Top Gun: Maverick Featurette Highlights the Intense Pilot Training Behind-The-Scenes

Tom Cruise has made himself a Hollywood legend by famously doing a lot of his own stunts in his films, but it looks like he’s put the other actors of Top Gun: Maverick through the wringer in order to bring a more authentic experience when it comes to the movie.

This new featurette for Maverick showcases all of the intense (and they mean intense) training that the actors had to go through to shoot this film with Cruise. Watch this:

While we should have expected the movie to just have the actors in cockpits put in front of a green screen, Maverick actually goes above and beyond by insisting on shooting the plane sequences practically. They even had to train the actors how to adjust the cameras, since they would essentially be directing the shots themselves when they’re inside their cockpits.

We don’t know just how intense this film is going to be, but with the first movie making such a lasting impact on pop culture, there are high expectations for this movie to up the ante and bring the excitement of the world of fighter pilots to a new audience.

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose.” Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.

Top Gun: Maverick flies into theaters on May 27.