So the story out of Vulture is to say Paramount Pictures has made offers (not signed or even in negotiations) to both producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott to make Top Gun 2, a follow-up to the 1986 film that sent Tom Cruise sky-rocketing to stardom. Word is Christopher McQuarrie (Valkyrie, The Usual Suspects) is being eyed to update the script with a small role for Cruise to return as Maverick. To make it all seem even more unlikely, Cruise is rumored to have agreed to the smaller role as long as it doesn’t appear to have been forced into the story.
to think Cruise is for this seems implausible to me as much as I can imagine his agents agreeing to look at the script. Just think back to April 2009 when he was deciding between Motorcade, The Tourist (dropped out and Johnny Depp stepped in), Wichita (became Knight and Day) and The Matarese Circle (still in development with David Cronenberg). He’s picky about his film roles and has become more so as of late. To think he’d be all for a small role in a sequel to one of his 24-year-old films just doesn’t make any sense.
Of course, Vulture mines an old Bruckheimer interview in which he said he’d been approached regarding the sequel but noted “the aviation community has completely changed since [they] made the movie a long time ago.” They then go on to say one of the reason the idea has legs is due to David Ellison, the 27-year-old son of Oracle Corp. founder – and world’s sixth-richest man – Larry Ellison.
David apparently loves Top Gun and went on to become an aerobatic pilot and instrument-rated commercial pilot before attending USC’s film school and going on to make the terrible 2006 World War I drama Flyboys. His connection to Cruise, however, is that he raised $350 million to co-finance much of Paramount’s slate of films, the first of which is Mission: Impossible IV, which Cruise is busy shooting right now. Coincidence? I think so.
I could, of course, be entirely wrong. Perhaps Vulture’s conspiracy theory regarding the film will come true, but is this really a film that would fit into today’s cinematic landscape? I just don’t see how a sequel that both updates the story to fit modern times and manages to remain in the all-’80s world inhabited by the original film would be possible. Top Gun is aviator glasses, beach volleyball, Kenny Loggins and MiG-28s. As much fun as it may be for those of us that grew up with the film to feel all nostalgic in returning to that world, I have a hard time believing it would capture younger audiences the same way.
Here’s the real question, why not just start over? Why make it a sequel? As Vulture’s Claude Brodesser-Akner notes, the focus of TOPGUN nowadays is “far less on the spectacular and dramatic air-to-air dogfights that defined Top Gun and far more about teaching U.S. pilots to drop very large bombs on very small ground targets.” Sounds to me like the time for playing with the boys is over.
I guess, if they’re thinking along these lines, McQuarrie’s script could embrace the changes in the naval flight school. Cruise was 24 when the first film came out, Tom Skerritt was 53. With Cruise ready to turn 50 in 2012 perhaps this is exactly what they’re thinking and the one time Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell steps into Viper’s shoes and teaches the young bucks a thing or two, but to call it a sequel considering the changes in the world around us makes this all seem unlikely. Beyond that, is this how Cruise wants to show his age? Will he spend his 50th birthday prepping for the Top Gun 2 press junket?
