Little makes aviation pedants happier than splitting hairs over what they view as embarrassing inaccuracies and lack of authenticity in movies involving flying machines. I take more of an impressionistic attitude to Hollywood’s treatment of aviation, leaning towards artistic license over literalism.
When you watch movies like "Top Gun" and its long-awaited sequel "Top Gun Maverick" with their breathtaking depictions of air combat, it’s hard not to ponder how on earth these scenes happen. A recent visit to CAE’s flight training center in Burgess Hill, UK, provided some exceptional insights when I met Kevin LaRosa, who was the aerial coordinator for "Top Gun Maverick" and has worked on more than 100 motion pictures including "The Avengers," "Iron Man," "Transformers," and "The Last Knight."
It got better when Kevin offered to show me how he prepares for the flying sequences in a full-motion simulator. These opportunities generally make the palms of my hands break out in a sweat at the realization that my sub-kindergarten-level flying skills will once again be found wanting. Back in the early 1990s, I took three lessons in a Cessna 172 before accepting that, with the attention span of a gnat, I was a real and present danger in the cockpit to myself and others.
Our simulator session did not include access to the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter that Tom Cruise made light work of in his "Top Gun" reboot. Instead, we took the controls of an Embraer Phenom 300, since this is the type Kevin uses for many of his aerial film shoots. As an ATP-rated pilot, he invests in recurrent training with CAE and also holds type ratings in Lockheed Martin’s C-130 military transport and Sikorsky’s epically bad-ass Black Hawk attack helicopter.
We started out relatively gently, using the Phenom to prepare for a scene involving low-level flying through a canyon in pursuit of an imaginary combat adversary. Kevin told me he and his team commonly spend three months scouting locations like this, using a helicopter to check for hazards like electrical wires. Typically, the Phenom he uses, which is owned by Jonathan Spano, will be fitted out with a pair of camera gimbals, one below the nose and the second beneath the fuselage. These take around eight hours to install and can be configured to capture wide and tight shots to give the director and editors plenty to work with.
After earning my wings in the canyon, or at least managing to land safely again without any dings to the Phenom or anyone throwing up in the back of the simulator, Kevin decided it was time to up the ante. So, the CAE instructor whisked us off to Long Beach, California, from where we were to head out into the Pacific to do some low passes over a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. No pressure, then.
Under Kevin’s patient guidance, I was soon buzzing the sailors at barely 25 feet above the deck. He chuckled at the thought of how often he and his team had flown this sortie to get just the right shots for "Top Gun Maverick."
Strangely enough, the U.S. Navy does not issue precise coordinates for the locations of their battleships, even to A-listers like Tom Cruise. Kevin said he was simply instructed to head west from San Diego based on vectors he was given and then switch to “mother frequency” on the radio so that the ship’s crew could speak to him at a time of their choosing. At just that moment, the carrier appeared on the horizon with just enough time for him to prepare for the first approach.
Top Gun Maverick’s director, Joseph Kosinski, wanted to show Maverick’s point of view in the flying sequences. Kevin’s team positioned the camera so that the shot would appear to be from right behind his eyeballs. The navy gave permission for him to get closer and closer to the carrier deck, and he took full advantage. “I did 11 passes at 25 feet, and it was the highlight of my career,” he told me.
But Kevin doesn’t do his job because he’s a danger junkie. Safety is paramount, and he places risk management well above impressing Hollywood creatives on his priority list. “There are times when I’ve had to say, ‘We’re not doing that because we might not come home tonight’,” he explained, acknowledging that these situations can be similar to those faced by corporate jet pilots having to tell high-maintenance, big-ego clients that they can’t make a trip because weather conditions would render it unsafe and exceed flight manual limits.
“We use a term called ‘knock it off’ when an emergency arises, and we immediately stop filming because nothing else matters but flying the aircraft at that moment,” Kevin said. “I train on every platform, and it’s expensive, but there’s nothing better and the flying has to be second nature. We repeat [system] failure after failure to get the muscle memory you need for excellence repetition.”
That was the cue for the CAE instructor to start a fire in one of the engines of my Phenom. Mercifully, Kevin took the controls, although he did give me the satisfaction of extinguishing the flames by expertly flicking a switch. That was a wrap, and I exited the simulator with a spring in my step, channeling Maverick as I got into my VW Golf for the torturously slow drive home through the London area traffic.