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Tom Cruise advocated for Val Kilmer to be in 'Top Gun: Maverick': 'We have to have Val'

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 8/27/21

Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer played rivals in Top Gun, but they were a package deal for Top Gun: Maverick.

"[Cruise] said, 'We have to have Val, we have to have him back. We have to have him in the film,'" Jerry Bruckheimer, who served as a producer on both films, told People. "And he was the driving force. We all wanted him, but Tom was really adamant that if he's going to make another Top Gun, Val had to be in it."

"It was a really emotional experience for all of us," Bruckheimer added. "It was a long time getting there, but we did."

Top Gun premiered in 1986 and starred Cruise as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, an ambitious pilot attending the United States Navy's top fighter weapons school known as "Top Gun." Maverick butts heads with fellow student Iceman (Kilmer).

Top Gun: Maverick, due Nov. 19, finds Cruise's iconic character's present intersecting with his past, according to the official synopsis:

"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."

The sequel features Kilmer reprising Iceman, which his 26-year-old son, Jack, told People the 61-year-old actor "was so stoked by" because "they honor the legacy of Iceman."

"They were coming up to us and telling us that the first Top Gun inspired them to join the navy and the air force," Jack continued, referencing the "hundreds of extras of real pilots" he and his 29-year-old sister, Mercedes, encountered on the Maverick set. "Then we had these big F-bomb planes flying overhead. It was like one of the proudest moments of being American that you could think of really."

Kilmer has been in the news lately for his moving Amazon Prime Video documentary Val, an intimate portrait of his life and career using his own archived footage. The project also captures Kilmer's battle with throat cancer, which he was first diagnosed with in 2015, that has cost him his natural speaking ability. Jack narrates much of the doc in Val's place.

Top Gun: Maverick was directed by Joseph Kosinski, and the cast additionally boasts Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, and more.

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