When they made the ‘80s movie Top Gun, they did a lot of things right, but they also made some mistakes. Turns out, throwing a bunch of actors in super-fast fighter jets can only lead to one thing – vomit.
The original action movie had it all; cheesy music, topless men playing volleyball, and Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things. One thing we didn’t see in the film, was the effect of putting the actors through their paces and making them fly real planes, which had pretty gross implications for the production.
In an interview with Deadline, producer Jerry Bruckheimer revealed what happened the first time the Top Gun cast flew their planes, and how Tom Cruise didn’t learn his lesson the second time around.
“First movie, we put the actors in the F14s and they all threw up and we couldn’t use any of the footage,” Bruckheimer explained. Did that put Cruise off getting back in the plane for Top Gun: Maverick, though? Absolutely not.
“Joe [Kosinski] pitched the idea of Goose’s son, named Rooster, and Tom said to him ‘I like the idea but you gotta promise me one thing – that we shoot everything for real,'” Bruckheimer added. They didn’t rush into it this time around, though.
“We started with baby steps, and we had three and a half months of flight training before we ever started rolling camera,” Teller said in the same interview. “From there we were flying all the time, constantly.”
If you have the need for speed, check out our list of the best Tom Cruise movies. Or, dive into our guide to the Mission Impossible 7 release date for your next helping of Cruise.