Tag: Tom Cruise

Steven Spielberg gives Tom Cruise and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ the highest compliment ahead of the Oscars

A reminder that we need to see Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise work together again.

You can count one of the greatest directors of all time as a fan of Top Gun: Maverick, the high-flying action drama starring Tom Cruise that dominated theaters last summer.

Steven Spielberg caught up with Cruise at this year’s Oscar nominees luncheon earlier this week. In an exchange between the former collaborators caught on camera — see below — Spielberg tells Cruise that he “saved Hollywood’s [butt]” with Maverick.

“And you might have saved theatrical distribution,” Spielberg tells Cruise. “Seriously, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ might have saved the entire theatrical industry.”

Maverick was just the second film released amid the pandemic to gross more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office, joining the exclusive company of Spider-Man: No Way Home. And in the domestic box office, Maverick is the fifth-highest grossing film of all-time, topping $718 million. It’s the only non-Marvel and non-Avatar film in the top five.

Unlike the third installment of the third Spider-Man series, Maverick has been nominated for multiple Academy Awards, hence Cruise’s presence at the awards luncheon. In addition to starring in the film, Cruise is also credited as a producer.

Cruise and Spielberg’s films are both competing at this year’s Oscars. Both Maverick and Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans are nominated for Best Picture. The Fabelmans is up for six other awards – including Judd Hirsch for Best Supporting Actor – while Maverick is nominated for five others, including sound, editing, original song, visual effects, and adapted screenplay.

Despite great performances by Cruise, and co-stars Glen Powell and Miles Teller, Maverick didn’t land any nominations for acting. Cruise has never won an acting Oscar, but would be credited with a win as a producer should Maverick win Best Picture. Cruise was last nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2000’s Magnolia. Though, we all think he should’ve at least been nominated for pulling off this insane stunt in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation.

Spielberg and Cruise haven’t worked together on a film since 2005’s War of the Worlds. Before that, they also teamed up for 2002’s Minority Report. Perhaps we’ll see them work on another film together if Cruise can take a break from death-defying stunts in Mission Impossible sequels.

Dallas Cowboys invite Tom Cruise – no, not THAT Tom Cruise – to camp

The star (kind of) of Top Gun: Maverick made an appearance at Dallas’ Heroes Appreciation Day.

Top Gun: Maverick is undoubtedly the movie of the summer, if not the movie of all of 2022. It’s flown — pun intended — by a billion dollars in the box office and passed Titanic this week to become the seventh highest-grossing movie of all time with $662 million raked in domestically.

It feels like we’ve seen way more mustaches than one would expect, and it’s a reasonable to credit at least some of that to Miles Teller’s portrayal of Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw.

But how much is too much when attempting to head into the Danger Zone? For the Dallas Cowboys, it’s inviting a Tom Cruise lookalike to camp for their Heroes Appreciation Day.

Don’t worry, Cowboys fans were not tricked into thinking that’s the real Maverick.

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Monica Barbaro on Phoenix and her rise in Top Gun: Maverick

Women weren’t allowed to fly combat for the Navy until 7 years after the original Top Gun came out. Now Phoenix rules the sky in Top Gun: Maverick.

It’s Top Gun: Maverick Week here at For The Win, where we’ve taken to the skies for five days of content to celebrate the premiere of the sequel to 1986’s iconic ode to naval aviation. Strap in for a wild ride (no spoilers!).

When the original Top Gun released in 1986, women were still seven years from being allowed to fly combat missions for the Navy. As a result, there were only two actresses in a major role: Kelly McGillis as contractor-turned-Maverick’s-love-interest Charlie and Meg Ryan as Goose’s wife Carole.

In the long-awaited sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, we finally get to see a woman in the cockpit as Monica Barbaro portrays Phoenix, a pilot that is vying for a spot in the challenging and dangerous mission that Maverick (Tom Cruise) is training them to do.

