Tom Cruise Returns As Maverick For Top Gun And Has Barely Aged A Day

Paramount Pictures

As the oldest member of the UNILAD staff at the ripe old age of 34 it gives me great pleasure to write about how Tom Cruise has barely aged a day since the original Top Gun was filmed in 1985 because by my maths I’m going to be looking pretty dapper well into my 60s.

Tom Cruise will be flying into cinemas with a supersonic boom in the highly-anticipated Top Gun: Maverick in summer 2020 and pics from the sequel’s set show he doesn’t look much older than when he first attended the Naval Air school.

You know Top Gun, it made Tom Cruise a star, bomber jackets and aviator sunglasses cool, there was that scene where all the guys played semi-naked volleyball…

Now decades later Cruise is back on set to reprise his role of Lt Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, now an instructor at the Naval Air Station Mirramar in San Diego, California.

He’s been spotted riding a superbike, a limited edition Kawasaki Ninja H2 Carbon, and wearing the aforementioned bomber jacket and aviators, which will presumably never go out of style in the military fashion scene. Maverick’s bike is reportedly one of only 120 ever produced, costs $30,000 and features a 1000cc four-cylinder with 200bhp and a top speed of 209mph, MEAWW reports.

Alongside Cruise, Val Kilmer will be returning to the base as Lt Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, and Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, and Ed Harris have been announced as cast members.

The son of Radar Intercept Officer LTJG Nick ‘Goose’ Bradshaw (taken too soon) will play a part in the sequel although details of who will play him have not been released as yet.

David Ellison, film producer and CEO of Skydance Media, was at a press day for Terminator Genisys when he mentioned the sequel is going to focus on modern warfare, Collider reports:

It is very much a world we live in today where it’s drone technology, and fifth-generation fighters are really what the United States Navy is calling the last man-made fighter that we’re actually going to produce, so it’s really [about] exploring the ‘end of an era’ of dogfighting and fighter pilots and what that culture is today.

The plot will take place in the present day to account for the decades between the sequel and 1986.

Fellow Maverick producer and producer of the original Top Gun, Jerry Bruckheimer, explained how the sequel had a lot to live up to following the success of the original.

Speaking to Metro, he said:

I’ll tell ya, any movie you make has pressure there, and when you have an iconic movie like Top Gun you know the bar is really high.

But we try to raise the bar in everything we do so it’s all about getting enormously talented people to work on it, and Tom is such a gifted not only actor, but also he produced this thing and he’s got a real sense of what the audience wants and what he likes.

Now, where did I put my aviators?

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Tim Horner

Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.