It’s been quite a while since “Top Gun” came out, and while we’ve known for some time that a sequel is in the works, exact details on it remain a bit confusing. The thing that bothers fans the most is the long period of time that’s passed since the release of the original, and it’s clear at this point that they might be in for a bit of a longer run as well. So, why is the new film so slow to come out?
We’ve heard reports about it as early as five years ago, but the original idea for the movie might have been scrapped in the end. At least, we haven’t heard it references recently, although there have been rumors that the new film’s plot is actually going to be inspired by that original idea to some extent.
From what we’ve heard so far, the film will be largely about drones. Or more precisely, the way drones affect modern warfare and how sky combat has changed. There are fewer jet pilots in the skies nowadays, and there will likely be even less of them in the future, and this is a topic that no film has touched in detail so far.
On the other hand, this kind of plot could have also been problematic with regards to the action that can be shown on the screen. It’s one thing to show a few jets dogfighting each other in the sky and performing risky maneuvers to outsmart each other, but a completely different story when you have a few autonomous machines roaming on a predetermined path, controlled from a tiny dark room thousands of miles away.
There’s certainly far less potential for action and drama in the whole thing, although it could paint an interesting picture for modern aerial warfare. One of the rumors we’ve been hearing about the story of “Top Gun 2” is that it may show a group of old-school pilots getting in their jets and going up in the sky to prove that there will always be a need for people even in the most automated combat in the future.
This is actually not a new idea, although we haven’t seen it explored in the context of fighter jets specifically. “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” asked the question of what would happen if our machines were turned against us, with no skilled human fighters to do anything about it. And the game was received quite well for its story exactly, so there could be a lot of potential for something like this in “Top Gun 2”.
Tom Cruise has been talking a bit about what we can expect from the new film in terms of special effects. He seems determined to pull off an amazing picture without restoring to CGI, and he’s apparently planning to devote a lot of attention to classic effects.
This is certainly great news, as it would be a refreshing change in today’s industry where more and more producers keep focusing on throwing as many shiny CGI effects in our faces as they can. It could also have some interesting implications for the story being told in the film, as it somehow matches the idea of human effort against machines. Of course, we might be looking into this too deeply at this point, although we have no idea how Tom Cruise sees the whole thing right now.