Here’s everything we have noticed in the new trailer.
Paramount has just released the first official trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick”, that will hit theaters in June 2020.
As the very first image released by Tom Cruise on social media last year suggested, the movie will feature the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Scenes shown in the very first clip show Tom Cruise in the cockpit during catapult launches, formation flying, low-level flying in the western US corridors. There is also a glimpse of his somewhat mysterious High Altitude Pressure Suit, of a new motorcycle scene and you can also spot one of the two U.S. Navy Super Hornets (and E and an F model) painted in the special black, light blue and gray color scheme, that were spotted at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and NAS Fallon, Nevada, in the last months wearing three “kill” markings (the silhouettes seem to be those of three F-5s aka MiG-28s….) and the pilot name, “Capt. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell”, the character played by Tom Cruise in both the original 1986 Top Gun.
The clip shows footage shot with the camera equipment we had noticed in a photo of a U.S. Navy F/A-18F that flew through the Star Wars canyon with a pilot wearing Maverick’s helmet. Here’s what we wrote back then:
The photo, posted to Instagram by Christopher Lohff (@lohffingfoto), shows the pilot/front-seater wearing the same HGU-68/P lightweight flight helmet with custom graphics as seen in previously leaked photos from the production of “Top Gun: Maverick”. The upcoming film, slated for release on June 26, 2020 in the U.S., is likely entering the final stages of its production phase before going to post-production and editing.
Another interesting detail in the photo is the appearance of an array of what appears to be four of the new Sony VENICE CineAlta video cameras on the coaming of the rear cockpit. The new Sony VENICE CineAlta is a full-frame, 36x24mm digital video camera that shoots at a maximum resolution of 6048×4032 and can be modified to shoot at even higher quality resolution. The cameras cost about $42,000 USD each without lenses or upgrades for higher resolution.
The Sony VENICE CineAlta array seen in the F/A-18 appears includes four rearward-facing cameras in the aft cockpit of the F/A-18 with various focal length lenses including at least two very wide-angle lenses. The camera array is fitted to the top of the rear cockpit coaming at the top of the instrument panel with a custom machined mount.
These photos give a clue about what some of the in-cockpit sequences may look like when the film debuts next year.
Interestingly, some footage shows “Maverick” flying an F/A-18E/F loaded with what seems to be a pair of GBU-24 LGBs (Laser Guided Bombs) and AIM-9X AAMs (Air-to-Air Missiles).
Moreover, the fact that an F-14 will appear in “Top Gun: Maverick” is not a secret. In December last year we posted the first shots of Tom Cruise at Lake Tahoe next to an old F-14. The same Tomcat, that appeared to have a Phoenix emblem under the cockpit, later made a comeback aboard a U.S. Navy carrier, when the very same aircraft was spotted, with black painted tails and phoenix-like insignias, entangled in the flattop’s crash barricade, during filming aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt in San Diego. Well, the aircraft (in CGI) makes a cameo at the end of the trailer…
Update: I’ve prepared an infographic that contains some of the most significant or curious details I’ve noticed in the trailer. Here it is:
