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With much anticipation,Top Gun: Mavericktriumphantly returned as one of the biggest box office hits of 2022, and the receipts were positively astounding. The film, which was nominated for six Oscars, had some incredible aerial action, but not all of it was in the skies. Did you know that at the request of Cruise, a particularly stirring scene featuring Jennifer Connelly was reshot?
Connelly recently unveiled the cinematic alchemy that turned a potentially tedious moment into a standout scene under the fastidious eye of Cruise. It is not every day that the latter describes a scene as “boring”, but that is exactly what happened during the filming of this eagerly anticipated sequel to the 1986 hit,Top Gun.
The cast and crew ofTop Gun: Maverick,as revealed by Connelly in her Vanity Fair interview, firmly embraced character depth & storytelling vigor, highlighting the meticulous attention to detail that went into the film.
Jennifer Connelly onTop Gun: Maverick’s Scene Makeover With Tom Cruise’s Help
In aVanity Fairinterview,Jennifer Connellydisclosed that Tom Cruise convinced her that one of their scenes in the Joseph Kosinski movie was “boring” and could be improved. This led to the decision to scrap the entire shot and swap it out for a completely different scene.
$171M Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly Movie That Got 5 Oscar Nods Almost Never Escaped Development Hell
According totheHulkstar, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) & Penny (Connelly) shared a romantic boat scene in the 2022 flick. Originally shot in San Diego with calm seas, Cruise felt it didn’t showcase Penny’s strength as a sailor. So, the scene was re-shot in San Francisco with rough seas to add more excitement anddepth to Penny’s character.
To quote Connelly:
Originally, we shot a sailing scene in San Diego. It was a beautiful, beautiful boat. We saw dolphins. It was great. We did the scene, we’re sitting out there, and Tom goes, ‘No, this is boring.’ I was like, ‘Oh.’ [Laughs] He was like, ‘It’s not fast enough. It’s not cool enough. It’s not fast enough. I want Penny to be really strong’ and he was right.
The actress, 53, further explained that Cruise wanted Penny to be portrayed as a “strong” and capable woman, not just a love interest for Maverick. The decision to reshoot the scene was challenging but ultimately necessary to show Penny in a new light. Connelly praised the decision as a“great choice”,stating:
So a gesture like that, she’s sailing a boat and it’s calm and lovely versus she’s sailing this boat, and it’s this really like high-octane adrenaline experience. I think it was a great choice.
Director Joseph Kosinski also acknowledged that the sailing scene was the most difficult to shoot and had to be done “three times”to get it right.
Director ofTop Gun: MaverickShared Insights on Filming Tom Cruise’s Hardest Scene
Although computer-generated imagery is increasingly being used in blockbuster productions,Top Gun: Maverickprioritized realism whenever possible by havingTom Cruiseperform his scenes alone. Despite this, director Joseph Kosinski claimed that the most challenging scene to film was onethat also starredJennifer Connelly and had nothing to do with airplanes.
Kosinski gaveVulturean explanation for why it was so complicated to shoot the sailing scene:
I mean, the hardest one, which is one that you wouldn’t think, was actually the sailing sequence. Because there was so much out of our control. I had to shoot that scene three times in three different places before we got it.
Therefore, it involved more than just a few takes of Cruise and Connelly being shot off a single stretch of the California coast. It is understandable that this was quite the ordeal given that Kosinski and his crew had to shoot this sequence over several weeks in various locations. The director added:
Just watching that footage, you’re able to see Tom looking directly into the sheer rock face next to him and seeing the shadow from his own jet about 15 feet away. That tells you how extreme the flying was for that sequence. That was probably the most dangerous thing we did.
The fact that the sailing scene was the most “dangerous” to film speaks volumes about how much training Cruise and his co-stars had to undergo forTop Gun: Maverick.
Tom Cruise and His $1.4B Top Gun 2 Co-Star Jennifer Connelly Inspired $504M Disney Movie That Was Later Remade With Will Smith
Despite the limited screen time dedicated to Penny & her relationship with Maverick, every second counts in establishing her as a strong and independent woman. The subtle change in the sailing scene not only added breadth to Connelly’s character but also made the scene more engaging for the audience.
Top Gun: Maverickis streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Siddhika Prajapati
Senior Journalist & Content Head
Articles Published :3310
With over 3,300 articles carved into the digital walls of FandomWire, Siddhika Prajapati excels at creating, curating, and elevating engaging stories. She takes pride in giving these stories a home and, of course, she’s got a Google Knowledge Panel to prove it!Whether it’s reviewing the latest drop on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Apple TV+, or analyzing the cultural echoes of a streaming hit on Paramount+ or Max, Siddhika is always writing three steps ahead of the discourse.
