The US Navy lent Tom Cruise F/A-18 Super Hornets for the new “Top Gun” movie. The only catches: The studio paid as much as $11,374 an hour to use the advanced fighter planes -- and Cruise couldn't touch the controls.
Previous Navy estimates put the unit cost of the last 20 airplanes at $55.7 million per Super Hornet. Congress previously appropriated and authorized approximately $1.15 billion for the F/A-18s, a total which would have bought a batch of 20 aircraft.
Tom Cruise and his 'Top Gun: Maverick' co-stars cost Paramount Pictures a tidy sum of money in filming for the new movie, Bloomberg said Thursday, explaining the US Navy was paid $11,374 per hour for the actors to 'train' in advanced F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets.
How much did they pay the pilots in Top Gun: Maverick?
'Top Gun: Maverick' studio paid U.S Navy more than $11,000 an hour for fighter jet rides—but Tom Cruise wasn't allowed to touch the controls. That was a fine use of some Millhouse. This elevator only goes to the basement!
Fighter Pilot Breaks Down Every Fighter Jet From Top Gun: Maverick | WIRED
Did they fly a real F-14 in Maverick?
There is also a shot of an F-14 Tomcat coming into the barricade when Maverick and Rooster are forced to land on the carrier without landing gear. Since the F-14 was decommissioned in 2006, the Tomcat sequences were done with an F-18 and digitally edited in post.
The total budget for “Top Gun” was $15 million. In exchange for DOD backing, the producers agreed to let the department make changes to the script. Maverick's buddy, Goose, no longer perished in a midair collision because, according to the Navy, “too many pilots were crashing.”
The film predominantly features F-18 Super Hornets over F-35s for a practical reason: the need for two-seater planes. The narrative required both the actors and the Navy pilots to be in the aircraft during filming, which is not possible with the single-seat F-35s.
Mach 10 is a feat that has been previously accomplished by a manless aircraft called X-43A, developed by NASA as an experimental aircraft to test hypersonic speeds. Mach 10 is approximately a speed of 3.43 kilometers per second or 12,348 kilometers per hour, which translates to 7,680 miles per hour.
Given these attributes, the Raptor's high production price tag—$125 million per aircraft, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate—is not unreasonable.
The F-35's price per unit, including ancillary costs like depot maintenance, ground support equipment, and spare parts is $110.3 million per F-35A, $135.8 million per F-35B, and $117.3 million per F-35C.
The F-35 aircraft is DOD's most advanced and costly weapon system. DOD currently has about 630 F-35s, plans to buy about 1,800 more, and intends to use them through 2088. We reported in this Q&A that DOD's projected costs to sustain the F-35 fleet keep increasing—from $1.1 trillion in 2018 to $1.58 trillion in 2023.
Why couldn't they use 5th gen fighters in Top Gun: Maverick?
As for why they didn't film with F-35s: others have already mentioned that the F-35's single seat makes it impossible to put actors in the cockpit. Other issues are that the F-35 has a lower thrust-to-weight ratio than the F-18, so maneuvers wouldn't look quite as cool.
The Top Gun: Maverick CGI use was minimal, and since most of Top Gun 2 was real the other cast members also flew in their jets just like Cruise. However, none of the Top Gun: Maverick cast flew the jets by themselves. All the cast member's jets were piloted by trained Navy pilots for their aerial sequences.
Yes, he apparently did fly a little. But most of the scenes are filmed with Cruise in the backseat of an F-18 while another pilot in the front seat is flying for the actual dramatic flight scenes. Having said that, I am sure Cruise was given the controls and flew himself for a bit, but never for those high G scenes.
Top Gun and its sequel are set in the Navy. However, the F-22 is used by the Air Force, an entirely separate institution. As such, it would have made no sense for Maverick to pilot an F-22 of the aircraft in Top Gun: Maverick.
Yes, the cobra maneuver is very possible in Infinite Flight. However, it's very hard to execute and requires talent and skill; most likely, you won't be able to accomplish the maneuver on your first try.
Does the Naval Fighter weapons School (Top Gun) still exist and do pilots still study there? Yes. Today it's formally the Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor Program, under the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center at NAS Fallon, Nevada. The course is still known as “TOPGUN.”
The film grossed $1.496 billion worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2022 and the highest-grossing of Cruise's career. A sequel is in development.
The film stars Tom Cruise as an older, somewhat wiser version of the brash Navy pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, the character he portrayed in the 1986 hit "Top Gun." Though both "Top Gun" films are fictional, they're inspired by a real-life military aviation program, the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School, aka TOPGUN.
Keanu Reeves has made $22 million for playing John Wick, with the bulk of that being his $15 million salary for John Wick: Chapter 4. Reeves' salaries for the earlier John Wick movies ranged from $1-2 million to $2-2.5 million, showing a significant increase over time.
