Top Gun: Maverick was screened for Ridley Scott

Top Gun: Maverick will finally be hitting theaters next month after several major delays, but one person has already seen the film and given it his seal of approval: Ridley Scott, brother of late Top Gun director Tony Scott.

The original Top Gun was the biggest film of the year upon its release in 1986, but it took a long time before serious talk of a sequel began. Tony Scott was supposed to have returned to direct the Top Gun sequel, and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie told Empire that he even had a meeting with Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer, David Ellison, and Tom Cruise before “Tony passed away and the movie went away with it.” Cruise recalled that “we were scouting on Friday together. I was with Tony on Friday, and he passed on Sunday. It was horrible.” Tony Scott’s passing left the film in limbo, but Top Gun: Maverick was eventually resurrected with Joseph Kosinski at the helm, but the filmmakers made sure to honour what Scott had done. As the film has been completed for some time, Jerry Bruckheimer told Empire that they have screened Top Gun: Maverick for Ridley Scott.

One of the most heartwarming things I experienced is when we showed the movie to Tony’s brother, Ridley. He was laudatory in his praise for the film, and the kind of care that Tom took to honour Tony throughout the movie. That was foremost in everybody’s mind.

The official synopsis for Top Gun: Maverick:

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.

Top Gun: Maverick will hit theaters on May 27th after screening at CinemaCon on April 28th.