The Big Picture - ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Is Here!

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

It. Is. Here! Tom Cruise’s Maverick flies again, after a years-long wait. Sean and Amanda break down the exhilarating arrival of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (1:00). Then, Joseph Kosinski, the film’s director, joins Sean to discuss, in great detail, how they made this action-packed return to the skies (41:00). Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Joseph Kosinski Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey. We've got something special cooking on the Prestige TV podcast. I'll be recapping one of my favorite shows, HBO's Barry, every Sunday night with the writer-director star of the show, the great Bill Hader. We'll talk about the show's wild twists and turns, its special brand of dark comedy, and how it all came together. So on Sunday nights, immediately after a new episode airs, you can hear Bill and I break it all down on the Prestige TV pod. Subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings.

Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. And I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Top Gun Maverick. At long last, we are talking about the long-awaited sequel to the 1986 Tom Cruise fighter pilot classic. How long have we been waiting? Well, it's been 36 years since the original film, 12 years since development began on this movie, and 1,050 days since Top

Gun Maverick was initially set to be released. First reshoots, then a global pandemic has made this maybe the most long-awaited completed film in modern movie history. So how is the movie? We will discuss all of it in a non-spoiler fashion today. And after Amanda and I discuss the movie, I'll have a conversation with Maverick's director, Joseph Kaczynski, about the exceptional accomplishments of this movie. But first, I just want to have a brief mention of the passing of the late great actor Ray Liotta, who died sadly today, 67 years old. Of course, listeners of this show, the rewatchables know how much we love Ray Liotta, the star of Goodfellas, of Something Wild, of Unlawful Entry, of Carina Carina, of Copland, of a great many movies over the years. Most

recently, he was probably the very best thing in The Many Saints of Newark, The Sopranos prequel that was released. And just an incredible actor, an actor of extraordinary chaos, skill, and verve. And we'll miss him very much. Amanda, you were a Ray Liotta fan. Of course.

I was also thinking, I thought you were going to say most recently in Marriage Story, which, you know, some pivotal roles. It's hard to stand up to Laura Dern's character in that movie, but he sure did. And, you know, of course, as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. Condolences to his family. Okay, let's pivot now, perhaps inelegantly, to Top Gun Maverick. This is a movie you've been yelling about

into a microphone, Amanda, for three on years. Yes. And did you like it? I cried three times. So that's, yes, I loved it. I cried because of those three years of waiting and really a lifetime of waiting for me and for tom cruise and for all of us together it was a really emotional experience for me um in part because

i've decided to make this into like a huge bit on this podcast and like tie my entire like all life events to seeing this movie but it paid off like i definitely had that experience of it was the first time I had been back in theaters since I believe December. And that was meaningful. It was finally getting to do this thing that had put off been put off for so long because of world events. Also a little bit because of personal events. When you said like 1060 days i mean i thought pregnancy was long but like waiting for this movie was like three times it somehow which i i can't even believe um and we'll talk a bit more about this but this this movie is about uh obviously people dogfighting in

the air but also it's about life and it's about waiting for things or reflecting on what has happened and what is to come and a little bit like of a one last ride mentality. And I was certainly in a place to receive all of those emotions. How about that? Yeah, I was too. Usually when a movie is long delayed, its expectations are held against it. And it's very hard to live up to something that it takes us a long time to see after hearing about it for many years. This was the exact opposite for me. I mentioned on the Tom Cruise Hall of Fame earlier this week that I do not have a big relationship to the original Top Gun movie. I do, of course, love Tom Cruise. And I was just totally knocked out. I was like, this is what kind of mainstream

Hollywood movies can do at their best. Is this the most significant emotional work of cinema ever made? No, of course not. It's a sequel to Top Gun. So let's not misconstrue what I'm trying to say. But as far as thrill rides go, as far as tying a bow on an epic journey

of one character's storyline, like it's pretty damn satisfying. And it's so rare that we get these event movies where you walk out and you're like, God damn, that was good. I really, really liked it. I can't wait to see that again. And this totally had that sensation for me. Before we go a little further, let me give a brief snapshot of what this story of the movie is about. And I'll do it in a largely non-spoiler way. I think we're going to be talking about this movie quite a bit more in the future on the show, and we'll have some deep dives coming up. And he wants to keep flying. Maverick wants to continue to fly even into his 50s. So all these years later, he's still flying for the Navy, still pursuing that need for speed. And then an admiral shows up in the form of Ed Harris,

who wants to ground him, who wants him to slow down, who wants him to pivot his career, enter the final phase of his career. And that means going back to the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor Program, which is, of course, also known as Top Gun. And that means going back to the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor Program, which is of course also known as Top Gun. And that's where he's got to confront his past and train some new inductees into Top Gun. Bobby, can you put like the gong, you know, sound like the chime, like the... As the movie does from time to time as well. I just feel like we need, like, as soon as you say Top Gun, we just need that. Can you do it again right now?

I'm just going to say Top Gun. Put it in. Top Gun. Every time we say Top Gun. You will hear that beautiful, I don't know if it's, is it a xylophone? Is it a gong? It's a beautiful sound that Harold Faltermeyer created for the original film. And that's a good way to pivot into this conversation because this movie has many, many echoes of the original film, but it is also completely its own beast. So for you, Amanda, you know, you love the original.

Did you feel like you, the fluency of the original was kind of essential to enjoying this movie? Not essential because can you really be fluent in Top Gun? I mean, you can, and there are a lot of specific callbacks and moments and winks. But it is not a particularly intricate uh setup uh it's it's pretty much i think some of its power is in its like dumb beauty right and in its lack of specifics or getting bogged down in anything except like oh like big plane go fast and you know like i have feelings and also maybe want to sleep with all of my best friends. And, but you know, they're all like essential feelings. And so I think you can walk into this movie

and have it hit those same notes, except for maybe the homoeroticism, which gets transferred into another pretty like primal set of emotions so it's fine you can access all of it without knowing you know that the certain scenes are almost like a beat for beat reconstruction of what happens in top gun which like it pretty much is it is its own beast but they also the first 20 minutes um i'll just say that the credit sequence like might be familiar to you and then um this setup you just described where tom cruise finds

his way back to top gun like the planes are different like the program is different but you know maverick does some maverick stuff and gets sent to Top Gun and then we're off. Exact same. So you can appreciate what it owes to the original but because of its simplicity it can stand on its own.

How about that? I agree with that. I've been thinking about this a lot in contrast to a number of other legacy sequels that we can talk about here throughout the show and kind of the idea of taking a long break in a story and then returning to that story. And I made this whole long list and was thinking about the movies and thinking about Mad Max Fury Road and thinking about Tron Legacy, another Joe Kaczynski movie. And there was a Space Jam movie

recently, Blade Runner 2049, Creed. We've seen this many times. And the movie I keep coming back to is Star Wars The Force Awakens. Because this many times. The movie I keep coming back to is Star Wars The Force Awakens. Because in many ways, this movie has a lot in common with Star Wars The Force Awakens, which is that the structure and the kind of emotional beats of the movie

are very, very similar to the original Star Wars. And frankly, Top Gun Maverick has a lot in common with the original Star Wars when you get down to it in terms of the storyline. But Star Wars The Force Awakens

was considered a copy of something that was so perfect in and of its place. Top Gun is iconic and beloved, but there's not a lot of people who think it is a truly great film. It doesn't feel like... It's a truly great act of artifice and a beautiful relic of its time.

