Thirty-six years on, Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise are still the best of pals (or, if they're anything like their Top Gun duo, frenemies — but probably not…)
On Instagram last week, Kilmer shared a short n' sweet tribute to his Top Gun co-star. “[Thirty-six] years later… I'm still your wingman," the 62-year-old wrote. Kilmer has a cameo part in the latest Top Gun flick, Maverick, returning as the titular pilot's one-time flight school adversary Iceman, now ascendant to the status of admiral — and, perhaps more importantly, keeping Mav veritably employed after the hot-headed aviator loses his wings.
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
It'd be a sweet carry-over at the best of times, but Iceman's fleeting return carries special emotional weight owing to Kilmer's real-life swathe of recent health issues. Throat cancer, for one, has snatched away his ability to speak; so, in the movie, Iceman communicates almost wholly by text. That he delivers a couple of lines (put together with an AI programme as Kilmer can't speak at all IRL) is a frisson-inducing act of defiance. Movie stars might not actually be invincible, but even facing the brink, they're tough as can be.
In a recent LA Times interview, Kilmer wrote that he gets “hundreds of fan letters every week,” describing the response to his appearance in Maverick as “very humbling”. Director Joseph Kosinski says Cruise and Kilmer, the two Hollywood vets, had “tears in their eyes" as they shot Iceman's farewell. “Tom and I get along really well,” Kilmer writes. “We giggled like little kids in school between takes. I consider him a real friend. We shared intimate stories and challenges about our different lifestyles!” Ah, dudes being dudes.
Beyond what anyone could've imagined — aside from Cruise himself, perhaps — Top Gun: Maverick continues to soar at the global box office, set to break the billion-dollar barrier sooner than a hypersonic jet can hit Mach 10. Even Pixar's latest kid-friendly picture to hit cinemas, the Toy Story spin-off Lightyear, failed to ground the Mav, with just Jurassic World sequel Dominion able to take a chunk out of the high-flying throwback.
Those afterburners have plenty of life in them yet…
NOW READ
Top Gun: Maverick is Tom Cruise's biggest hit ever
What the director of Top Gun: Maverick is planning next
How Tom Cruise created Top Gun: Maverick's bittersweet Val Kilmer cameo
