The film Top Gun: Maverick is certainly one of the biggest cinema releases in 2022. With real scenes involving combat and fighter planes, the film starring Tom Cruise, as Captain Maverick, was quite expensive to produce.
According to Fortune, Paramount had to shell out $11374 for every flight hour on each F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter. The payment was made to the US Navy, as compensation for the use of the aircraft. For pilot training footage the US Navy does not charge this compensation.
The requirement for real scenes came from Tom Cruise, to record the sequel to Tom Gun: Indomitable Wings. The total budget of the feature film is US$ 152 million.
It is worth noting that the film was produced between 2018 and 2019, when fuel prices were not yet out of control around the world. The planes were used by Tom Cruise and the actors, for the composition of the real scenes, but piloted only by the US Navy.
Glen Roberts, head of the Pentagon's entertainment media office, said that the actors never got to fly the fighters, and flew in the back seat of the F/A-18 Two-seaters. The images of the pilots in the front seats were obtained through CGI (Computer Graphics).
As in the first film, the US Navy provided the planes, pilots, technical crew and an aircraft carrier for the film's execution. The script and final material, as well as the 1986 feature, also underwent a Pentagon review before going to the public.
Despite this, Roberts stated that no changes were made to “Top Gun: Maverick”, unlike the first film that needed corrections in the script.
The production of Top Gun still had to spend on training the actors to withstand the G Force during the recording flights, as well as to eject from each fighter, if necessary. Other scenes were produced in CGI by Paramount.
The scenes were filmed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in August 2018 during a training exercise involving F-35C Lightning II fighters, Roberts said. The production also filmed at Naval Air Station Lemoore in central California.