And people love that movie. But there's not a strong critical case for it out in the world. It's a much more emotional relationship to it. And so that leaves it in this interesting place where Maverick can actually improve upon it in a couple of significant ways. And for me, the number one way in which it improves upon it is like the filmmaking and the storytelling I actually think is just better than the original. As much as I love Tony Scott and as much as I love the performances in the original Top Gun, this movie is, candidly, I thought a better movie than the original. Of course it is. Yeah, of course it is.

And I think on paper, well, not practically and just logically, yes yes it's a better movie and some of that is because you know it was made 40 years later 35 years later and so what they can do like the planes are different and how they can film the planes is is different and they and they do an amazing job and i'm really excited to listen to your conversation with joseph kaczynski because i like it's incredible like the practical filmmaking that they they do uh i do also think that there is like slightly more thought and like slightly less you know illicit substances going into how the movie gets put together it's less kooky is what you're saying yeah Yeah, except right, without casting any aspersions on the original Top Gun crew. So, yeah, it's more sensical.

There's less kind of like joking or whatever. I mean, you know, there's a lot of unintentional comedy or greatness in the original Top Gun. Everything from the volleyball scene to the complete lack of chemistry between Tom Cruise and Callie McGillis and um the multiple shower scenes for no reasons and like you know like some lines that have become truly iconic not just like I feel the need for speed but also like take me to bed or lose me forever you know which is a Meg Ryan like one-liner and so all of those things are so absurd that to me they do kind of transcend to a higher form of art but this is probably the top the original Top Gun is probably the closest I get to like loving a bad good movie um and understanding how a bad good movie can like become just good good because of like the

confluence of events and the Top Gun Maverick is just like a good movie yes it doesn't require any asterisks on it yeah um you know it looks sounds and just feels incredible it's a movie that like really you can feel yourself shaking while watching the movie and I'll just say for anybody who's listening to this and hasn't seen the movie yet, see this movie in a movie theater for one, if you feel comfortable doing so to try to see it in a good movie theater. I was I was fortunate to see this movie in the Dolby room at an AMC. And it was exhilarating in that format because the sound is so essential. And, you know, like we talk a lot about like whether or not a movie feels like it is. How careful the filmmakers are treating every aspect of the movie.

And in some cases, you watch some of these big event tentpole CGI movies. And you can almost feel them racing to the finish line. This movie feels like the exact opposite. It has so much respect for the thing that it's trying to do. Every little mechanical and creative decision feels really really um overwhelmingly managed in a good way and so like there's a way to respect that by putting yourself in a position to enjoy the movie as much as possible and you know it's it's in part i think because of kaczynski and because of the writing and of course because of tom cruise who's a producer and the you know

creative shepherd of the maverick character and frankly, his entire industry, as we talked about earlier this week. But I think they made a really good choice with Kaczynski. And, you know, we did mention how Cruz is in this stage of only working with filmmakers that he's basically previously vetted at this point in the last 10 years or so. You know, he worked with Kaczynski on 2013's Oblivion. He's worked with Ed Zwick again on a Jack Reacher movie. He, of course, has this longstanding partnership with Christopher McQuarrie on the Mission Impossible movies. McQuarrie notably is a co-writer of this movie, and it sure feels at times a little bit like a Mission Impossible movie as well. So that's

memorable. But Kaczynski, he might be like the most underrated Big Ten director we have right now. I really liked talking to him. I really think people should listen to the conversation because he was very specific about how they did what they did in a very understandable way, which frankly many filmmakers either won't do or can't do. And so he's obviously put a lot of thought

into the how of things, but also I think a little bit of the how of the story. And you need both of those things. You need to be able to pull off these breathtaking fighter pilot sequences. And you also need to make us care about Maverick and make us care about these new characters that are introduced and also make the movie look beautiful. And movies like this don't always look beautiful.

Sometimes they look like CGI crap. And a lot of this movie was made tradition shot traditionally pragmatically in real planes, you know, with real flight choreography. And the stuff that is CGI, for the most part, looks pretty seamless.

And that's a signature of Kaczynski. Whether it's Tron Legacy or Only the Brave, like, the movies that he's made often have a lot of digital imagery in them,

but he works very hard to make them seem, if not naturalistic, at least part of a coherent world. So, I think just from a visual perspective and from like a kind of narrative mechanical storytelling perspective,

really, really, really well done. I wanted to ask you about the writing in the movie and the story and kind of where we pick up from the story. You know, it struck me as sincere, but not gloopy or sentimental. It does have a kind of like americana hokiness that's at the center of the top gun story but did you like the the story did you like the dialogue what did you make of it so you mentioned that there is some like mission impossible overtones to this

and i i was also struck by the um the ethan huntness of uh the the maverick character ethan hunt obviously being the character that Tom Cruise plays in the Mission Impossible movies and who has evolved into a real messianic figure as those, and also just like a ridiculous person who flies a helicopter onto a spaceship and then takes the motorcycle back down or whatever. So the way that they incorporate Maverick back into Top Gun The School and into this new generation

of pilots is ultimately like pretty Ethan Hunty. And it works. And we know that works because we have like a whole franchise that does really well that has been like Tom Cruise's lifeline for the past 15 years so it was it was amusing and I thought it was clever and to go with what works um and I thought I I'm excited to talk more about Tom Cruise's performance and I don't know how much we can spoil but they they do a good job I think of balancing like the maverickness which is sort of the defining element of like the first 15 years of Tom Cruise's career as we talked about on the Tom Cruise podcast before he you know like a little edgier a little uh more assholey a little bit more it's got to like bring this guy down a

few rungs before he can go be the best that he can be which is maverick in a nutshell and there are elements of that but it also incorporates the age and incorporates everything else that tom cruise has been up to for the last 15 years um you can definitely read this movie as a referendum on tom cruise saving the movie industry literally things are said to this character such as the future is coming and you're not in it uh and tom cruise is throughout just being like yeah we may not do this anymore or this may be over but but not yet, and then goes and does things that the Navy doesn't do anymore, but also that most people who make movies don't make anymore. So I enjoyed that. I definitely picked up that signal. I like to think that that's

intentional and Tom Cruise knows what he's doing. again it goes back to like the level of self-awareness um that seems both like palpable and also sometimes completely absent from a Tom Cruise experience but yeah it like it works it's clever and it comments on Tom Cruise as much as it comments on the original or just like reproduces the original simultaneously you also can feel when he is in training sessions with these young Top Gun pilots you know played by Miles Teller and our beloved Glenn Powell and you know Jay Ellis and a handful of other exciting young actors you can kind of feel him teaching them how to be a movie star you know that there is a way to read it directly into, if you want to do this,

this is what it takes to the point of him, obviously having to insert himself into the epic conclusion of this story. You know, it's like, you want to do it, you got to do it yourself. There's something to that. Um,

what about, uh, the, um, kind of callbacks to the original film? Cause you know, you talked about the volleyball and kind of the homoerotic subtext of the original film. Because, you know, we talked about the volleyball and kind of the homoerotic subtext of the original film.

And, you know, it's not spoiling anything to say that Miles Teller's character plays Rooster, who is the son of Goose, who is, of course, Maverick's late partner in flight and dear friend who died tragically in the first film, played by Anthony Edwards. The constant, like, callbacks, you know, not just the Harold Faltermeyer, but some of these storytelling beats or even some of the visual cues.

