Val Kilmer Shares “Special” Throwback Original Top Gun Pic With Tom Cruise

With Top Gun: Maverick just one week away from its global roll-out in cinemas, Val Kilmer is doing his part to promote the movie by sharing a new throwback photo with Tom Cruise during their production of the 1986 original movie.

“Here’s a very special throwback from OG Top Gun. Pictured here are the actual Navy Airforce Top Gun Advisors!” Kilmer, 62, captioned the photo on Twitter.

The other cast members featured in the photo are Anthony Edwards (‘Goose’), Tom Skerritt (‘Viper’), Michael Ironside (‘Jester’), Clarence Gilyard Jr (‘Sundown’), Whip Hubley (‘Hollywood’), Adrian Pasdar (‘Chipper’), Barry Tubb (‘Wolfman’) and Rick Rossovich (‘Slider’)

Cruise and Kilmer are the only original Top Gun actors reprising the roles of Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell and Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, respectively in the Joseph Kosinski-helmed follow-up.

Cruise, 59, recently revealed that he “really rallied hard” for Kilmer to return as Maverick’s rival Iceman.

Kilmer, too, is excited to revisit one of his most memorable roles. Speaking to ET Canada recently, he likened the experience of playing Iceman again to “being reunited with a long lost friend.” “The characters never really go away,” he said. “They live on in deep freeze.”

“My main joy was the camaraderie of the cast, [producers] Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, along with the incredible, unflappable enthusiasm of [Top Gun director] Tony Scott and Tom Cruise,” he said. “My crew was Rick Rossovich, the funniest strong man in show business back then, and Barry Tubb…Oh, we all laughed till we fell down the hot, spiked, crabgrass at the Holiday Inn in San Diego.”

Wait, what Holiday Inn? The answer is in the feature-length documentary Danger Zone: The Making of Top Gun (taken from the 2004 DVD release):

Top Gun: Maverick is set 30 years after the original — which turned 36 last Friday! — and sees Maverick training a generation of hot-shot pilots, including one Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s fallen comrade Nick ‘Goose’ Bradshaw, played by Edwards.

Kosinski told Insider last week that he wanted to limit the links between the original Top Gun and its sequel to Rooster and the relationship between Maverick and Iceman. “Those weren’t stories that we were throwing around,” he said. “I didn’t want every storyline to always be looking backwards. It was important to introduce some new characters.” And that’s why Kelly McGillis' Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Blackwood, the instructor who falls for Maverick (cue ‘Take My Breath Away’!). In her place as romantic lead is Jennifer Connelly’s Penny Benjamin, a character Maverick once had a fling with and was briefly mentioned in the original movie.

When the Top Gun: Maverick teaser first dropped in 2019, McGillis, 64, revealed that she wasn’t asked to return for the sequel. She told Entertainment Tonight then, “I’m old, and I’m fat, and I look age-appropriate for what my age is. And that is not what that whole scene is about. To me, I’d much rather feel absolutely in my skin and who I am at my age as opposed to placing a value on all that other stuff.”

Watch McGillis’s Entertainment Tonight interview here:

Meanwhile, Top Gun: Maverick — opening in Singapore cinemas on May 25 — has already earned high praise from the critics (we’ve seen it too and it’s as good as they say); it’s certified ‘Fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes with 97 per cent approval rate.

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos, Val Kilmer/Twitter