Today, women make up just 12 percent of all Navy pilots, and Barbaro felt pressure to play Phoenix in a way that would make them proud. “It was just an incredible honor to represent the female aviators that I got to meet and got to fly with,” Barbaro said during the Top Gun: Maverick press junket. She took some of those female aviators with her to the movie’s premiere and was grateful for their support throughout the whole process.

The movie doesn’t burden Phoenix with a romantic storyline, but clearly establishes her friendship with Rooster (Miles Teller), contentious rivalry with Hangman (Glen Powell) and fantastic working relationship with her weapon systems operator, Bob (Lewis Pullman). The message? She’s an incredible pilot who just happens to be a woman.

“Initially she was written like she was overcompensating for the fact that she was a woman in the original script and being the bro-iest bro of the crew,” Barbaro said of Phoenix’s beginnings. While Monica and the rest of the actors were in training, Jerry Bruckheimer, Joe Kosinski and leading man Tom Cruise had already started tweaking her character.

“As I was in training, they were like, ‘OK, just FYI, she’s changing a lot,'” Barbaro said. “It was really important to Tom [Cruise] and Joe [Kosinski] and Paramount, and then also so important to the Navy and our pilot consultants, to represent her in that strong, capable way where she’s just really confident about what she’s great at and not overcompensating for everything.”

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The training Barbaro and her cast mates had to go through was intense and included water survival and high G training to prepare them for all of the demanding flying scenes. Despite all that training, flight hours in an F/A-18, and becoming a movie star, Barbaro has remained humble about the process. There is one thing she refuses to stay cool about, however.

“They made a Phoenix Barbie, which I think is like, the coolest thing on the planet. It’s the only thing I refuse to be humble about. It’s super cool.”

The original Top Gun led to an increase in applications to the Naval Academy and greater interest in aviation, and Bruckheimer hopes the sequel will inspire a new generation.

“I think it’s terrific, I really do,” Bruckheimer said. “I’m so thrilled that on the first movie a lot of fathers took their sons and Navy recruiting went up 500 percent after the first one. A lot of the pilots that we talked to said, ‘I joined the Navy because I saw Top Gun,’ and I think it’s going to happen all over again.”

Barbaro felt similarly regarding the reach this film could have.

“I became very close with a lot of the guys at Top Gun and to the instructors …  the way they talked about hoping their daughters would be interested in aviation I think was cool.

“I think in a big way, watching a big media movie represent a woman in a way that that she’s strong and capable and cool … this is why representation matters. You need evidence of these things and you need to see it to be like, ‘OK, that’s a possibility for me’ or ‘ Oh, that is a possibility for my for my daughter.'”

“It’s an honor,” Barbaro said of depicting a naval aviator. “They’re big shoes to fill.”

Top Gun: Maverick hits theaters worldwide on May 27.

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Why Top Gun: Maverick is more than just a summer blockbuster reboot

The sequel to 1986’s high-flying hit is finally in theaters, and it’s worth the wait.

The long awaited Top Gun: Maverick screams into theaters this week after numerous COVID-19 related delays. Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer’s sequel to 1986’s cult classic love letter to Naval Aviation was set to come out in the fall of 2019 before the studio pushed it to ensure they had enough time to edit the intense flying sequences. The July 2020 release was pushed after the start of the pandemic, sliding right to December 2020 before moving to July 2021 and then November 2021 before landing on May 27, 2022.

It was worth the wait.

Top Gun: Maverick is the kind of movie made to watch on the absolute biggest screen possible. From the very first bell gong that signals you’re about to strap in for a high-flying adrenaline rush, Maverick moves Mach 10 from start to finish. There’s no real reason why this should work so well, but Bruckheimer and director Joe Kosinski manage to perfectly mesh just the right amount of nostalgia with the action and excitement of a new adventure.