Like, did that stuff work for you? Did you like it? Yeah, of course. I mean, I like fan service just as much as anybody else. It's just like I never get fan service. The things that I'm a fan of don't often get like recreated this way. So sure, let Miles Teller play the piano. Sounds great.

By the way, Miles Teller with the mustache looks so much like the son of Anthony Edwards. It's like really amazing. It's great casting. And I know Glenn Powell wanted that role and like was very disappointed when he didn't get it. And Tom Cruise had to convince him to become Hangman, who is the Iceman stand-in. They like didn't even try. That's fine i liked it you know and there is something about they do recreate like the obviousness and the dumbness of tom of top gun the original in like very sublime ways such as like hang man for ice man like you don't even have to try um but i think miles teller works and like you know, looks so convincingly like Goose's son.

And then Glenn Powell just gets to have the time of his life being literal Iceman again. You know, like, he doesn't do the teeth thing at any point, which I think is smart. You know, he doesn't, like, do the gnashing, like, Val Kilmer meme because you wouldn't. That would make an SNL sketch but he is he is like almost doing the weird breathing and really using that grin in in what is a Val Kilmer Iceman homage and I just have to say I love it I just I loved it and every time you know they would play like the, the Top Gun gong or the, I don't want to spoil anything, but I will just say, and I think this is in the trailer,

so it's okay. The first of the three times that I cried was when Tom Cruise goes back to, to Miramar and is once again on his motorcycle, like racing down with the, you know, as he does in the first. And I believe that the Top Gun theme is playing in the new one, even though it's Danger Zone in the original, whatever. I just was like, we're all here together and we did it. And I started crying. Like that's what can make me cry. So did the callbacks work for me, Sean? Yes, they did. So what you're saying is you cried at the pastoral beauty of the american military complex yeah yes i mean wait so can we talk about that writing for a minute because you know famously in the original well famously in the original like the navy basically underwrote the

movie which uh perhaps there were some arrangements here as well i'm actually not uh familiar with like how involved the the navy was in the making of Gun Maverick, but it's also really anonymous and absent of conflict. Like they never, the MiGs are Russian planes, but they don't say Russia. They're in the Indian ocean, but no adversary is named. Like there are no specifics, which is like very creepy in its own way but they're trying to avoid any sort of geopolitical comment um they pretty much do that again in this one i they said nato at one point right yes but the the the country of origin in which the mission takes place is not identified and then again once again the the quote-unquote villain is not identified. And once again, the quote unquote villain is not identified.

For me, that worked. And maybe in a way that it didn't work in the original Top Gun. And maybe that's just a function of the time when the film is released. And you could certainly see a world in which Russia was the villain in this movie, just given the circumstances in Ukraine over the last few months. Right. But I felt relieved to not have a politicized Top Gun movie, honestly. Yeah, of course.

Even though in some ways, and especially given the drone aspects of this plot, which they go pretty lightly on as well. Again, they're just not trying to touch anything geopolitical with a thousand foot pole um but there is like something sinister about like the kind of anonymity of it or just like that we're just not even going to think about it if you try to think about it i am obviously choosing not to think about it because thought as we learned if you think up there you die. And so if like thought and Top Gun don't

go together, I honestly feel like we're being too like intellectual already in this podcast. I don't feel like I, I we're like 20 minutes in 30 minutes in, I want to let people know, like, I do have more heat to bring to this. I feel like if I'm like letting you down right now, it's because I'm trying to be restrained. You're penned in by not revealing details. Yeah, I'm trying not to spoil. But I'll get there because that's the spirit of this movie. Well, one of the interesting things about that point that you're making is this movie feels even more so like a fantasy. And I mentioned this to Kaczynski because not only is there no kind of clear enemy

in the storytelling, we don't even really know what year it is and also the way that the the idea of the top gun program in 2022 is sort of farcical um the idea of like war engagement taking place the way it might have in 1986 is just that's not how war is it is is is fought and so with that mind, like it just kind of feels like we're in another universe. It doesn't really feel like we're in like a practical story of American ingenuity and courage. It's there's something it's different. It is like in its way, it has become more of a franchise entertainment.

And I don't say this to kind of cast aspersions, but it's like Top Gun has become a Marvel movie. You know what I mean? Like it's got its own little like universe of story. It doesn't really mean anything in terms of the geopolitical circumstances of 2022. And I think that's okay. Now, look, if you feel like this is valorizing the military industrial complex, of course it is. Like it's a movie about the Navy.

You're correct. Yeah. Like that's not, you have not made a profound point by identifying that. And if that bothers you, I understand that because, of course, the military is a very complex institution. And who runs it versus who participates in it is very different. And this is in part a movie about bureaucracy and in part a movie about somebody who's trying to break bureaucracy. And so you could have a reading of the movie that does celebrate Maverick while not celebrating necessarily the entire system of the military. That's kind of not really here nor there

like that's just not what the movie is it's not i'm not sure it's even worthy of that kind of a deep reading like it's a thrill ride movie it's a it's an amusement park movie like which is the most american reading of all which but that's you know that's fine just ignore it and focus on the fun big dumb stuff it is it's and i mean this sincerely as a compliment. It's an amusement park ride. Like it in, in the, in the best way to the point that as soon as I got out, I texted you, I want to go again.

Like, I mean, it is that like you get off the roller coaster and you just like, you want to go again. Um, and you try not to think about any of the consequences. I will say this movie has one of the all time opening credits I've ever seen in a movie. And when I saw this hit the screen, I was like, we are so, so, so blessed.

And the credit reads, music by Harold Faltermeyer, Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe, and Lady Gaga. Tremendous. What'd you think of the Gaga song? Honestly, it totally passed me by and i know that i i saw that i saw that people or people pointed out that the like the motif or one of the melodies was like incorporated throughout the movie i guess i hadn't listened to the song enough to recognize it when i went i've only seen this movie once i am going again tonight guys don't worry um got child care lockdown uh just going solo where are you seeing it i'm seeing it solo as well

tonight. I'm going to we can do this offline. How about that? You don't want to you don't want to be spotted. I mean, no, I guess I'm going to the La Canyada

because I can reserve the seat. Yeah. OK, I'm going to the draft house. That's amazing that we're seeing it solo the same night at different places.

OK. The thing about the draft house, the parking really stresses me out. It is stressful. So, I mean, I like the experience. But anyway, we can talk about that a different time. Could someone please buy the Arclight?

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So, the Lady Gaga thing kind of like passed me by. But let me just say once again, like a huge supporter of Lady Gaga, all of her, you know, movie efforts. Also, historically, I'm a woman who loves an end credits theme song that just really defines movie going to me in a powerful way. We don't need to speak about some of the other people who have made great contributions right now. We'll get to it. So I'm looking forward to revisiting it.

What about Jennifer Connelly and Jon Hamm? These are two very well-known figures that are inserted into the story. Jennifer Connelly is herself a callback because she plays Penny Benjamin, a character who is mentioned briefly in the original film, the daughter of an admiral. And she gets her day in the sun. What do you think of Connelly? I would like her wardrobe.

