Top Gun: Maverick has proved to be more than just a nostalgic trip back to the 80s, wowing critics and audiences and becoming on the biggest movies of the year. While the movie hasn’t rested on its nostalgic laurels, director Joseph Kosinski revealed in a recent interview that the most emotional moment making the movie did come from its biggest nostalgic pivot: the reunion of Tom Cruise’s Maverick and Val Kilmer’s Iceman.
Top Gun: Maverick has torn up the box office in the last couple of weeks after landing on Memorial Day Weekend, and while it does have plenty of links back to the 1986 original, it only brings back Cruise and Kilmer from that cast. However,, that was more than enough to bring a huge emotional moment to the movie, and filming it was one thing that Kosinski will never forget. He told The Hollywood Reporter:
"That’s one of those memories I’ll never forget, where you’ve got this actor in Val, someone who I admired through his whole career, and having him play one of his most iconic characters reuniting with one of Tom’s most iconic characters on screen for the first time in 36 years. Just to see how much respect they had for each other as actors and to see a friendship that has evolved over 36 years. They’re just two actors at the top of their game doing this really beautiful scene for the film that’s so important. It was just a very emotional day on set … it’s not often you get to do a scene with that much kind of emotional weight in a summer tentpole film.
My favorite part of that scene is the button at the end, that sense of competition is always there. Despite them being friends, there’s still that one-upmanship that exists between, I think, all these pilots and I also think between Tom and Val. I think that competition is what kind of made their relationship in the first film feel so electric and real, in that there was a bit of a rivalry there as young actors. So just that moment at the end, that hug and that bit of humor to me is kind of what really makes the scene work."
The Bond Between Cruise and Kilmer Continued From Top Gun
There has been no doubt that the on-screen reunion between Maverick and Iceman is the kind of moment cinema was created to deliver, but the love of the actors for each other is something that began 36 years ago in the original Top Gun. Kilmer recently explained that there was a “special bond” between everyone on the set of the original movie, and they would often continue to socialize together after shooting had finished.
When it came to the appearance of Kilmer’s Iceman in the new movie, it seems that both Cruise and producer Jerry Bruckheimer were adamant that he had to be part of Top Gun: Maverick. After the movie’s arrival in cinemas, and its continued success at the box office, it is now clear why they believed that Kilmer had to be part on the movie by whatever means necessary.