It would be one of the most important flights in film history. When a young 5ft 7in actor with long hair and ponytail rocked up on a motorcycle, a group of US navy pilots were all too happy to test his need for speed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey look at him and they don\u2019t know who Tom Cruise<\/a> is,\u201d recalls screenwriter Jack Epps Jr. \u201cThey do what they like to do: they took him up, they shook him around, he barfed on himself, and he came out and said, \u2018I love this.\u2019 From that moment, he was on.\u201d<\/p>\n Cruise\u2019s experience that day with the Blue Angels, the US navy\u2019s premier flight demo squadron, would inspire him to become a licensed pilot. He would also accept the role of Maverick in Top Gun<\/a>, 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, it turns 40 on Saturday.<\/p>\n Top Gun charts reckless navy pilot Maverick\u2019s rivalry with Iceman (Val Kilmer), romance with instructor Charlie (Kelly McGillis<\/a>) and guilt over the death of co-pilot Goose (Anthony Edwards) in a training accident. He is sent on a dangerous rescue mission, saves Iceman and gains redemption, with Iceman telling him: \u201cYou can be my wingman anytime.\u201d<\/p>\n The high-testosterone slice of Ronald Reagan-era Americana \u2013 with a homoerotic game of beach volleyball<\/a> thrown in \u2013 made 23-year-old Cruise a star and drove a spike in military enlistment; the navy even set up recruitment tables in cinemas. It eventually spawned a hit sequel in 2022, with a third instalment now on the way.<\/p>\n It all began in 1983 when Bruckheimer was flicking through the May issue of California magazine. \u201cTop Guns\u201d read a headline<\/a>, with a big photo from inside the cockpit of an F-14 fighter jet. The article began: \u201cAt Mach 2 and 40,000 feet over California, it\u2019s always high noon.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking from Los Angeles, Bruckheimer, 82, recalls: \u201cI saw the magazine article and it looked like Star Wars on Earth and I threw it to my partner, Don Simpson, and then he called in one of our executives and said, \u2018Let\u2019s get the rights to this,\u2019 and that\u2019s how it started.\u201d<\/p>\n The pair pitched the idea to producer Jeffrey Katzenberg<\/a>, then head of production at Paramount, and he was impressed. When Katzenberg floated five or six ideas to screenwriters Cash and Epps over breakfast one day, Top Gun was among them. Epps, who had a private pilot\u2019s licence, seized on it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The 76-year-old, based in Santa Monica, recalls: \u201cI said, \u2018Wow, this will be great, I get to fly in the jet plane!\u2019 We didn\u2019t have a movie made yet. Even if it didn\u2019t get made I\u2019d get a jet ride out of it, so that\u2019s a pretty special thing. My partner didn\u2019t like to fly so I had to talk him into it but that was no problem.<\/p>\n \u201cWe met with the producer Simpson. Bruckheimer and I said my concern is if we\u2019re gonna do this project, we have to go up in real planes. We can\u2019t have some special effects of planes; it has to be the real things.\u201d<\/p>\n This requirement was central to the pitch made to the Pentagon to secure military cooperation. \u201cI pitched the idea of how we see these young American heroes and they said, \u2018Sounds interesting and we\u2019ll let you use our equipment. You know, you\u2019ll have to fly in a navy jet?\u2019 I said, \u2018Oh, no, really?! How fast can I get down there?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Epps was dispatched to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar<\/a> to immerse himself in the cloistered, elite subculture of naval aviators. He interviewed 30 pilots but the true revelation came when he was strapped into the back of a jet at full throttle.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to go through training, which gave me a lot of ideas,\u201d he says. \u201cBefore I could go up, I had know how to eject and go through what is called the helo dunker, where they put you under water and you have to go out in a very systematic manner. All these crazy things were great because it gave me a full feeling for it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got up in the air and they said to me, \u2018We shouldn\u2019t be doing this but we\u2019re gonna do it anyway,\u2019 so they did a lot of close passes. We pulled six G\u2019s and I learned that, when you\u2019re pulling G\u2019s, although you do have a special uniform that compresses your legs, you\u2019ve got to grunt to keep the blood up in your brain.\u201d<\/p>\n Kelly McGillis and Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Photograph: Paramount\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n Epps continues: \u201cIt was phenomenal and the speed was amazing. I had never felt that in my life. The skill of these guys to be able to pull that hard-G turn, come up over the top, cross each other, barrel roll again, come back and go back in high-speed passes was fabulous.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I got down, I called my partner and said, \u2018Jim, this is not what we thought this was. These guys are athletes, they\u2019re strong, this is about speed we\u2019ve never seen before in our life.\u2019 We both were athletes \u2013 Jim played football in high school, I played ice hockey up until my 30s \u2013 and so we took an athlete\u2019s view of this. These guys were very special and athletes like to compete with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n But as Epps watched F-14s taking off and landing, he realised there was still a plot-sized hole at the centre of the project. Drama demands friction but the pilots at Miramar were entirely unified. \u201cI\u2019m looking at these guys and they\u2019re all getting along because they\u2019re all about teamwork and I\u2019m going, \u2018What am I going to write about? What is the story here? What\u2019s the conflict?