Top Gun: Maverick thrilled audiences with its aerial sequences, but the dogfights were impressive enough to gain acclaim from some real-life experts. After nearly 35 years, Top Gun‘s long-awaited sequel finally arrived and delivered in a way fans could only dream of. The movie ended up being a mᴀssive box office success and was even nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. One of the aspects that people pointed to the most in the impressive sequel was the amazing aerial dogfights that put the audience right in the cockpits.

Tom Cruise’s work in stunts has become the stuff of legends, but it was amazing what he and his team were able to pull off in this movie. Top Gun 2 uses real fighter jets and amazing filmmaking techniques to showcase the adrenaline rush of being in one of these planes. However, while there were real pilots involved with ensuring authenticity in Top Gun: Maverick, the fact that some of them have come out and praised the movie as realistic is a true accomplishment.

Top Gun: Maverick’s Dogfights Are Surprisingly Realistic, According To Real Navy Instructor

The Tactics Seen In The Movie Are Similar To Ones Real Pilots Use

Top Gun: Maverick depicts the TOPGUN school in an elevated Hollywood way, but it is an actual Navy flight school. The instructors of this school would obviously be the harshest critics of a movie like Top Gun: Maverick and hold it to a high standard when it comes to realism. However, Guy Snodgrᴀss, a former TOPGUN instructor and retired naval aviator, wrote about the movie for Business Insider in which he admitted that Top Gun: Maverick‘s dog fight sequences are “pretty darn realistic.”

Snodgrᴀss actually praised the original Top Gun as well, but identified some of the training sequences in Top Gun: Maverick as being especially accurate in terms of the techniques used by the Navy:

“When the pilots were ripping through canyons in “Maverick” to practice low-level flying and then popping up to release ordnance on target, all of those are things that we would train to do and would do in similar circumstances.”

Of course, Snodgrᴀss also admitted that some aspects of the movie and its depiction of TOPGUN are theatrical, but those mostly come down to the interactions between characters. He pointed out that the fights that break out in the movie and the love stories are not commonplace in the actual flight school. The infamous Top Gun volleyball scene is also something Snodgrᴀss claims is not representative of the actual lives of these pilots.

However, the fact that a real-life pilot of this school was impressed with and even recognized the tactics used in the movie’s flying sequences marks an amazing achievement for Top Gun: Maverick.

Top Gun: Maverick’s Dedication To Realistic Details Helped To Make The Tom Cruise Sequel A Success

The Aerial Sequences Are A Highlight Of The Movie

Despite the fact that it took so long for Tom Cruise and his team to make a Top Gun sequel, there was clearly a lot of pᴀssion and dedication behind the scenes to get it write. Top Gun 2 delivers some surprising emotion and character moments, but there is no denying the real draw is the flying sequences. In fact, these moments were part of the reason the sequel was hailed as a return to form for summer blockbusters, as they demanded to be seen on a big screen.

With Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible stunts becoming part of pop culture, it can almost be taken for granted that the star will go to great lengths to put the audience right with him for some unforgettable sequences. However, the logistics necessary to pull off Top Gun 2‘s level of realism in aerial sequences are staggering. Along with working with the military to allow the use of their extremely expensive planes, they also had to allow the actors to go in the place, film equipment to capture everything, and multiple takes done in midair.

In an age in which audiences can get cynical about unnecessary sequels made strictly for financial reasons, Top Gun: Maverick put in the work to ensure that it was worth the wait. It delivered a thrill ride that was not even possible with the original movie and dedicated itself to making it an authentic experience.