Why Val Kilmer didn’t want to do ‘Top Gun’
If you want to transport yourself back to the 1980s, you might want to throw on some shoulder pads, stick on ‘Take on Me’ by A-ha, and slide on a quintessential movie from the era. You might opt for Steven Spielberg’s 1982 alien movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial or Rob Reiner’s adorable Stand By Me, but only Tony Scott’s Top Gun quintessentially reflects the mood, fashion and zeitgeist of the time.
A strange homoerotic action flick, part-funded by the Pentagon, Scott’s movie stars Tom Cruise as Maverick, a student of the Navy’s elite fighter weapons school who’s competing to become the best in his class alongside a group of other competitive egos. Alongside Cruise, Tim Robbins, Meg Ryan, and Val Kilmer thrive, helping to collectively craft one of the greatest action movies of all time.
Only Kilmer’s third feature film role, Top Gun, elevated the actor’s profile considerably, opening him to new avenues in Hollywood that were previously blocked off. Following his time in the movie, Kilmer went on to star in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, True Romance, penned by Quentin Tarantino, and the superhero flick Batman Forever, where Joel Schumacher forever altered the genre.
Yet, while Top Gun was essential for the progression of Kilmer’s career, it was a movie he initially wasn’t too keen to take on.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t want to do Top Gun at first,” he stated in the 2021 documentary Val, which explores the career of the beloved Hollywood icon. Continuing, he added: “I thought the script was silly, and I disliked warmongering in films. But I was under contract with the studio, so I didn’t really have a choice.”
Going further, he admitted that he created an artificial hatred between himself and Cruise on the set to make for a more palpable on-screen rivalry. “I would purposely play up the rivalry between Tom’s character and mine off-screen as well,” he explained, “And what ended up happening is the actors, in true Method fashion, split into two distinct camps. You had Maverick and Goose on one side, Slider, Hollywood, Wolfman and me, Iceman, on the other.”
Thankfully for Kilmer and the broader world of cinema, the actor eventually ended up being one of the main selling points of Top Gun, giving a performance that perfectly toed the idiosyncratic tone of the movie. 36 years after the release of the film, Kilmer also starred in its sequel, helping the project to earn over $1.4billion at the box office.