I was like, oh, i'm aging and this like this is where i'd like to go this is my like amazing fisherman sweaters i mean she's clearly doing sort of like the nautical san diego you know naval theme there's a sailing scene she looks great um that's really the only time she gets to do anything but whatever do you think that they film that sailing sequence without a co-pilots without any co-captains because it looks like it's just the two of them on that boat yeah well they've been suspiciously silent about the sailing sequence and it's like we know a lot about tom cruise flying things and training other people to fly things there's a great piece on the ring ringer by Jake Crank's trifles about like the

top gun pilot school that Tom Cruise set up for all like the, the young guns. And so we know a lot about that and we know nothing about him. They filmed the sailing. And that just makes me think that they don't want us to know that there was like a whole crew off screen, which is fine. Like sailings. I don't know anything about sailing. there was like a whole crew off screen which is fine like sailing's hot i don't know anything about sailing i would love to be the type of person

you know who like knows what a jib is or whatever i don't um i don't know how to do it i i the lifestyle calls to me the actual sailing seems like a lot of work um but it's a different skill set tom cruise can't know everything but yeah i like don't think that he sailed anyway i thought that jennifer connelly had almost nothing to do and was still winning and i really really want some of those sweaters um she's i assume in part in this movie because she was in only the brave the previous kaczynski movie and she's so good in only the brave she has an amazing sequence in that movie with Josh Brolin. You can feel her getting cast almost entirely off of that.

I think she's a pretty credible love interest for 60-year-old Tom Cruise too. You know, she's 50 now. She, of course, looks amazing, but it's not like so absurd. We don't have this massive age gap or anything. Is she credible as the owner of the Miramar local bar? Well, again, if you think of this movie as a fantasy okay i mean sure like then i then yes great if you think of this movie as as a

documentary about a woman who owns a bar no this is like this is like one thing that i forgot to mention in our original tom cruise podcast about eyes wide shut which is like would you want tom cruise as your general practitioner? Like, is he- The movie kind of makes a joke about that, where it's like it has that sequence where he's like, you know, like, I guess, examining all of his patients.

And some of them seem like bored and some seem titillated. Right, sure. That's like one version of that joke. But the other is still just like, Tom Cruise can do many things, but like, do I want him as like my regular doctor i don't know he just doesn't read doctor to me but whatever um dr bill i love dr bill um okay i don't think you're supposed to love dr bill i just want to say that for you well there's something um do you want pete maverick to be maverick mitchell to

be your pilot is an honest question because because maverick is be Maverick Mitchell to be your pilot? Is it, is an honest question? Cause, cause Maverick is, he's a risk taker, man. He does a couple of things in this movie where you're like, Hey buddy, maybe the whole, the opening sequence of this film is a series of like,

don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. Okay. Great.

Don't do it. Don't do it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. If you just hopped on a jet blue flight and it was like, I'm your captain, Pete Mitchell,

would you be like, yes, this is great. No, I wouldn't enjoy it, but JetBlue flight and it was like, I'm your captain, Pete Mitchell, would you be like, yes, this is great? No, I wouldn't enjoy it. But that's just because I do like tend to throw up with motion sickness. So what about Jon Hamm? Jon Hamm has, I think, the most unfortunate role in this film, which is as the guy who tells Maverick he can't do the thing he wants to do. Right.

Did you think Hamm was effective? Can we talk about Jon Hamm for a second? Can we talk about the last, I don't know, 10 years of Jon Hamm's career? Where he's either playing the FBI guy who is trying to ruin everybody's fun. Obviously he's in the Navy here. What do they call him? Like the air boss.

That sounds, that's what you'll be calling me going forward on the show. Okay, great. So, but he's just like, he's always the FBI guy who just shows up to like give some tough talk and, you know,

stand in everybody's way. Or he's in a progressive commercial making fun of himself. And if it's not, you know, stand in everybody's way. Or he's in a progressive commercial making fun of himself. And if it's, you know, like progressive, Apple, like whatever's going on with him, he's clearly making a lot of money, but it's just not what I expected. And I actually think those progressive commercials are really funny.

Whoever is doing progressives ad campaign right now, this is not SponCon. I just like, I'm really um we're why is he taking why are these the decisions that he's making he's fine in them he's effective like i know now when john hand shows up john ham shows up in some sort of like uniform like oh boy okay he's here to like tough talk people but they're gonna figure out a way to get past Jon Hamm. But I don't know. It seems like he might like to be having a little more fun.

It's been a very long time since he played the hero of a movie. You know, he played a cop in No Sudden Move. He played an FBI agent in Richard Jewell. He played the sort of bad partner, the sort of like the counterpoint

in Lucy in the Sky. He was a bureaucrat in The Report. He was, I think he was a detective in Bad Times at the El Royale. Like, he hasn't been. He's the FBI guy in the town,

you know. Both legendarily. He's a man and a windbreaker. And, it's interesting because he's, it's been leading towards something

which is Confess Fletch, which is the new Fletch movie that Greg Mottola is directing that he's starring in, in which, of course, he's playing Fletch, the legendary Chevy Chase character,

Gregory McDonald, novel figure. And, I'm hopeful that that will be a in, in which, of course, he's playing Fletch, the legendary Chevy Chase character, Gregory McDonald novel figure. And I'm hopeful that that will be a pivot for him because, of course, I love him. Mad Men, that's my favorite show. Yeah, I do too. But it's funny that he took this role.

He's very good at it. I mean, this role more than any is the thing that feels like 1986 to me, where it's like, this guy has no shades. I have no idea what his motivation is

other than just being a prick. He's got to look at Tom Cruise and Tom Cruise is you've got to be you are rooting so hard against everything Jon Hamm says the entire time and it's fine it's just like the most movie convention bullshit in the movie and you know like will he win him over in the end

gosh I wonder but he's good he's effective what else what else do you want to say about top gun maverick before we uh wrap up um well i mean there are we are gonna do a spoiler version right so we'll talk about some of the reveals and the choices and the other two times i cried how about that great um i think this is a really good tom cruise performance i think that this is like obviously this is a movie built around

letting Tom Cruise be Tom Cruise and revisit the role that, you know, at least in terms of blockbusters, introduced him as the phenomenon that he is. But I think he's not just doing

bland, outsized, sort of jumping off of stuff. Tom Cruise, there is he like, if he is not intentionally playing all of the Tom Cruise, like meta commentary, then the role itself is clearly affecting him. And there are like emotional shades that i haven't seen in a performance

of his in like the last 10 years probably and it really worked and i think like part of the emotional experience for me of like being back to the movie theaters and being like being back with tom cruise is that he is like clearly swept up in that as well completely agree i think this is the best he's been in a long time. Maverick is not the most, isn't the deepest character in the world, but the idea of a man out of time and a man without a family and a little bit without purpose and with a lot of regret is a rich character for somebody like this to play. You know, we talked about earlier this week on the show, what does his 60 to 80 look like? And, you know,

this is not Paul Newman doing the verdict. I don't want to overestimate the work of Top Gun Maverick. It's a different kind of thing. The verdict is a very, very powerful movie from an incredibly gifted actor

and series of filmmakers about really living with regret. It's a deep movie. But it's in the same realm. Is it? Well, I was going to say, is it like sort of color of money ish i mean again it's you know it's it is to tom cruise what color of money is to paul newman obviously there are differences um but i mean and obviously tom cruise is in color of money

in case you didn't know but so there is some symmetry there. But yeah, I think he's fantastic. Can I ask you about that then? Because the last thing is, when you see the Color of Money for the first time, you're just like, you know, Paul Newman, of course, is the all-time screen presence, but Tom Cruise is electrifying in the Color of Money. What do you think of... Sorry, something just fell behind you. I don't know.

