Goose may be gone (ahem, spoiler warning for a thirty-year-old film), but Tom Cruise‘s Maverick has his pick of new wing men for the forthcoming Top Gun sequel. After already casting young buck Miles Teller as Goose’s son and pilot-in-training Bradley Bradshaw, Top Gun: Maverick has also added TV stalwarts Jon Hamm and Ed Harris to its cast.
Mad Men star Hamm, long-time character actor and Westworld antihero Harris, and Bill Pullman’s son Lewis have all been cast in mystery roles, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That is to say, their parts in the film are a mystery to us. Presumably Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski, who previously helmed Tron: Legacy and Oblivion, have a good idea of their roles and didn’t just hire them for a laugh.
Odds are that Pullman will be another trainee pilot, alongside Teller’s Goose Jr. In fact, is Ladbrokes took bets on such things, I’d be willing to put down at least a tenner on him dying in a stunt directly mirroring the elder Bradshaw’s own fiery demise. Hamm, meanwhile, will either be a suave Don Draper-type, or else a by-the-book pilot guy who disapproves of Maverick’s, um, maverick ways.
Harris’s inclusion is perhaps the most interesting, since he is mostly hired for his old-man menace and seemingly-calm demeanour barely concealing a volcanic volatility beneath the surface. Or maybe he’ll just be another pilot teaching guy. We’ll soon see!
Besides with Cruise and Val Kilmer reprising their roles from Tony Scott’s 1986 original, Jennifer Connelly has been cast as “a single mother, running a local bar near the Navy base.” Kosinski directs from a screenplay penned by the triple threat of Peter Craig, Justin Marks and Eric Warren Singer. Just keep “Danger Zone” on the soundtrack, and I’ll be happy.
Top Gun: Maverick‘s ETA in cinemas is July 12 2019.
