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Tag: Top Gun

  • ‘Top Gun 2’: Val Kilmer Reveals He, Tom Cruise Said ‘Yes’ to the Jets

    Val Kilmer dropped the bomb when he posted that he and Tom Cruise have said “yes” to the making of Top Gun 2s.

    If Kilmer’s Facebook post is truth, Maverick (Tom Cruise) and Iceman (Kilmer) will be back in the skies sometime soon.

    “I just got offered ‪#‎topgun2‬ – not often you get to say “yes” without reading the script…,” Kilmer wrote on Nov. 16 on his official Facebook page.

    The actor was quick to point out that being offered a role isn’t the same as actually doing it. There’s are doubts that the much-anticipated Top Gun sequel is even happening, but that doesn’t keep fans of the 80s classic film from getting excited.

    “This is a long way off so calm down. This has been talked about for a long, long time and being offered a role is very different from doing a role. I jumped the gun with my post. I jumped the topgun… An innocent mistake. It was just such a wonderful phone call with my agent…,” he said, as reported by TV Guide.

    I just got offered #topgun2 – not often you get to say "yes" without reading the script…"It's starring Gene…

    Posted by Val Kilmer on Monday, November 16, 2015

    Fans posting comments noted Kilmer’s health — rumors swirled that the actor is suffering from a brain tumor, which Kilmer denied.

    “I have had treatment and I’m perfectly well,” Kilmer wrote Tuesday. “Don’t believe articles that say ‘a source says.’ If they can’t claim a relationship to me how can u trust they are telling the truth. Even when they do assign a name to whoever they gave 50 bucks to, how does a nurse or a parking attendant gonna know about my personal health,” he replies.

    Only time will tell if the Top Gun 2 jets carrying Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise will take flight. Stay tuned!

  • Tom Cruise Wants Real Jets for Top Gun Sequel

    Tom Cruise is just now launching the latest installment of Mission: Impossible. But he is already talking about a Top Gun sequel.

    The idea of the sequel was in the works between original director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer until Scott’s death in 2012. Since then, it sat on a shelf. Now talk of getting Maverick back into a jet has kicked into gear.

    “Justin Marks is writing the screenplay right now,” Top Gun sequel producer David Ellison said. “He has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy has turned into today. There is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie and there is no Top Gun without Maverick, and it is going to be Maverick playing Maverick. It is I don’t think what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon. But like all things, it all comes down to the script.”

    “I think this is a movie that should be in 3D and in Imax, and again something that you can shoot practically. As everyone knows with Tom, he is 100% going to want to be in those airplanes, shooting it practically.”

    Tom Cruise concurs. He would have to be in a real jet for a Top Gun sequel.

    “It would be fun. I would like to get back into those jets,” Cruise said recently. “It would have to be practical. I don’t want any CGI jets. I want to shoot it like how we shot the first one.”

    Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison have both confirmed that the Top Gun sequel script would be about drones and would have Tom Cruise.

    “The concept is, basically, are the pilots obsolete because of drones. Cruise is going to show them that they’re not obsolete. They’re here to stay,” Bruckheimer said of the Top Gun sequel plot.

    “When you look at the world of dogfighting, Ellison added, “what’s interesting about it is that it’s not a world that exists to the same degree when the original movie came out. This world has not been explored. It is very much a world we live in today; where it’s drone technology and fifth generation fighters are really what the United States Navy is calling the last man-made fighter that we’re actually going to produce. So really exploring the end of an era of dogfighting and fighter pilots, and what that culture is today, are all fun things that we’re gonna get to dive into in this movie.”

    Before his death, Tony Scott spoke of that too, saying, “It’s a whole different world now. These computer geeks – these kids play war games in a trailer in Fallon, Nevada and if we ever went to war or were in the Middle East or the Far East or wherever it is, these guys can actually fly drones. They are unmanned aircraft. They operate them and then they party all night.”

  • Blue Angels Commander Removed For Alleged Misconduct

    Capt. Gregory McWherter, a top Navy officer and former Blue Angels commander, was relieved Friday of his post as executive officer of Naval Base Coronado.

    The decision was carried out by the commander of the Navy Installations Command, Vice Adm. William French and was “based on initial findings of an ongoing investigation into recent allegations of misconduct and inappropriate command climate” at the Blue Angels at the time during which McWherter was the commander. The investigation, which initiated in March, stems from a complaint filed by one individual, according to Cmdr. Mike Kafka – a spokesman for the Naval Air Force Atlantic Command based in Norfolk, Va.

    The US Navy clarified in its statement that “the allegations refer specifically to the period when McWherter served as Blue Angels commanding officer, from November 2008 to November 2010 and again from May 2011 to November 2012.”

    This statement was released with no additional details regarding the specific nature of the alleged misconduct.

