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1. Who directed Top Gun: Maverick?
Joseph Kosinski
Kosinski had already directed Cruise in Oblivion and pitched him the sequel in person; McQuarrie, the other plausible name, co-wrote the script and produced. Tony Scott, who made the original, died in 2012, and the film is dedicated to him.
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2. Who plays Rooster?
Miles Teller
Teller got the part over Glen Powell, who had read for the same role and was then talked into playing Hangman instead. Teller grew the mustache himself and spent months in the training program Cruise designed so the cast could shoot in real jets.
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3. How is Rooster connected to Goose?
He is Goose's son
Bradley Bradshaw grew up without the father who died in the back seat of Maverick's Tomcat, and blames Maverick for pulling his Academy application and setting his career back years. What he does not know is that his mother asked for it before she died.
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4. Who plays Penny Benjamin?
Jennifer Connelly
Penny is a name from the original, where she is only mentioned as the admiral's daughter Maverick got in trouble over; the sequel gives her a daughter, a sailboat and a bar. Kelly McGillis and Meg Ryan, the women of the first film, were not asked back.
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5. What is the name of Penny's bar?
The Hard Deck
The hard deck is also the minimum altitude the pilots may not go below in training, which Maverick breaks in his first exercise against his students. Anyone who cannot pay his tab gets thrown in the sea, and Maverick is that man on his first night.
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6. What experimental aircraft does Maverick fly near the beginning?
Darkstar
Lockheed's Skunk Works helped build the Darkstar mock-up, and the program is about to be shut down when Maverick takes it up for one last run. It comes apart when he pushes past the target speed, and he walks into a desert diner to ask where he is.
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7. What speed is Maverick told the test program needs to reach?
Mach 10
The program's funding depends on reaching Mach 10, and Rear Admiral Cain is on his way to cancel it when Maverick hits the number and keeps going. Cain tells him his kind of pilot is headed for extinction; the reply is 'Maybe so, sir. But not today.'
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8. Which pilot is nicknamed Hangman?
Jake Seresin
The callsign is a dig at his habit of leaving his wingmen hanging out to dry, as Phoenix explains, and he spends most of the training being right about his own talent and wrong about everything else. Floyd is Bob, Fitch is Payback and Bradshaw is Rooster.
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9. Who plays Hangman?
Glen Powell
Powell had lost the part of Rooster to Teller and turned Hangman down until Cruise promised to build the role up, which is how Hangman ends up flying in to save the day in the final dogfight. Jon Hamm plays Cyclone, the admiral who wants Maverick gone.
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10. What kind of target is the team sent to destroy?
A uranium enrichment facility
The plant belongs to an unnamed country and sits in a canyon ringed with missiles, with fifth-generation fighters based nearby. The plan is a low-level run, a steep climb and laser-guided bombs down a vent, which Maverick calls two consecutive miracles.
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11. Which fighter does the team train to use on the mission?
F/A-18 Super Hornet
The cast flew in real two-seat Super Hornets with Navy pilots at the controls, filmed by six cinema cameras rigged in each cockpit, so the strain on their faces is genuine. An F-14 turns up too, an old one stolen from the enemy airfield when things go wrong.
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12. What sport does Maverick organize to build teamwork?
Dogfight football
The rule is that both teams attack and defend at once, which is Maverick's answer to a class that will not fly as a unit, and the scene is cut to OneRepublic's I Ain't Worried. Cyclone is not amused to find a day of training spent on the beach.
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13. Who reprises the role of Iceman?
Val Kilmer
Iceman is now the admiral commanding the Pacific Fleet, the one protector Maverick has left, and he is dying of throat cancer, which Kilmer himself had been treated for. With his voice largely gone, Kilmer's Iceman types most of his lines and speaks only once.
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14. What song does Rooster play at the piano?
Great Balls of Fire
His father Goose played the same Jerry Lee Lewis song at a piano in the first film, and Rooster has the Hawaiian shirt and mustache to match. Maverick watches through the window from outside, and it is how the film shows who Rooster is before anyone says so.
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15. Who sings Hold My Hand for the film?
Lady Gaga
Gaga wrote it with BloodPop, and it lost the Oscar to Naatu Naatu from RRR; she is also credited on the score alongside Hans Zimmer, Harold Faltermeyer and Lorne Balfe. Faltermeyer's synth anthem from the first film returns under the opening carrier deck.
