The first moments of the film Top Gun: Maverick show a curious plane that reaches Mach 10, piloted by Captain Maverick. We now know that this fictional aircraft is the Darkstar, a concept launched by Lockheed Martin, which is really aimed at hypersonic flights.
And in recent days the manufacturer released a making-of video, where it demonstrates a model, used by Tom Cruise in the recording of the film, one of the parts where we can also see the use of CGI (Computer Graphics) to produce the scenes.
Paramount Pictures ed Lockheed, asking them to design the jet that would make Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell the fastest man in history.
See the video below:
“We based the design on the fastest aircraft, the SR-71 [Blackbird], which Lockheed built in the 1960s. The team wanted to go beyond that”, said Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski in the video. “We integrated their Skunk Works designers with our designers from the film side.”
“There is no way we could have made Darkstar the way we did without their help”, explains Kosinski.
“Through your design team, we learned how to make the plane look angry, mean, insanely fast”, adds Jeremy Hindle, the film's production designer. “We narrowed it down a bit. It also made it look a little more elegant and fast.”
“The cockpit was mind-blowing… you really wanted to believe it was real”, said Hindle, proving that Lockheed took care of the details in the construction of the Cockpit even using the model.
“We wanted that moment in the Darkstar flight where you feel not just the command of flight, but the beauty of flight”, said Tom Cruise, at the end of the video above.
The Darkstar model was so realistic that China sent a satellite to capture images of the plane, believing it to be a new secret US project.
The aircraft was designed by Skunk Works, the name of Lockheed's Advanced Development Programs division. Based in Palmdale, California, planes like the SR-71, F-117, F-22 and F-35 came off the drawing boards at Skunk Works, identified by the design of a skunk (skunk in English).
