When writers and directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein shot the film may dayThe world has just witnessed Top Gun: Maverickthe ultimate aviation film, which put its actors in real planes and grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.
while may day You don’t have the benefit of working directly with the US Navy like Maverick She did, as producer and Paramount-Skydance president David Ellison was among her list. Ellison, a pilot, was obsessed with the details of aviation, Daly and Goldstein say Hollywood Reporter In a conversation explaining the trailer for the Cold War-era action comedy, which Apple will release when it airs on September 4.
“He knew the world we were playing in very well,” Goldstein says. “We’ll get feedback on very specific things that studio heads don’t usually care about.” One of his main points was to ensure the accuracy of the “hard surface”. “When you do these maneuvers, you have an imaginary surface level so the pilot doesn’t hit the ground, and that’s usually 5,000 feet above the real ground level,” Goldstein continues. “David wanted to make sure we were always above the hard surface when we did these maneuvers.”
The trailer begins with Reynolds’ Troy “Killer” Kelly crashing his plane behind enemy lines in Russia, where he is nursed back to health by an American-obsessed former KGB officer, Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh).
“The goal of the movie and the trailer was to give you a little bit of a cushion in terms of genre and tone. At first, it could almost be a setting for a horror movie. We’ve always talked about this as a kind of spiritual cousin of a horror movie.” Misery“,” Daly says, referring to the Stephen King novel and film of the same name by Rob Reiner, about a woman who nurses her favorite novelist back to health while also keeping him prisoner.
The trailer then cuts to Branagh’s Nikolai rescuing his new American friend and beating up a group of men in a restaurant. It’s a change of pace for Branagh, a Shakespearean theater actor and director who made a point of doing as much of the action himself as possible.
“He would arrive on set early and do these stunts and fight moves so elaborately,” Goldstein says. “We’d get videos of him walking and mumbling movements to himself like a crazy person. And then you’d see that on the day he really dedicated himself to it.”
In fact, the film took a page from Jackie Chan’s action films of the 1980s and 1990s, with long cuts so the audience could really see the fight choreography.
“It’s satisfying to be able to see what’s going on, but also the most challenging, because you have these stunt guys who are really putting themselves through the wringer. We don’t have the advantage of them being able to fall on platforms off-screen,” Daly says.
Daly and Goldstein, who directed Game night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thievesis known for its blend of action and comedy, with other highlights from the trailer including a shot of a young boy sneaking up on Reynolds during the dinner scene. The director’s mandate was for this kid to get a terrible haircut, which was actually a challenge for the hair department.
“When you tell people who spend their lives giving people good haircuts to give them a bad haircut, it’s a real battle,” Goldstein says with a laugh. “You have to force them to do it wrong.”
There’s also a moment when the heroes fall down a snowy hill, and Reynolds presses the scene by saying, “I don’t like Russia.” This is actually an alternate line from the final cut of the film, but it worked in the trailer because it requires less context. (“It’s always a pleasure to be able to work with someone who can help give you a wide range of options. That’s what Ryan did,” notes Daly.)
Finally, the trailer ends with Reynolds and Branagh hiding in a closet, where they hide from a Russian official’s meeting with a sex worker. The duo listed it as among their favorite on-set experiences ever, noting that their script supervisor had to leave because she was worried she would laugh so hard that she would ruin the take.
“There were moments,” Daly says [Branagh] He was so close to Ryan that they were practically kissing each other.