Was there just like a squirrel that just did a death dive behind you? Literally, the squirrel was inspired by our conversation. Okay. Because it just leapt off of the roof. It was like, honestly, like someone just, I got distracted.

Okay. So the squirrel is his own maverick. Yeah, there's a mig on top of the roof and there's a squirrel trying to do battle. That is what just happened, literally. What do you think of Miles Teller? Because I want to kind of wrap on that. Because is Miles Teller like worthy of Tom Cruise

in the color of money role? Because that is the position that he's put in here. He's not quite as flashy, but he has to do a lot of emotional weightlifting in this movie. Do you think he lived up to that? Ultimately, yes. And I think we'll talk more specifics

about what this movie allows him to do. And the thing about he's both he's taking on like the Maverick character in the original Top Gun, but you still got to make room for the actual Mavericks. So, you know, there's some like balance things that have to happen where Miles Teller doesn't get to do everything right from the start in the way that Tom Cruise did in the original Top Gun. But I thought he was pretty effective at the end. And I was like, oh, I would watch a movie with Miles Teller in this role and with Glenn Powell as his, I was about to say Iceman, but I'm sorry, Glenn Powell's name is Hangman. So that works. I thought it worked too.

We'll talk more about it next week. Last question for you. What's your call sign? I don't know what mine is, but yours is spreadsheet. No. No, mine is, mine is Lord,

if you have to ask. No, but can you have one syllable besides Bob? Yeah, Bob. If you're going to be Bob. Bob appears in this movie. Lewis Pullman plays Bob. You might as well be spreadsheet. Isn't Goose one syllable?

I guess Goose is. Okay. So you're Lord. That doesn't... Just think of L-O-R-D right on the helmet. You're telling me that wouldn't work? I mean, that's cool. But hey, Lord, it's confusing when you're yelling out a bunch of things all at once spreadsheet is

not confusing we know when we say spreadsheet we're talking about you the person that's so mean you're just okay if mine's spreadsheet yours is homework okay that's actually that's fine. That's totally fair. I'll accept it. Thanks, Amanda. Bobby is Slugger, he says, as apparently is invented by his sister. Bobby, that's really good. You're the coolest of the three of us. That is pretty good.

I like Slugger. Okay. All right. I'll take it. One of the reasons why we didn't want to spoil the movie on this podcast is because Bobby hasn't seen the movie. And I don't know anybody who's looking forward to this movie more than Bobby Wagner. So maybe we'll get Bobby's take when we come back on

the show next week. Amanda, you and I will talk again soon. Thanks so much for chatting. Let's go to my conversation now with Tim's everyday value menu. Enjoy the new spinach and feta savory egg pastry or our roasted red pepper and Swiss pinwheel starting at only $2.99 plus tax. Try one or try our full Tim Selects lineup. Terms apply. Prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada. It's time for Tim's. Delighted to have Joseph Kaczynski here on the podcast. Joe, how are you? I'm good. How are you?

I'm delighted to have you because you've got two movies coming out, but the big one first is Top Gun Maverick. I'm going to start with a very simple question. How did you become the director of Top Gun Maverick? Can you walk us through that? Well, it starts in May of 1986. I was 12 years old. I was at the Orpheum Theater in Marshalltown, Iowa, and I saw Top Gun. And like everyone else, it blew me away. Obviously, I was like the perfect age to see it. And it always lived in my memory, I think, as kind of the quintessential summer movie. I guess it was 25 years later, I found myself on set with Tom Cruise shooting a movie, Oblivion, which we made together, which was an incredible experience. And Tom says we talked about Top Gun. I don't recall the specific conversation, but our crew t-shirt was Oblivion in the Top Gun font with a bubble ship instead of an F-14. So clearly it was, you know, and if you look at Oblivion, there's certainly some Top Gun moments in it for sure.

So cut to May of 2017. I'm just finishing a movie called Only the Brave. I'm up at Skywalker Sound. And Jerry Bruckheimer sends me a script called Only the Brave. I'm up at Skywalker Sound. And Jerry Bruckheimer sends me a script called Top Gun 2. And I read the script and have some ideas. It's an early draft. I go into Jerry, Jerry's office, who someone obviously grew up watching his films, always wanted to work with him, of course, and kind of told him my initial thoughts, which he liked a lot and said, you know, we got to talk to, you need to talk to Tom about this

directly. So I said, great. So he said, we got a flight to Paris. Tom's shooting there and we should go talk to him in person about this. So Jerry and I flew to Paris in the May of May of 2017. And Tom was shooting, shooting right in the center of Paris. And we got about a half hour of his time in the middle of the day. And we stepped into a little hotel room or something that was right nearby. And I basically had about 25 minutes to pitch kind of my take on what the movie could be um and you know having made a movie with tom i knew you know i kind of knew what types of things he would respond to and i knew that the most important thing was the emotional kind of core of the story what would that be so um i pitched the idea of the rooster storyline which you've seen the movie, you know what that is. I think people who've seen the trailer get a sense of it, but that being the kind of emotional core of the film and the reason for Maverick to come back to Top Gun. The second thing I pitched was the opening, the first kind of 20 minutes, which is what has Maverick been up to? Because I think that's something that previous versions had a hard time cracking because it's like, what's he still doing in the Navy?

So that's kind of that whole Dark Star sequence I pitched to him. Obviously, I pitched the idea of shooting it practically. I showed him a couple of videos, GoPro videos of Navy pilots who had put little suction cup cameras on their canopies and were getting these little glimpses of their training flights and I showed that to him and I said this is on the internet for free like these clips

like if we can't beat this there's no point in making this film and he agreed obviously 100% and then finally it was the title you know I said we can't call it Top Gun 2. It's got to be Top Gun Maverick. It's a character driven story wrapped in this big action film, just like the first film. And Tom looked at Jerry and he picked up the phone. He called Paramount and said, we're making this movie. So that was pretty amazing to see that level of power.

Anyone who knows how hard it is to get a movie made, to see Tom essentially do it with a phone call. And that was five years ago. So that was the beginning of this kind of epic journey to making this movie. Is that a common experience for pitching yourself for a film? And also, are you trained in the art of pitching your take on a movie in that specific way? It's a very important part of the job that you learn.

And I learned when I first moved to Los Angeles in 2005. I feel very lucky because I started in the world of commercials. I came out to shoot music videos, but that industry had kind of died off at that point. So commercials was the way into making films. And I spent the first 15 months here in Los Angeles pitching on commercials. I probably pitched on 25 commercials and got none of them, lost every one. And it was an amazing learning experience for me to understand that it's not just about having the vision and the idea. You have to learn how to sell your idea. That's almost more important. I feel like

it's a skill that I don't know if it's taught in film school. I don't know if people realize that, but you have to be able to communicate what it is you're going for. Um, so every film I've done, there is a moment like this, not quite with the stakes of Top Gun Maverick, but there, you know, even on Tron Legacy, that one really started with me talking to Jeff Bridges and convincing him to be in that first teaser that we made for Comic-Con. That's where that whole project started. So every project starts with you either in a room full of studio executives or sitting across from a movie star trying to convince them why they should put their trust in you for the next two years.