    The former Blue Angels Commander was also an instructor at the Fighter Weapons School, known more colloquially as TOPGUN. In fact, Capt. McWherter even mentioned the film of the same name serving an initial inspiration during his earlier years. When he visited Marietta’s Dobbins Air Reserve four years ago, he listed the Tom Cruise film as being a motivation for his career path.

    “That was it. I wanted to fly,” McWherter had intimated to the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

    Capt. McWherter was the executive officer of Naval Base Coronado since November 2013. He spent November 2008 to November 2010 as well as May 2011 to November 2012 as commanding officer and flight leader of the Blue Angels. McWherter, a F/A-18 Hornet pilot, logged 5,500 flight hours as well as 950 aircraft carrier landings for training missions and deployments. When he was on his second tour with the Blue Angels, he was awarded for his demonstration of “leadership and contributions” to the North American air show industry.

    The 20-year Navy veteran has been provisionally reassigned to Naval Air Forces in San Diego.

    Image via Youtube

  • ‘Top Gun’ Inspiration Promoted at Pentagon

    ‘Top Gun’ Inspiration Promoted at Pentagon

    Christine Fox, who was the inspiration for Kelly McGillis’ character in the 1986 Tom Cruise vehicle Top Gun, was recently appointed by President Barack Obama as acting deputy defense secretary Tuesday, making the civilian analyst the highest-ranking woman ever at the Pentagon.

    In Top Gun, McGillis plays Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, a civilian contractor with a Ph.D. in astrophysics, serving as a Top Gun instructor. Fox, who had been director of cost controls at the Pentagon, before leaving for the academic world during the summer, had remained an unpaid consultant to Ashton Carter, who she will replace.

    Fox, former president of the Center for Naval Analysis, helped McGillis prepare for her Top Gun role.

    Below is a clip of Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, opposite United States Naval Aviator Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise).

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiKSAo6vKmk

    Ashton Carter stepped down on Wednesday, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stated that Fox would serve as his top deputy, “pending the nomination and confirmation of a permanent successor.” In a statement, Hagel called Fox “a brilliant defense thinker and proven manager, who knows the intricacies of the Department’s budget, programs and global operations better than anyone.”

    Speaking of Top Gun, Goose and Maverick lore has permeated the highest levels of American culture, as seen in HBO’s now-defunct series Eastbound and Down:

    Regarding Top Gun style air combat, Fox told People Magazine in 1985, “I don’t know anything about flying airplanes, but I know a lot about the guy in the back seat – his mission, his radar and his missiles.”

    Image via The U.S. Department of Defense.

  • Top Gun Inspiration Rises to Highest Ranking Female

    “I don’t know anything about flying airplanes.”

    Christine Fox, Kelly McGillis’ inspiration for her character in “Top Gun,” has been named acting deputy defense secretary by President Obama, which makes her the highest ranking woman ever at the U.S. Defense Department, according to Yahoo News.

    She is “a brilliant defense thinker and proven manager,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.

    Fox left the Pentagon earlier this year for a job as a senior adviser at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. While Hagel searches for her replacement, Fox will assume the acting deputy role.

    Fox is the former director of the Defense Department’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office. While in that position, she helped tackle the nearly $1 trillion in projected defense cuts aimed at the Pentagon.

    “There needs to be a serious national dialogue on what a sensible, sustainable and strategically sound defense budget looks like,” she wrote in September.

    Her bio on the Defence Department’s website also reveals that she “oversaw [the Center for Naval Analyses] analysis of real-world operations, including the operations in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, the operation in Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks, and the operation in Iraq in early 2003.”

    However, despite all of her accomplishments, her role as a civilian mathematician at the San Diego Naval base in the 1980’s is what inspired the producers of “Top Gun” (Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer) to create Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, Tom Cruise’s love interest and astrophysicist in the popular 1986 movie.

    Despite what the movie portrays, Fox rarely interacted with pilots.

    “I don’t know anything about flying airplanes,” Fox said. “But I know a lot about the guy in the back seat — his mission, his radar and his missiles.”

    She also rarely felt any sparks with the men. “The fact that I know so much about what these guys are doing every day and they come in and talk to me about it — ‘Why is my radar doing this?’ — changes the relationship. It takes some of the romance out.”

    Fighter pilots, however, did have a nickname for Fox: “Legs.” It never seemed to bother her.

    “The reason it doesn’t bother me is that it doesn’t interfere with the work,” Fox said. “It’s just part of an attitude all aviators subscribe to, something they adopt as soon as they join the fighter community. If that prevented them from coming over and asking for help, then it would be a disaster. Anyway, I make fun of them for being macho creeps sometimes.”

    “She’s so professional that her looks don’t become a point of interest,” Commander Harry Hunter told People Magazine in a 1985 profile piece. “When she walks in you say ‘wow,’ but 30 seconds later you’re talking business.”

    Fox replaces Ashton Carter, who is stepping down Wednesday.

    image via: U.S. Department of Defense

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiKSAo6vKmk