---
title: "The Navy refused to let Tom Cruise fly an F/A-18 Super Hornet in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’"
description: "Despite Tom Cruise's piloting prowess, the Navy wasn't keen on actually putting the superstar actor in the cockpit of a F/A-18."
date: "2020-03-29"
modified: "2020-03-29"
authors:
  - name: "Jared Keller"
    job_title: "Former Managing Editor"
    link: "https://taskandpurpose.com/authors/jaredkeller/"
url: "https://taskandpurpose.com/news/top-gun-maverick-tom-cruise-f-18-super-hornet/"
categories:
  - "Aircraft"
  - "Culture"
  - "Entertainment"
  - "Fighter Aircraft"
  - "Mandatory Fun"
  - "Tech & Tactics"
---

# The Navy refused to let Tom Cruise fly an F/A-18 Super Hornet in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

![](<https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/22166133-6.jpg>)

Tom Cruise can do almost anything, but he absolutely cannot fly a $70 million Navy fighter jet.

In a new interview with Empire magazine ahead of the release of *Top Gun: Maverick* this summer, film producer Jerry Bruckheimer revealed that despite Cruise's piloting prowess, the Navy wasn't keen on actually putting the superstar actor in the cockpit of an F/A-18 Super Hornet.

"The Navy wouldn't let \[Tom\] fly an F-18, but he flies a P-51 in the movie, and he flies helicopters," Bruckheimer [told](<https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/03/24/top-gun-shocker-navy-denied-maverick-chance-fly-f-18.html>) Empire, per Military.com. "He can do just about anything in an airplane."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSqVVswa420

According to Empire, both Cruise and Bruckheimer put a premium on authenticity when it came to the return of Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell for the highly-anticipated sequel.

“We just started talking,” Cruise [told](<https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/tom-cruise-top-gun-maverick-exclusive/>) the magazine. “And I realised that there were things that we could accomplish cinematically. And I started getting excited about this big challenge of, ‘How do we do it?’ So I said to Jerry, ‘I’ll do it if…’ meaning, I’m not going to do the CGI stuff.”

For a guy who once [clung to the side of an Airbus 400 ](<https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/mission-impossible-plane-stunt-tom-812158>)to execute a mind-numbing opening stunt for *Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation,* Cruise's devotion to total realism isn't surprising. But while that didn't translate to letting Cruise putter around in a Super Hornet, it did yield some g-force-heavy sequences of Cruise and his co-stars [getting rocked around](<https://taskandpurpose.com/culture/top-gun-maverick-behind-scenes-video/>) by naval aviatqors.

“What’s different about this movie is that \[in *Top Gun*\] we put the actors in the F-14s and we couldn’t use one frame of it, except some stuff on Tom, because they all threw up,” Bruckheimer [told](<https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/tom-cruise-top-gun-maverick-exclusive/>) Empire. “It’s hysterical to see their eyes roll back in their heads. So everything was done on a gimbal. But in this movie, Tom wanted to make sure the actors could actually be in the F-18s.”

You can absolutely watch the *Top Gun: Maverick* actors get dizzy AF in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz9lnIDdkMo

Directed by Joseph Kosinksi and starring Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer, *Top Gun: Maverick* finally hits theaters on June 24, 2020.

## Author
Jared Keller is the former managing editor of Task & Purpose. His writing has appeared in Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, among other publications.

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