Tag Archives: Top Gun 2

In-Flight Emergency, New Kawasaki Motorcycle And More: All The “Top Gun: Maverick” News We Can Tell You, And Some We Can’t…

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Among all the other things, Tom Cruise Has Emergency “Flap Caution” Landing During “Top Gun” Sequel Filming.

Hollywood action film star Tom Cruise had to cut short the filming of an aerial sequence for the upcoming “Top Gun: Maverick” after a “flap warning” indication appeared in the U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet he was flying in Monday afternoon, September 17, 2018. The aircraft diverted to an alternate airfield following the incident.

The 56-year old Golden Globe Award winning actor was photographed wearing U.S. Navy flight gear and a specially painted Gentex HGU-68/P lightweight flight helmet. The photos were said to have been taken at “an airbase in Nevada” and have circulated on Hollywood gossip and aviation fan blogs including TMZ.com. Our own David Cenciotti was the first to notice that Maverick used the modern flight helmet instead of the old HGU-33:

Other photos surfaced on the “Eggs, Bacon and Joey Morning Show” Facebook page that showed Tom Cruise dressed in a flight suit shaking hands with men and women also in military flight suits at Naval Air Station Lemoore in Kings County and Fresno County in Central California. F/A-18 aircraft appear in the background including the tips of the twin tails of one F/A-18 painted in colors that may be similar to the one we showed in a previous update that will be used in the filming of the upcoming “Top Gun: Maverick”.

A story on ABC30.com by columnist Jim Jakobs confirmed from the U.S. Navy that, “The Navy can’t tell us if Cruise is in Lemoore. But, the Navy can say that NAS Lemoore’s F/A-18 Super Hornets and F-35’s will play a big role in the movie.” The article mentioned our editor David Cenciotti as a source for new photos of the specially painted F/A-18F to be used by Tom Cruise in the movie. ABC30 writer Jim Jakobs went on to quote Cmdr. Ron Flanders, Public Affairs Officer, Naval Air Forces as saying, “A great deal of the flying in this film will be done by Lemoore based aviators.”

Enough rumors also flew fast and low earlier this week about the upcoming “Top Gun: Maverick” to make you spill your coffee in the tower. But just like any target rich environment, in a matter of minutes, the most interesting- and as it later turned out- accurate rumors, disappeared from social media like a MiG-28 on afterburner. We’d tell you more, but we’d have to… you know. Most of the rumors that were acknowledged as accurate mentioned locations for filming the low flying sequences of the film. TheAviationist.com was asked not to reveal these locations.

Photos of U.S. Navy aggressor aircraft never before photographed in specific western U.S. low flying areas began surfacing on social media. Similar or identical aircraft were used in the first “Top Gun” movie in 1986. The photos sparked rumors and speculation about set locations for the movie. After responses to our inquiry about the photos we were asked not to say anything more. Our post on social media inquiring about the location disappeared after the information was privately confirmed.

What we can report is that better photos have surfaced of the aircraft that is going to be used for Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the movie, as played by Tom Cruise. We first ran unattributed photos rumored to be “Maverick’s” plane on September 13 after they appeared in at least two Hollywood entertainment gossip blogs. Within hours the rumors were at least unofficially confirmed and more photos surfaced- the one shown here.

Then, more interesting news appeared online:

No “Top Gun” sequel would be complete without the need for speed, and photos have surfaced of Tom Cruise being filmed as Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell riding a new Kawasaki Ninja H2R motorcycle on a runway for a possible title sequence that reprises the original 1986 sequence. This new Kawasaki Ninja H2R replaces the Kawasaki GPZ900R that he rode in the original 1986 film. “Maverick”’s new Ninja H2R displaces 998cc’s and has a top speed of (seriously) Mach .327 or between 206 and 249 MPH.

Fox News and other Hollywood gossip sites have ran spy photos of Tom Cruise as “Maverick” filming a possible title sequence on a new 200 MPH Kawasaki Ninja H2R. (Photo: Via Fox News/Facebook/Kawasaki)

Raven-haired Hollywood hottie Monica Barbarow has been cast in the role of a pilot trainee in “Top Gun: Maverick” and will fill a major part of the female cast of the film as the love-interest of another pilot in the film, “Bradley Bradshaw” as played by actor Miles Teller. Barbarow is a formally trained ballerina who left dance to pursue acting full time. She has appeared in the NBC television legal drama “Chicago Justice”.