So you mentioned that you're a fan of the original. The film, your film, it's very much true to the spirit and some of the tone of the original, and it opens with this deep homage to the way the first film opens. But your style is very different from Tony Scott's style. And I like your movie better, candidly. But I'm curious how much you felt like kind of a

fealty to replicating a lot of what people are expecting when they think of Top Gun versus how do you put your own spin on it and your own vision of it and also what a movie represents in 2022 versus 1986. Yeah, it was something certainly we talked a lot about, which is, you know, Tom and I agreed from the beginning, we didn't want to be the cover band version of Top Gun. At the same time, there's so much love for the first film. I wanted people to know from the opening frames that we love Top Gun as much as you do, and that this is a Top Gun movie, but we're telling a new story. So yes, those opening few minutes, definitely. I love the idea of just bringing the audience, wrapping our arms around them and saying, this is a Top Gun film. But I think shortly after that, as soon as Maverick pulls

into that hangar in China Lake, you realize that this movie is going in its own direction. So I think the first 20 minutes of the movie really are designed to tell you that we respect the past, but we're telling a new story. Aesthetically, yes, Tony Scott. I mean, I think what he did for blockbuster filmmaking aesthetically is maybe not fully appreciated. You know, Jerry Bruckheimer hired him off The Hunger, which is, you know, like almost a European art film

in the way it's photographed. And for Tony to bring that style to a Hollywood tentpole is, was pretty groundbreaking. And obviously he continued that with Days of Thunder and Crimson Tide and, you know, True Romance, just incredible vision. So there are parts of this film, you know, I definitely wanted to feel like it is in the Top Gun universe where the sun is always setting you know people are always sweating and and there's just this glow this kind of San Diego fantasy world that I wanted our world our film to also live within but the same time yeah I knew I had to innovate on my own and not just mimic

the style of the first film. So yeah, I think you'll see a very different feel once you get inside the planes, for instance, you know, the wide angle cameras, that 10 mil fish eye is probably something that Tony would never touch, but it's such an important angle for the film that that kind of one looking back that just pulls the entire world in because we were able to capture it all for real. And Tony just didn't have the technology back then to do that. So you have this architectural design-based digital background. A lot of those commercials that you worked on early on were very digitally oriented. Your first couple of films are very digitally oriented.

Lots of CGI. They're set in science fiction worlds. Top Gun, in some ways, is kind of the opposite of that. It's like American ingenuity, steel, physical, man-built product. Did you feel like you had to make any kind of transition or reimagine how you saw the world to capture some of those things? I don't think so, personally.

I mean, yeah, Tron Legacy required a lot of digital work because it is in a world that could not be photographed. But I tried really hard to make the world feel photographed. You know, we built all the sets in that film. We did

real lit suits. Like I, I, I tried my hardest to not make the film feel digital. I wanted it to feel like you took a camera into that world and photographed it. Oblivion, very much the same, not as much CGI as you would expect just in the technique we used with, you know, using front projection at the, in the sky tower and building the bubble ship and building that bike and shooting in Iceland. So I've always strived for photorealism, even in the digital work that I did.

So, and then only the Brave was, you know, 90% in camera and really just me kind of wanting just to make a real drama. So no, I don't feel like I had to change my aesthetic. And in fact, I think having the background in digital is really helpful so that when we did have to use CGI, it's hopefully people don't know where we did, you know, because hopefully we've integrated in a way that feels very photographic.

I have a couple of questions about Only the Brave, but I'm going to wait on that. You mentioned pitching to Tom Cruise. It's obviously legendarily exacting and hard-charging as a producer and as a star and also brings an incredibly strong vision for a movie. You already worked with him before, but that was an original story, something that you'd conceived.

Top Gun is woven into the fabric of his iconography. What's it like to work with him on something like this? What is a day on the set like? If you disagree, how do you settle something like that? I mean, everyone knows this. He's very, very passionate. And yes, this is me stepping into his world, but you know, also Jerry Bruckheimer who's producing.

So having worked with Tom, I knew, I knew from the start that it's always a partnership with him, which is fantastic because he's made 50 films. He's worked with literally every cinematic hero that you could have. And when you look at that list of directors, it's pretty mind-boggling just how he hit every single one over the last 40 years. And he learned from each one of them. He know, he's like a sponge. He absorbs. That's all he wanted to do in his first couple decades is just learn as much as he could about filmmaking. So for me, making my fourth film, you know, it's me trying to pull a lot of,

extract what he learned from them out of him. But if Tom wanted to, he could direct movies. Absolutely. I mean, he's got the experience the technical knowledge he could do it all if he wanted to but I believe he really loves the collaborative experience he loves working with a director he loves having someone to bounce ideas off of he loves the push and pull of the creative process and out of that push and pull of the creative process. And out of that push and pull, the movies, I think, are forged to be stronger. It's like he loves to test every aspect of the movie to make sure it's

absolutely watertight. So you have to be on your toes every single day. You need to have a plan A and a plan B, and you'll probably end up doing plan plan c but it'll be the best of three because of the process so it it's a um it's i think for a director uh you have to go in with a very strong point of view on the movie you want to make and you just have to be prepared to have that tested every day with him with the goal being what's the best film at the end of the day and and so um you know as long as everyone's pushing in the same direction i think the process works really well you know in oblivion so much of that film is just tom on screen in in the pilot's chair or you know on a calm screen yeah this movie has this tricky challenge where

maverick is the central figure and he is the lore, but you have to introduce all these new pilots, you have all these older characters that we have to remind people about. How do you balance the weight of the charisma of Tom Cruise to make a movie legible and exciting when someone that isn't him is on camera?

You cast it with the absolute best actors you can find and um you know casting is the most important part of a director's job uh i i say it's 80 percent of kind of what the job is jerry brockhammer just told me the other day he said it's 90 percent so i'll defer to jerry he knows um and so you, I was coming off only the brave. I just worked with Miles Teller. I just worked with Jennifer Connelly, both fantastic, incredible actors. And, you know, I felt like the roles in this film were both suited to them. It wasn't the same as what they were doing before different roles, but I just knew as, as actors that they would be able to go toe-to-toe with Tom. Obviously, bringing back Val Kilmer was incredible. We got Jon Hamm. We've got Ed Harris, which is my dream to work with someone

who is in the right stuff. So just surrounding him with actors who every second they spend on screen they're making an impression and that's what you need to do in a tom cruise film is you got to make the most of every second you have uh and then the younger pilots you know that was a uh just a long process of going through hundreds of tapes and trying to find those faces that maybe people hadn't seen before that were going to do the same thing that we're going to from the moment they appear on screen are going to make an immediate impression and get you to invest in them because

if you invest in the other characters besides tom cruise those action sequences at the end mean so much more uh so yeah we narrowed i narrowed narrowed it down to the top two or three for each role, and then I sat with Jerry and Tom and we made the final choice together. And having their experience in that, you know. Jerry Bruckheimer notoriously has an amazing eye for talent. Tom also instinctually knows right away if someone is right. So luckily, I think we chose correctly and I couldn't be more thrilled with every person that we cast in this film. So I'm revisiting your films this week.

