wanted the jet combat in Top Gun to feel as thrilling and visually spectacular as the spaceship battles in Star Wars but with real planes and pilots They brought that same sense of speed danger and excitement down to Earth
3 Is this a new movie
No its not a new Top Gun movie Its a retrospective look at the original 1986 film explaining how it was made and why it became such a huge hit
4 Who made this documentary
It was typically produced by a network like National Geographic the BBC or a film history channel often in collaboration with Paramount Pictures It includes interviews with the original cast the director Tony Scott and real Navy fighter pilots
5 Do I need to be a pilot to understand it
Not at all Its made for regular movie fans It explains the technical stuff in simple exciting terms so anyone can enjoy it
Intermediate Advanced Questions
6 How did they actually film the dogfights without CGI
They strapped IMAX and 35mm cameras directly onto the F14 Tomcats and other jets Real Navy pilots flew the planes while the actors were inside reacting to real highG maneuvers The cameras were mounted on the wings cockpits and even on the pilots helmets
7 What was the biggest challenge in making the flight scenes
Keeping the actors from getting sick The Gforces in a real F14 are brutal Tom Cruise and the other actors had to train for months just to survive the flights and they often threw up between takes The camera operators also had to
