‘Top Gun 2’ Cast Rounds Out By Surrounding Tom Cruise With Much Younger People
TheTop Gun 2cast continues to fill out by adding a whole slew of fresh-faced youngsters to star along old man Tom Cruise. Cruise returns for the sequel,Top Gun: Maverick, but it’s clear from this recent casting that the film is going to be focused on a much younger generation.
Various publications are reporting some young whippersnappers are taking the highway to the danger zone to join theTop Gun: Maverickcast.Deadlinehas a list of names:Thomasin McKenzie(Jojo Rabbit),Charles Parnell(A Million Little Pieces),Jay Ellis(Insecure),Bashir Salahuddin(GLOW),Danny Ramirez(Assassination Nation), andMonica Barbaro(The Good Cop).
They join a cast that includes Cruise,Miles Teller,Jennifer ConnellyandVal Kilmer. Cruise is back as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Teller is playing the son of Maverick’s old wingman Goose; Connelly is the female lead, “a single mother who runs a local bar near the Navy base”; and Kilmer is back as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.
Of this new group of actors, Parnell and Salahuddin are the only two that appear to be, well,adults –with Parnell playing an admiral and Salahuddin playing an engineer. The rest of this bunch looks barely out of high school. McKenzie will portray the daughter of Connelly’s character; Ellis and Ramirez are both playing pilots; andVarietyreports Barbaro will be Teller’s love interest.
We don’t know a whole lot about the plot other than the fact that Cruise’s Maverick will be training Teller’s character. Based on this new casting, I think it’s safe to sayMaverickis going to lean heavily into a whole new generation of younger individuals taking over theTop Gunfranchise. There’s also probably a bit of inspiration fromCreedin here as well, with the original, aging main character from the first film training the son of a dead friend.
At one point, an earlyTop Gun 2script involved drone warfare, but directorJoseph Kosinskichanged that when he came on board. “Personally, I would never want to see a movie about drones. For meTop Gunhas always been not about fighter planes,” the directorsaid. “It’s been about fighter pilots.”
But do peoplewantto see aTop Gunsequel? Is nostalgia enough to carry the film to box office glory? Cruise has had continued success keeping the exciting, thrillingMission: Impossiblefranchise alive, but he’s had less success with other franchises. Is there enoughTop Gunenthusiasm out there to bring back that loving feeling? We’ll have to wait untilTop Gun: Maverick’sJuly 12, 2019release to know for sure.
