‘Top Gun: Maverick’: Video Goes Inside The Making of Mega-Anticipated Sequel

“This is a love letter to aviation. We’re gonna show you what it’s really like to be a Top Gun pilot.”

Tom Cruise is reprising his iconic role as Maverick in next summer’s Top Gun: Maverick after 34 years, and a new behind-the-scenes video is providing further insights into the blockbuster sequel.

“This is a competition film about family, friendship and sacrifice. This is a love letter to aviation. We’re gonna show you what it’s really like to be a Top Gun pilot,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer says in the opening of the high-octane clip.

“We have the greatest fighter pilots in the world working with us,” adds Cruise, who notes that real-life Top Guns performing the stunt scenes hit a face-smushing 7 and a half or 8 G’s in the air. “I am so proud of them and what they’ve done. It is heavy duty.”

Here’s an official synopsis of the film, if you “feel the need” to get up to speed:

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him.

When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”.

Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.

Watch the making-of featurette above, and check out the latest trailer here:

Top Gun: Maverick co-stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, and Ed Harris and was directed by Joseph Kosinski. It roars into theaters on June 26, 2020.