Filming for “Top Gun: Maverick” has also been taking place onboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) during August. Film crews from Paramount and Bruckheimer Films were aboard the carrier until Sunday, August 26.

Tom Cruise as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell was spotted shaking hands at NAS Lemoore in California. (Photo: Via Facebook/Eggs, Bacon and Joey Morning Show)

The release date for the film has been pushed back nearly a year until June 26, 2020 from the original release date of July 2019. Entertainment writer Anthony D’Alessandro reported in Deadline.com that the film is being delayed to, “Work our all the complex flight sequences so that the pic can be great.”

The delay has led to speculation about the plot for “Top Gun: Maverick” that is already said to include remotely piloted aircraft and the Navy’s new F-35C Lightning II. The Navy has confirmed the F-35C will be included in the movie.

Top image: Several websites leaked photos of a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet with special markings that could be for Tom Cruise’s character “Maverick” in the upcoming Top Gun sequel (Photo: Via RevengeOfTheFans.com courtesy of Mario-Francisco Robles)

Tom Cruise Teases “Top Gun 2” Movie With An F/A-18F Super Hornet Photo

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Looks like Top Gun sequel may feature the Super Hornet instead of the F-35.

Tom Cruise has just teased the long-awaited Top Gun movie sequel (expected in July 2019) with an interesting photo posted on Twitter with the text “Feel the need” and #Day1. The image, that marks the beginning of filming and production work, shows U.S. Navy pilot Capt. Pete Mitchell, wearing the flight suit with a TOPGUN patch on his shoulder and what appears to be an F/A-18F Super Hornet in the background. This seems to suggest “Maverick” retains a pilot role (and possibly he’s still assigned to the U.S. Navy Naval Fighter Weapons School even though the patch may only mean he graduated there) and that he flies the Super Hornet and not an F-35C, the U.S. Navy’s most modern aircraft, as most had predicted.

Since the first movie was released back in the 1980s, TOPGUN has moved from Miramar to NAS Fallon, Nevada even though, according to our friends at Combat Aircraft  the trees in the shot suggest that the photo wasn’t taken at the base home of the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center, near Reno.

One thing worth noticing is the fact that “Mav” has his famous HGU-33 helmet in his hand even though that kind of old-fashioned helmet has long been replaced within the U.S. Navy and other air arms around the world by the more modern Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System or HGU-68/P helmets.

 

We will keep you updated as more details on Top Gun 2 emerge.

As we wait for the sequel featuring the F-35, let's celebrate Top Gun Day with a funny video

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Top Gun was released on May 12, 1986 (at least in NYC).

It’s by far the most famous (and in my honest opinion, still one of the best) Hollywood movie about military aviation ever reaching theaters, directed by Tony Scott starring Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer and Anthony Edwards.

According to the creators of the dedicated-website, Top Gun Day, established on May 13, 2011 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the action drama film, is:

like talk like a pirate day, only way cooler because it allows you to quote Top Gun all day long, wear aviator sunglasses (no matter how cheap), pretend you’re a fighter pilot (“it’s time to buzz the fridge”), play volleyball in jeans, and drink Hemlock–wait, wait–I mean ICE water.  Participating in Top Gun Day is so easy even Slider can do it (read the next post title, “How do I Participate?”).

A Top Gun Day is also made of thousands tweets with the #topgunday hashtag (usually with the most famous quotes of the movie) as well as special avatars and pictures.

The Aviationist’s way to celebrate the Top Gun Day is by sharing this funny alternative ending. It was uploaded to Youtube in 2011 but I hadn’t seen it until today.

As you probably know by now, Top Gun 2 is in the works. Tom Cruise was initially thought to be a drone pilot. However, in March 2012, Tom Burbage, Executive VP of Lockheed Martin and General Manager of F-35 Program Integration, unveiled that the F-35 will be used in the movie, with Maverick being a test pilot.

The F-14 was an extremely fascinating machine and the perfect symbol of naval aviation. Let’s hope the F-35 fits the role as well.

Provided that they will be able to fix the aircraft’s tailhook system after the F-35 Carrier Variant’s embarrassing series of failed tests.

Highway to the danger zone!

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