The new Top Gun film isn’t even out in cinemas just yet, but one particular moment has already got people talking – the ‘emotional’ reunion between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, reprising their roles as Iceman and Maverick.
36 years since the first film saw the two characters turn from bitter rivals into firm friends, the pair have been reunited on screen once again in Top Gun: Maverick.
If you want to get a taste for what the film is all about, you can watch the trailer below:
Cruise and Kilmer shared the screen back in 1986 as Admiral Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky and Captain Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, and now they’re back together after much water has passed under the bridge.
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While Cruise has obviously continued his stellar Hollywood career, Kilmer has recently recovered from throat cancer, which threatened to end his own career prematurely.
At the UK premiere – attended by stars such as Prince William and Kate Middleton – Cruise explained how ‘lovely’ the experience of shooting the film was, and one of the producers spoke of how ‘emotional’ it was to see the pair sharing the stage once again.
Mission Impossible star Cruise said: “It was lovely. The whole experience, you know, 36 years to make this film. There were so many moments in making it that were very special, incredibly unique.
“He’s an actor that I greatly admire, so it was wonderful.”
David Ellison, one of the producers and a collaborator with Cruise on Jack Reacher and Mission Impossible, said that the scene between Maverick and Iceman was his ‘favourite in the movie’.
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Ellison said: “The first movie made me want to become a pilot.
“This was the first movie when we originally started working with Paramount 12 years ago we said we wanted to make.
“So to see the two of them on set, the emotion that people hopefully get from that scene, was how it felt to be on set.
“It was a surreal experience.”
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Kilmer revealed in 2017 that he’d been suffering from throat cancer and the treatment had affected his voice.
In a Reddit AMA, he said he was ‘healing’ but added: “My tongue is still swollen altho healing all the time.
“Because I don’t sound my normal self yet people think I may still be under the weather [sic]."
Kilmer has also spoken about how he ‘begged’ to be allowed to return as Iceman.
In his 2020 memoir, he wrote: “Tom was Maverick, but Maverick’s nemesis was Iceman.
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“The two went together like salt and pepper.
“It didn’t matter that the producers didn’t contact me.
“As The Temptations sang in the heyday of Motown soul, ‘Ain’t too proud to beg.’”
Top Gun: Maverick is out in cinemas on Friday 27 May.
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Topics: Film and TV, Tom Cruise, Celebrity