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m racking my head and I go, \u2018Oh, what if one guy doesn\u2019t get along? What if one guy is out to be the star? It\u2019s about him and now you\u2019ve got this bump in this situation.\u2019 That\u2019s the beginning of the character Maverick where we said, \u2018OK, here\u2019s where the conflict comes from internally. Somebody wants to be the best here at top gun school.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The emotional anchor of the film \u2013 the shocking mid-point death of Maverick\u2019s radar intercept officer Goose<\/a> \u2013 was a narrative risk directly inspired by the profound grief that Epps had witnessed among the real-life pilots.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went out and we had a coffee together and I was sitting around with about six, seven guys and they started talking about the friends that 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 the fellow pilots and I was very taken by the sincere emotions they had.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a thought to myself as a writer: if I could get the audience to feel what they feel, the sense of loss, I will have achieved something. That\u2019s when I got the idea to lose Goose in the middle because it would bring the audience in, they\u2019d feel a sense of loss, like what it means to lose a pilot, lose a friend, and so we went with that and it\u2019s quite a moment.\u201d<\/p>\n With the script taking shape, the vital question of casting loomed large. The role of Pete \u201cMaverick\u201d Mitchell required an actor of singular charisma and swagger. For Epps, there was only one choice. \u201cI was a Tom Cruise<\/a> fan at that time \u2013 still am \u2013 so we wrote this with Tom Cruise in mind as Maverick. I loved his movies: he\u2019s such an energetic actor, he connects with the audience.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were finishing up the script and I turned it over to Jerry Bruckheimer at the gates of Bel Air on a Saturday night. I said, \u2018Jerry, think Tom Cruise when you read this.\u2019 He read it and so did Don and they both said, \u2018Yeah, love the script. Tom Cruise: great idea.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Bruckheimer echoes this sentiment, confirming that Cruise was their immediate target. However, securing the young star \u2013 who had grown his hair long for Ridley Scott\u2019s fantastical film Legend<\/a> \u2013 was not a straightforward task.<\/p>\n Bruckheimer recounts: \u201cWe couldn\u2019t quite 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 they saw this guy walk up and they said, \u2018We\u2019ll get this hippy a real ride.\u2019 They sure did and he got out of the plane, walked to a phone booth, because there were no cell phones then, called me up, said, \u2018I\u2019m in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Pete Pettigrew, a former top gun instructor, served as a crucial technical adviser. Once production commenced under the visionary eye of Scott<\/a>, the film had to balance its spectacular aesthetic ambitions with its emotional core. Bruckheimer admits that the process of editing Top Gun was a delicate negotiation between visual grandeur and narrative substance.<\/p>\n Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Photograph: Paramount\/Allstar<\/p>\n \u201cWe watched it in various stages. We watched some early cuts, which were more style over substance, and that\u2019s where Tony comes from. He\u2019s an amazing artist and commercial director and he\u2019s a brilliant visualist and he over-indexed in that area, and then we sat with him, the editor, and went through every scene together and brought it back to the movie that\u2019s out there.\u201d<\/p>\n After an initial reluctance, the US military had seen the potential of Top Gun<\/a> to burnish its image and encourage young people to sign up. But this cooperation has fuelled a persistent critique from the left over the ensuing decades: that Top Gun is an overly jingoistic, pro-war recruitment tool wrapped in a pop soundtrack.<\/p>\n Epps rejects this reading, preferring to view the film through the deeply personal lens of the service members he interviewed. \u201cThese are great American heroes and they put their lives on the line every day for America. They love the country and they\u2019re there to protect us so it\u2019s a little silly to not honour our veterans and our people in the military who basically protect us.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are heroes. You\u2019re always going to hear somebody say that but in no way was it suggesting that they\u2019re creating wars. They\u2019re basically there to protect. They are the tip of the spear and out there every day putting their lives on the line for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Despite the confidence of the film-makers, the road to release was fraught with unknowns. An early test screening in Houston, immediately after the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle<\/a>, left the production team anxious. Bruckheimer admits: \u201cThere was no laughter, there was nothing. It was just dead and we thought for sure it was a disaster. Then when the numbers came back it scored high and we were shocked.\u201d<\/p>\n Epps recalls the first time he saw the film at a private screening. \u201cIt was sensational. What was so great about Tony Scott\u2019s directing is he understood this sense of speed, the sense of the G-forces, and he was able to shoot it, edit it. That made the audience feel like they were flying in a jet. Tom\u2019s performance was great and the music was fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the critic Pauline Kael branded it a \u201cshiny homoerotic commercial\u201d, Top Gun earned $357m worldwide to become the No 1 film of 1986 while its accompanying album was the bestselling soundtrack. The song Take My Breath Away<\/a> by Berlin went on to win the Oscar for best original song.<\/p>\n