'Top Gun: Maverick' Featurette Shows How The Filmmakers Fit Six IMAX Cameras In A Fighter Jet Cockpit

It's not just a fun line from the franchise: Tom Cruise really does feel the need for speed in Top Gun: Maverick. He's learned that if you're going to impress audiences with a stunt, it needs to feel as real as possible – so that means actually going up and pulling multiple Gs in a real fighter jet.

Check out this new featurette which shows off some of the actors' training, and gives us a look at a new camera system that manages to fit six IMAX-quality cameras inside the cockpit.

Top Gun: Maverick looks like fun. A lot of fun. But this featurette and all of the marketing materials seem to be going out of their way to convince us that Cruise and these actors are literally piloting these aircraft, and I'm not 100% sure that's what's happening. Please do not get me wrong: I fully believe that Cruise and the rest of his co-stars are really up there flying in those jets. But what none of the marketing materials are making explicitly clear is if the actors are actually piloting them or if there's a trained pilot who's somehow hidden from view and is doing the actual flying. If the latter is what's really happening, I want to see an entire featurette about those pilots – how does one pull off these incredible aerial maneuvers if you're not in the traditional cockpit?

For comparison's sake, check out this making-of featurette for the original Top Gun:

Here's the film's official synopsis:

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.

Cruise is joined by Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, and Ed Harris. Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) directs, and the script was written by Ehren Kruger (Transformers: Age of Extinction), Eric Warren Singer (American Hustle), and Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – Fallout).

Top Gun: Maverick flies into theaters on June 26, 2020.