The USS Abraham Lincoln which, with its carrier strike group, sailed into European waters on Monday to train, patrol and make a show of force in regions where the Russian navy has grown more active, has been used for filming of the new sequal to Top Gun.
The sequel to the 1986 Hollywood blockbuster Top Gun was being partly filmied aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier before she set sail for the Mediterranean.
The original film, starring Tom Cruise, inspired an entire generation of fighter pilots and served as a recruiting bonanza for the United States Navy and the sequal is due out this July.
According to a photo on Tom Cruise’s Instagram account, which featured him in a flight suit near a fighter jet with the same helmet he wore in the original film and referenced with an oft-quoted line from the original movie: “I feel the need, the need for speed,” the first day of shooting took place at Naval Air Station North Island in California.
Few details about what the film will be about have been released, but Cruise revealed last year that it will be called Top Gun: Maverick.
“Stylistically it’ll be the same,” Cruise said in the interview. “We’ll have big, fast machines. ... It’s going to be a competition film like the first one and it’s going to be in the same vein, the same tone as the first one, but a progression for Maverick.”
A 15-person crew from Paramount Pictures and Bruckheimer Films went aboard the Lincoln, said Naval Air Force Atlantic spokesman Cmdr. Dave Hecht.
New protege
They shot footage on the flight deck of air operations, which include F/A-18 Super Hornets from Virginia Beach-based Carrier Air Wing Seven taking off and landing as part of their carrier qualifications.
It has been reported that Only the Brave star Miles Teller was tapped to play the son of “Goose” and is Cruise’s new protege in the sequel.
In the original film, Goose was played by Anthony Edwards and served as Cruise’s radar intercept officer in the F-14 before his character died during a training accident. Val Kilmer, who played Cruise’s rival, “Iceman,” in the original film, will be returning for the sequel. The Nimitz-class Lincoln is the first U.S. aircraft carrier to enter the theatre since the USS Harry S. Truman did a double deployment here last year as part of “dynamic force employment,” a recently revived concept of operating in unpredictable patterns.
In 2013, the Lincoln underwent a refueling and overhaul that took four years to complete.
Part of the extensive work was to prepare the ship to accommodate F-35C fighters.
