CRUISE CONTROL

TOM CRUISE was in control of every aspect of the new movie, from picking its director to choosing his co-stars and even signing off on the final script.

The Hollywood superstar was ‘only’ paid $13million, although he will also earn a percentage of every dollar taken at the global box office. He made $100million for the original Mission: Impossible film – and could earn even more if Top Gun: Maverick is a box office smash.

The first Top Gun film not only made Cruise a global action star but inspired him to become a reallife pilot off-screen. He calls Top

Gun: Maverick ‘my love letter to aviation’. As Captain Pete

‘Maverick’ Mitchell, he donned his signature aviator sunglasses and filmed inside real F-18 fighter jets at 1,914kph over California’s Mojave Desert.

‘Everyone thought he was crazy,’ said Captain Brian Ferguson, the US

Navy adviser who coached Cruise. ‘It probably would have looked almost as good if they had used special effects technology. But he wanted it to be authentic. And it is.

‘There will be speculation that,

“Well, there’s no way an actor was in that plane at 50ft, inverted, going over the ridge at 580mph (933kph) at seven Gs”. But there was.

‘Every time you see an actor in a plane, there is an actor in a plane.’

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said:

‘We spent a fortune filming them in the cockpit. Tom was the only one who could handle the G-forces.

‘The rest of them, their eyes were rolling in the back of their heads, they were blacking out, vomiting.

But nothing brings people together like group suffering.

‘Tom’s into every detail. He called me late one night to complain that a door closing in one scene was too loud.’

Cruise famously insists on doing all his own stunts. The Navy wouldn’t allow him to fly in the front seat [and take control] of a real $67.4 million F-18 jet so they modified one with an instructor in the front seat – and Cruise in the back. ‘He was really flying, the Navy pilot was there to take over in case something went wrong and Cruise blacked out. But he never did,’ a source told the MoS. ‘He’s superhuman. He works out every day at 4am before coming in and being the most prepared person on set. He’s fearless. And it shows in every scene.’