When Top Gun was released in the summer of ‘86, it was a true cultural moment. The movie, which you can currently watch with a Paramount+ subscription, launched Tom Cruise’s career into the stratosphere, where he has stayed for the last four decades. It famously almost didn’t happen that way, as Cruise wasn’t the first choice to play Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Matthew Modine turned down the role. Once Cruise was cast, he insisted on some script changes that really elevated the movie. Let’s get into it.
Matthew Modine Turned Down The Role Because He Didn’t Like The Tone Of The Movie
Top Gun is unabashedly pro-military. The production worked with the U.S. Navy, and one of the main criticisms of the film by some is that it’s basically a two-hour recruitment video for the U.S. Armed Forces. That tone soured Matthew Modine on the role. Modine explained to Fox News in 2020 why he turned it down:
It was the 1980s, and Reagan was president, and there were a lot of movies that were just pointing the finger at Russia and saying they were the bad guys. I think it’s too simplistic to do that.
Instead, Modine took on the role of Pvt. Joker in another one of the best war films of all time, Full Metal Jacket. That opened the door for Cruise, whose career was really starting to take off with his best roles to come after his breakout in Risky Business in 1983 (along with All The Right Moves and The Outsiders that same year).
Cruise Asked For Some Changes To The Script
Before he took on the role in Top Gun, he wanted a few changes to be made to the script to make Maverick a more sympathetic character. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1986, he explained that he loved the idea, but the script wasn’t right, Maverick was too cocky, too much of an “asshole.” So he told the producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, that he wanted a better script before he signed on:
I said, ‘After two months, if I don’t want to do it, the script’s gonna be in good enough shape, and you’ll have more of a sense of what you want to do.
In that time, Cruise worked with Bruckheimer, and they landed on Maverick’s backstory. He was reckless because he lost his own fighter-pilot father after he was shot down in Vietnam. It made the character sympathetic, and not just a “real turd” sometimes, as CinemaBlend’s Nick Venable (correctly) called him. It was brilliant, and both Bruckheimer and Cruise were correct. Without that backstory, there’s no way we’d still love Maverick today. The movie would not have endured like it has, even if it had still been a hit upon release.
Not only has the original Top Gun endured, but it has also produced an even bigger box office hit, Top Gun: Maverick, which is also one of the best movies of 2022, proving just how much filmgoers love the character. Who knows the fate of the movie if that seemingly simple change had not been made?