The plot is straightforward: Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is back — and don’t worry, they explain how he’s still active duty and only a Captain — and in charge of coaching up a group of Top Gun graduates for a seemingly impossible mission. Those graduates are (of course) the best of the best, and include Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, the son of Maverick’s former Weapon Systems Operator Goose. Rooster, played by Miles Teller, still holds a grudge against Mav for not only his potential role in his father’s tragic death but also for some drama around his application to the Naval Academy.

Teller didn’t get any time with Anthony Edwards, who played the iconic Goose, before the filming. Despite that, he does a remarkable job emulating his fictional father’s mannerisms in a way that immediately makes you think, “ah yes, I see this 100%.”

Although the plot is simple, it’s the perfect vehicle to bring the audience a plethora of just absolutely incredible aviation sequences. The utterly charming Glen Powell serves as cocky pilot Hangman, with Phoenix (Monica Barbaro), Payback (Jay Ellis), Fanboy (Danny Ramirez), Coyote (Greg Tarzan Davis), and BOB (Lewis Pullman) all among those vying for the coveted mission spots.

All of the flying scenes are real, and Kosinski shot over 800 hours of footage to put together the finished product. Each actor was their own director in the cockpit, adding one more layer of complication to an already endlessly complicated process. He essentially had a collection of mini-directors, each responsible for controlling their own scenes mid-flight.

“It was the only way to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, which was getting all of this footage for real in the [F/A-18] Super Hornet,” Kosinski told For The Win during the Top Gun: Maverick press junket. “It was a lot of training, a lot of briefing, a lot of rehearsals on the ground…it was a team effort.”

The result is breathtaking.

In an era of sequels and nostalgic reboots, Top Gun: Maverick knocks it out of the park. It’s not just a good movie or a fun summer blockbuster; it’s the best blockbuster to hit theaters in the last decade. There’s drama, edge-of-your-seat excitement, emotion, and everything in-between. While it may not end up with the quotability of Top Gun’s “need for speed” or the classic “your ego is writing checks that your body can’t cash,” it is a sequel that honors the original and elevates it (literally) to a new level.

Get your tickets, grab your snacks and enjoy.

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LOOK: Tom Cruise recognizes Ohio State marching band

This is pretty cool for #TBDBITL after its tribute to #TopGun.

The world-famous Ohio State marching band has a new fan. In case you missed it, OSU performed a Top Gun salute at halftime of the Purdue game on November 13, and it apparently did not go unnoticed.

Just to get you acclimated with the performance, we’re resharing it here. TBDBITL took the crowd through several songs from the movie all while changing formations and, of course, pulling off some pretty amazing animations on the field to pay tribute to one of the most popular movies of all time.

If you haven’t seen the performance, you can take a look at it below thanks to the local Columbus CBS affiliate’s YouTube Channel below.

Apparently, Tom Cruise himself took note of the performance and wrote into the band during a one of their breaks. What was then shared that may interest you is that band director Christopher Hoch then surprised TBDBITL by reading the letter from Cruise and keeping the one who penned it a surprise until the end.

It’s definitely worth a watch for yourself, and pretty cool for one of the biggest movies stars of all time to not only recognize the OSU marching band on Twitter but to also send some swag. Follow the video through and look at some of the perks Cruise provided, including an invitation for an early screening of Top Gun: Maverick in the spring.

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Tom Cruise was at the Dodgers-Giants game but many MLB fans didn’t believe it was really him

MLB fans had jokes about Tom Cruise.

The Los Angeles Dodgers evened up their NLDS with the rival San Francisco Giants with a 9-2 win on the road on Saturday night. It was a big win for the defending champions, who didn’t want to head home down 0-2 in the series.

Oracle Park was packed again last night and there was one special fan in attendance who has done a number of legendary movies over the years.

The man… was Tom Cruise.

The 59-year-old actor was shown on TV and the Jumbotron but many fans who were watching didn’t think it was really Tom Cruise and had lots of jokes about who it could have actually been.

Here he was:

Twitter had reactions: