Speaking on CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast yesterday, Quentin Tarantino held forth on the experience of seeing Top Gun: Maverick.
“Normally I don’t talk about new movies that much because I’m only forced to say only good things, but in this case I f***ing love Top Gun, the Maverick movie. I thought it was fantastic,” Tarantino said. “I saw it at the theaters. It was, as our good mutual friend Brett Easton Ellis says, that and [Steven] Spielberg’s West Side Story both provided a true cinematic spectacle, the kind that I’d almost thought that I wasn’t going to see anymore. It was fantastic.”
One question he had before he saw the sequel, said Tarantino, was how you make a Top Gun sequel that’s not directed by Tony Scott. Tarantino said he spoke to star Tom Cruise about that.
“It wasn’t so much concern,” couched the director. “I figure if he was going to do it he has a good handle on it. But I did ask him, I said, ‘How do you do Top Gun without Tony Scott?’ And he goes, ‘I know. Look, I know. You’re right. It’s why I’ve said, “No.” All these years I’ve said “No” for that exact reason, [but] we figured out a way. We came up with a good story.”
Tarantino then expounded.
“There was just this lovely, lovely aspect because I love both Tony Scott’s cinema so much, and I love Tony so much that [Top Gun: Maverick is] as close as we’re ever going to get to seeing one more Tony Scott movie,” Tarantino said. “[Director Joseph Kosinski] did a great job. The respect and the love of Tony was in every frame. It was almost in every decision. It was consciously right there, but in this really cool way that was really respectful. And I think it was in every decision Tom [Cruise] made on the film.”
Tarantino reiterated, “It’s the closest we’re ever going get to seeing one more Tony Scott movie, and it was a f***ing terrific one.”
Tarantino also called the scene Cruise shares with Val Kilmer “almost too cheap, but it works…It absolutely delivers.”
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