‘Top Gun’ at 40: what would have happened to Tom Cruise if Matthew Modine hadn’t turned it down?
Love it or hate it, Top Gun has had an undeniable impact on the industry, not least because it made Tom Cruise the mega-star we all know today.
The actor had already appeared in a handful of successful films, like The Outsiders and Risky Business, but it was Top Gun that launched him into the cinematic stratosphere – he became a global icon, harnessing that classic movie star quality that otherwise seemed to be a dying art. Tony Scott’s film grossed $358.6million, beating every other movie released that year to the top spot in the box-office charts.
But Cruise wasn’t the first choice to play Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. The role almost went to Matthew Modine. The actor, of course, appeared in a much better war-themed movie the following year, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, which took a decisively anti-war stance, opposed to Top Gun’s pro-military message. This was a conscious decision from Modine, who was not interested in a movie like Top Gun, which seemed to endorse everything he was against.
“I wanted to tell the story about human behaviour and what the war does to individuals, our youth and how the scars that people receive from combat are not always physical,” Modine told Fox News. “I thought it was a much more important story to me than telling the story about pointing the finger at the Russians and saying that they were the bad guy.”
Modine was well aware of the political climate in America at the time and knew the power that cinema has in shaping public consciousness. If he was going to be in any movie featuring combat, he wanted it to be staunchly anti-war.
“It was the 1980s, and Reagan was president,” he said. “There were a lot of movies that were just pointing the finger at Russia and saying they were the bad guys. I think it’s too simplistic to do that.”
In another interview with Salon, Modine emphasised the political reasons for his reluctance to star in Top Gun, explaining that “Cruise said that he felt that Top Gun was a movie about individualism and personal strength. I just thought the movie was jingoistic.”
So, with Modine out of the running, Cruise was able to get in there and lead Top Gun to box-office success. It was the perfect role for Cruise, who isn’t exactly a shining beacon of morality (have you ever seen a more untrustworthy grin?). The actor is a vision of accessibility in Hollywood, like the human embodiment of an American flag, a symbol of the American Dream come true.
But what would’ve happened to Cruise if he didn’t land his Top Gun role? Considering that he’d already been in some successful movies before Top Gun, there was every chance that he would’ve continued to hone a promising career, although it’s hard to say if he would’ve become this mega movie-star if he hadn’t bagged the leading role in such a massive movie.
Top Gun gave Cruise a taste of the ultimate levels of Hollywood stardom, allowing him to go on to roles in other hits like Interview with the Vampire, Rain Man, Minority Report, and, of course, the Mission: Impossible franchise.
All of this came as a result of Cruise’s success in Scott’s film, although he certainly always had the drive to become an icon. Even if he hadn’t landed that Top Gun role, I’m sure he would’ve managed to find another huge blockbuster to lead sooner or later – it’s impossible to imagine a version of modern Hollywood without him.
