i want to begin by speaking about tom cruise because he is someone who demands such a high
standard of from every department i mean as a sort of director when you're on a set you've got
someone like that who cares so much and goes so far and beyond to make sure that this project is
as brilliant as it has proven to be that must be so such a great help
for you no it's uh that attitude is infectious you know the whole crew feels it and everyone
strives to kind of deliver their best work so yeah it's great to have on set i've gotta
imagine you would have seen this sort of the the original films of all those all those years ago
did you ever envision one that you'd be on the set of the sequel not when i saw it certainly not no i
saw it as a 12 year old kid and just you know had the same reaction that everyone else did which was
fun film great character great music you know it was all over the radio that year
and uh yeah never really thought i would be able to work on it until jerry bruckheimer sent me
an early version of the script about five years ago and that was you know the first step
of many to get to this point so you've known all those five years that this was a this is
a project you were going to eventually be helming well i didn't know that until jerry and i traveled
to paris to kind of pitch tom on the idea of the film and uh at the end of that meeting tom picked
up the phone and called paramount and said we're making this movie and at that point i was like i
guess i'm doing it um which is crazy so how tough was that balance in giving the fans that injection
of nostalgia they want so there's little moments of sequences that heart back to the original and
yet create something that's completely new and original and modern as well is that quite a
tough sort of balance to get right yeah i mean for me it's about capturing the feeling of what
i had when i saw it for the first time um so we didn't want to make a cover band version of the
film we're not aping you know shot by shot but at the same time we want people to feel like they're
going back into the top gun universe so i think in the first few minutes you definitely feel that
but then very quickly the story goes in its own direction and we see that it's a new journey for
maverick there's a lot of new characters and it's going to be its own story because how important
was it i mean obviously there's always pressure on a movie like this to appease the kind of
the fans but also to honor tony scott's legacy as well and i was wondering too if there was any
sort of specific looks inspired by tony that you wanted to to bring into this uh definitely
no i mean tony set the look for the universe so you know like i said we wanted our film to
exist in that same place uh you know and that means shooting at sunset
you know there's a couple shots where we use those sunset grads which are those filters that
tony would put on the lens to give it that top gun look so you'll see you know little touches
and homages throughout um to tony but at the same time we also knew we had to innovate on our own
and and give it a a look and that that would stand on its own i know tom was keen to get all of the
kind of cars to do all the flight pilot training and stuff like that did you ever get up in a plane
with with tom or anyone or was it did you get to experience that i didn't get to experience the
f-18 which uh i've been invited to uh now that the film's over and covid's over so i hope to get that
opportunity soon but yeah tom tom would take me up on his plane a couple times he'd fly me back
and forth to set with him which was pretty cool i mean it feels like with tom cruise he feels
like one of the last true movie stars i mean look there's hundreds of brilliant movie stars still
on the planet but there's something about him that has this kind of throwback to being what a
specific breed of movie star doesn't really exist anymore um i just wondering if it's almost do you
worry a little bit for the future of the kind of blockbuster in the sense that obviously tom
cruise are getting older something it feels like who's going to be the next tom cruise do you feel
like top gun is a film that do you think we could see many more films like top gun maverick is what
i'm saying i mean i think you see in this film tom is kind of mentoring a bunch of young actors about
you know how he got the career he has and how to make movies that entertain an audience so
i think with this film he's he's actually teaching the next generation how to do it so
i'm i'm not worried about the future blockbusters i think you know the
movies like this will hopefully inspire in another generation and we'll keep doing it and just very
fine i mean is there any scope for another top gun film potentially one day do you think
uh we're just trying to get this one out obviously this took five years it comes
out in a couple weeks so we'll see we'll see what audiences think brilliant well thank you so much
thank you very much nice to meet you thanks ladies and gentlemen you're watching hey you guys
hey you guys how are you guys is that from the goonies nice hey