Top Gun: Maverick star cast went through the 'Tom Cruise boot camp' for the upcoming sequel

A new clip released by the makers of Top Gun: Maverick shows the tough, gruelling training that Tom Cruise and his co-actors went through to bring more realism to the story.

"I wasn't ready to make a sequel," Cruise tells the camera as the visual switches to the team soaring across the sky while being filmed. "...Until we had a special story worthy of a sequel. And until technology involved so we could delve deeper into the experience of being a fighter pilot," he continues.

The Navy and the Top Gun School were involved in making pilots out of these actors. While it's just easy to get some CGI magic done and wrap up the movie quicker than you can say "cut", the makers wanted the aviation sequences to be the real thing. Three months of intense training is what it took the actors to prepare for these scenes.

Cruise shares that the actors even trained to survive in water in case they'd ever had to eject themselves from the plane. Cast member Monica Barbado (who plays Phoenix) reveals that Cruise spearheaded this program. Miles Teller went on to call it the "Tom Cruise boot camp" and Lewis Pullman revealed he once puked in the cockpit. 

Watching the actors fly so far above the ground and at great speed was adrenaline pumping and exhilerating. Now the only hope is that the sequel doesn't disappoint long-time Top Gun fans. 

More than 30 years later, Cruise is set to return as Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell as an instructor at the US Navy's Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California. 

The sequel to Tony Scott’s 1986 action classic is directed by Joseph Kosinski, and stars many of familiar faces like Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer.

Top Gun: Maverick will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, followed by a theatrical release on May 27. Presented by Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films, the movie is distributed in India by Viacom18 Studios. It will be available to watch in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

Watch the training video here —