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Tarantino on Top Gun: Maverick: ‘I f***ing love it”

He only had one complaint.

August 8, 2022 11:26pm

Updated: August 9, 2022 12:30pm

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino called Top Gun: Maverick a “true cinematic spectacle” in a recent interview, saying it was a fitting, respectful tribute to the 1986 film.  

A longtime admirer of Tony Scott, who directed the original Top Gun, the Pulp Fiction director had nothing but praise for its long-awaited sequel, reports Vanity Fair.

“I fucking love ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’ I thought it was fantastic,” Tarantino said on last week’s episode of the ReelBlend podcast.

“I saw it at the theaters. 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.”

Scott also directed the cult classic True Romance from Tarantino’s script. The director committed suicide in 2012 by jumping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles.

“There was just this lovely, lovely aspect because I love both Tony Scott’s cinema so much, and I love Tony so much that that’s as close as we’re ever going to get to seeing one more Tony Scott movie,” said Tarantino.

“[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.”

Top Gun: Maverick has been an overwhelming success, earning $653 million in the domestic box office and $1.3 billion worldwide. It is Cruise’s first $1 billion movie and the highest domestic-grossing film ever for Paramount, overtaking the company’s iconic 1997 film, Titanic.

Tarantino only had one gripe about the movie: he felt the emotional reunion scene between Cruise and Val Kilmer, who played his rival turned wingman “Iceman” in the 1986 film, was “almost too cheap.”

“But it absolutely works,” Tarantino added. “It’s a bit like Charlie Chaplin dying on stage for the last scene of Limelight… but it fucking works. You’re waiting for it and the fucking scene delivers.”

Cruise refused to take part in the sequel if Kilmer was not involved as well, reportedly telling co-producer Jerry Bruckheimer in 2017, “I’m not making this movie without Val.”