It's obvious that you love things that fly. There's a lot of flying objects. There is a lot of flying objects. Yeah, you're correct. In every movie I've made, there's at least one or two aerial sequences. Where does that come from? Why do you like that? I made model airplanes as a kid. I started making little plastic models with my dad when I was like five. Then in high school, started making these very sophisticated remote control planes with, you know, gas engines and retractable gear and all this stuff. Um, I went and studied aerospace engineering at, at, in college. Um, so I've always been fascinated with, uh, flight and, um, and yeah, I guess it's just, it's not something that's conscious. I guess it's more of a subconscious thing and it just seems to express itself in each film. But, you know, luckily I did because it took me three movies of playing with aerial sequences to be prepared to make this one, this is going to sound like a dumb question, but there's a lot of lay people like myself who don't

understand air travel or planes or anything at all. And I genuinely do not know how you film the sequences of flight in this movie. So in a compact way, how do you

do this? Literally, how do you practically make this movie? Well, I guess the most innovative thing we did was we found a way to fit six IMAX quality cameras inside the cockpit of an F-18 Super Hornet. And that was like a 15-month process of working very closely with the Navy to figure out how to do that. We also were very lucky in that Claudio, my DP and I, had been working with Sony on a new camera called the Venice and particularly a new version of it called the Rialto which basically allows you to split the camera into two pieces. So you have the sensor

and the lens separate from the recorder and they're connected by a fiber optic cable so what you end up with is a very small box with a lens on it that is capturing a 6k large format imax quality image in a very very small form factor so we had been working with sony right when we were developing movie. And we sat with the Navy and figured out how to get six cameras in the plane. So four of them are facing the actor. You've got the 10 mil wide angle. You've got a close up right below it. Then you've got two kind of over the shoulders going out over both wings, allowing you to see both the actor and the action off each side of the airplane. Then we had two cameras over the pilot in the front seat, and the pilot's dressed in the same gear as the actor

so that when you cut between those angles, you end up with this sense of shooting over the shoulder of the actor. So you're doing a little bit of a cheat, but you're creating the sense that the actor is flying the airplane. All of them are connected to a switch on the cockpit so that when the actor was ready to roll, they'd hit one switch and all six cameras would turn on simultaneously. So the actors were actually controlling the rolling and cutting of the camera by themselves because they were up there with their pilot and that's it, just the two of them. I wasn't there. I wasn't communicating.

We couldn't see anything they were doing. There's no feed that you can watch while that anything they were doing. There's no feed. There's no feed. That you can watch while that's happening. No, no, there's no feed. As soon as they would land, we'd pull the chips out of each of the cameras, load them into the playback device and a big screen in the debrief room. And we'd sit and we'd watch the whole, what they had just shot, watch it down real time in front of everybody. So it was real time critique of everything they had done on that flight. And we would, you know, I would give them notes on things that need to be changed and we would all cheer

when they did something right. So it was this very kind of, you know, as a group, everyone was kind of involved together watching everyone's performance. So that's how we did the interiors. We would do a flight in the morning and a flight in the afternoon. Every flight had like two hours of briefing and an hour of debriefing. So it was very long days and they were getting two hours of shooting each day and out of that there's maybe a minute or two that was usable. In addition, I had cameras mounted on the outside of F-18s. So, Top Gun pilots would fly their low-level routes or their combat sequences with the cameras on the outsides of the planes, getting those very classic Top Gun angles of what it's like to be mounted to the plane. And those angles are really important because those are the only time the cameras are really able to go five or 600 miles an hour.

Then we also had air-to-air sequences where we had a helicopter with a camera mounted on it, or another jet with a camera mounted on the nose when we needed faster sequences, shooting air-to-air sequences. Then we also had ground-to-air units, sometimes four cameras of all varying focal lengths on a mountaintop shooting the sequences, much like the first Top Gun, which is kind of how they did most of the first film. So all in, and we had over 20 cameras running someday, which is why we were generating so much footage.

That quote about shooting 800 hours of footage got a lot of traction, but that was as a result of how we shot the movie. That wasn't like some sort of prideful thing where we're like, look how much movie we shot. You know, that was, that's just because we had so many cameras running to try to capture these moments. That sounds tremendously hard. It just seems like a lot of effort and there's gotta be something disorienting. I don't know if you had had this experience on previous films, but the idea of footage being captured that you can't see and are not in control of, that feels so antithetical in some ways to the idea of what a film director does, which is you watch a performance or you watch a sequence being executed.

It works or it doesn't work, and then you fix it. What was that like for you as a director? Well, it wasn't that random because after the two-hour brief of talking through every single shot, every line, every eyeline, where the sun is going to be, what the terrain is, what the choreography is, then we'd sit. I'd go with the actor and their naval aviator down to something called a buck, which was basically a plywood version of the F-18 cockpit that had the instruments and switches and everything. They would climb in that and I would just sit right next to them with the script and we'd just walk through everything they

were going to do. And we'd rehearse it to the point that it was like muscle memory. So it was so well rehearsed that it wasn't as random as you think. Then it would come back. It wasn't usually a performance issue that we would give notes on. It was, oh, you know, the sun was in the wrong place, or you forgot to put your visor down, or your straps are loose, or, you know, it'd be better if you guys were a little bit lower so we could see those mountains. So in that sense, the aerial stuff was very prescribed. And it usually took them one or two passes in the jet to get what we needed. Then we move on to the next thing. There were just so many other factors that were making it difficult between weather and distance to the location and how much fuel you had and do you have to refuel to get back? And there's just a lot of logistics. But yeah, it wasn't as random as that. It was very, very kind of specific what we were going for each mission. I always want to know from someone as skilled as you about the art of the action sequence and the design that goes

into sequences like that. So, you know, in many cases in scripts, you'll see sometimes there's extraordinarily detailed description of what's supposed to happen in an action sequence, oftentimes not. So for someone, for a filmmaker like you, and for a film like this, where the action is so consequential to the story that is being told, it's not just something blows up and then we move on to the next thing. It is very detailed, mission-oriented. What is your responsibility to creating or participating in the design of an action sequence? Well, the only thing I look for in a script when it comes to action is what's the story you're telling during the sequence. That's the most important thing. I'm not as concerned with the mechanics of the action

because I can work that out later. The question is, what is the story you are telling? Because if you're not telling story, then it's just action for action's sake. So that's worked out in the script ahead of time. Once you know what the story is, then for me, it was sitting down with real Top Gun pilots and talking through tactics, how they train, different maneuvers. And then it's a long process. Then I start with storyboards. I think we did over 3,500 storyboards for this movie. Storyboarding it out.

Then sequences where you need to do previs for a very specific piece of action or you want the camera to be in a very specific piece of action or you want the camera to be in a very specific place we'll previs certain sections then you're in the brief with all the pilots and actors you're going through the boards you're going through the previs but you also have these things called stick models which is what the real pilots use which are little fighter jets on sticks and you're kind of hand puppeting through it. And, uh, that was something Tom could do. That was something the pilots could do. The actors could do it. So everyone understood what the choreography was. Um, and then you go up and you shoot and, um, and then you kind of

reinvent in the edit, you know, because sometimes a piece of action that you, that you shot for a different exercise works great uh in in this sequence and then it just becomes an editorial thing which you know in this case was as you can imagine a monumental task just how to put all the pieces together in a way that made sense told the story and kept the pace up so um it was a lot of work there's you know thousands of people that worked on this movie. You mentioned Only the Brave earlier and bringing two cast members along from that movie.

I really like that movie a lot. I think it's really, really underrated. It felt like a pretty big departure from at least the worlds that you had been in before. I was wondering if you could just talk about kind of what you learned from that because it feels like Maverick could not have happened if you had not made that movie. I assume you agree with that. and science fiction is something I loved to do, but it was not the only thing I was interested in.

And when I read the story for Only the Brave, it reminded me a lot of the town I came from, even though I'm not from Arizona, the small town quality of it. And it just felt very moved by the story. And I wanted to tackle something different, and it's a real drama. A huge challenge for me, I think, would be for any director because it was only three years after the tragedy,

going to meet with the families, hearing their stories, and shooting some real difficult scenes. I mean, that scene when Brendan returns to the gym at the end of the film was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever had to tackle as a director for a variety of reasons but you know again working with that cast Josh Brolin Jennifer Connelly getting to work with Jeff Bridges again meeting miles teller and just being able to work with an ensemble because there's so many guys you know in that crew was just a

huge learning experience for me and a wonderful experience as a director and yeah certainly informed the approach to Top Gun because Top Gun is a drama you know and that's that's what I realized looking back at the film as a director who had made three films as opposed to the 12 year old kid who saw it for the first time. The movie really is a drama wrapped in this kind of glossy action exterior, but it is a rite of passage story of this guy and a new Maverick, Top Gun Maverick had to be the same thing. One thing I noticed about the movie, this is neither criticism of anything, but it feels deeply apolitical. You know, the mission is kind of indeterminately based.

We don't know what year it is, really. You know, we don't know what administration is in charge. And I think that works great. I think that there are some people who will say, why didn't you use more specificity? And it feels like Hollywood is even in this troubled moment where it's like, if we make someone the bad guy, the film won't play in that country or something like that. Can you talk about that decision to make the movie so standalone, so inside of its own creative bubble? Yeah, absolutely. Certainly that was the intent. I mean, the film is really a

competition film. It's more of a sports movie in terms of its structure. It's about friendship. It's about sacrifice. It's not about geopolitics. It never was, even though the first film was made in the heart of the 80s. The enemy in that film was also kind of faceless and nameless. So we wanted the focus to be on a character-driven story about Maverick kind of dealing with all these relationships. So we designed the mission to be with a nameless, faceless power. And, you know, I'm glad we did because the world's changing every year. I mean, we shot this movie in 2018. You could never anticipate what the state of the world would be today.

I want this to be a film that people watch 10 or 20 years from now can still enjoy and not feel like it was a product of the early 2020s. So that was our goal. Tell me a little bit about that, this interregnum we've had. You know, you finished shooting this a long time ago. You made a whole other movie after this, which is also coming out next month, Spiderhead. And this, more than any other movie that has been sidelined by the pandemic, feels like the one that I know people in my life, my co-host on this show, is like, when can I see this damn movie? I really, really, really want to see this. Obviously, the audience and the people who made it, there's a difference there. But what's it been like for you waiting and waiting and waiting?

Well, it's very difficult. You know, as we talked about when I first came in, it's hard to hold on to something. Because, you know, the project's not really over, it's very hard to move on until your movies kind of out there and you can kind of move on the next thing. But this film was designed from the start to be a big screen experience and to be experienced with the biggest movie sound that you can find and so the idea of releasing it in any other way just never seemed as an option so we knew we had to hold it and wait and now it just feels like the timing is right. People are excited to go back to the movies. Obviously we just had another huge weekend for the movie business, which is great to

see. Um, and you know, I would say if, if you haven't gone to the movies in a while, this is a movie you should see on the big screen and you should hear because you just can't replicate that kind of sound at home unless you've spent a lot of money on your home system. This is a movie that's meant to be seen in the theaters and we're excited for people to go back to the movies and experience it with a big audience. Yeah, I saw it in the Dolby room and it was very powerful. It really, really worked. Great. Conversely, you know, you do have a film coming out for Netflix. I'm curious.

I'm always interested in directors and kind of what their relationship is to those two things. The idea of you've made, I think, really one of like the critical in-theater experience movies of the decade now. And now you have a movie coming out on a streaming service in a month. So what's your perception and conception of how that should work in in 2022 well spider head's a very unique movie that does not fit into any box neatly it's not based on well-known ip it's not like i said a fit into a specific genre it's it's much more idiosyncratic and And that's the type of film that I think does lend itself to streaming. It's not a movie that you hope finds an audience weekend one, weekend two before it disappears and gets lost. This is a movie that on June 17th will be available to 220 million people simultaneously, no matter where you live,

no matter where you are in the world. So for a film like that, it makes a lot of sense. And so I feel like it's about what's the correct medium for the story you're trying to tell. And it's my first experiment with streaming, but I don't think I would have been able to make it through a traditional theatrical process. So for me as a director, being able to kind of try something totally different from a creative point of view was a credible experience. This may be total happenstance, but I happen to notice you've now made a movie for Paramount, Disney, Sony, Universal, and Netflix, which is basically the big five right now. Is that by design? Are you trying to be for hire?

Is that happenstance? Not all filmmakers bounce that cleanly through the system. For me, it's just about the story. It's like following the next story. It's trying something different. So yeah, it's interesting following the next story. It's, um, trying something different. So, yeah, it's interesting how I've, I've worked at each different place, but also, you know, the studios, the, the name above the gate doesn't define it as much as the people that work there. So, you know, the, the, the, the people are, are always changing. Um, but, uh, yeah, I don't,

that, that's not by design that's just me kind of looking for what's the next story that gets me interested you know what's that thing that makes you get up at 4 in the morning and go stand on a set for 15 hours drinking you know bad coffee like what is that thing that's got the

gives you the passion to get up and do this job every day so that's what I'm always chasing. Do you have another one of those right now? I'm developing a couple things right now. The one that's kind of in front of me is a movie set in the world of Formula One, which is developing. Very hot right now. Yes.

We're developing it with Apple. So it's yet another studio for me. We end every episode of this show, Joe, by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen based on how you're talking. I get the sense you watch a lot of films. As a director, do you get to watch a lot of films? No.

I don't. It's like I wish I could see more. When I'm working on a film, it's hard for me to watch other films. I almost find that documentaries or maybe even a little bit of TV or something is kind of like a nice change of pace. The last thing that I saw that struck me was on a flight to the UK a couple weeks ago, I finally saw The Green Knight. Oh, I would love to hear what you thought of that. I was, you know, I had no expectations. I just put it on

and I was really blown away because I thought it was a very distinct, unique vision. And, you know, as a kid, I was always drawn to directors who when you saw a frame of a film they did, you knew it was them.

You don't know maybe exactly how or why, but just a very distinct point of view. And I just thought that was a very distinct film, you know, that I know how hard it is to do that in the system. And I thought the performance by Dev was something I hadn't seen him do before. So I was really blown away by that. And I got to meet him a few weeks after seeing the film and just told him how much I enjoyed the experience of watching that movie because I found it very unpredictable, which is a rare thing.

I felt the same way about Top Gun Maverick. I thought it was absolutely amazing, Joe. Thank you. So thanks so much for doing the show. It was great to chat with you. Thanks, man. Great talking Thank you. So thanks so much for doing the show. It was great to chat with you. Thanks, man. Great talking to you. Thanks to Joe Kaczynski.

Thanks to Amanda and to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. And tune in next week for more Top Gun Maverick on The Big Picture. See you then.