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March 29

Top Gun: Maverick plot line inspired by Bob Hoover?

Shortly after the release of Top Gun: Maverick, former project script writer Zack Stentz reported on Twitter that David Ellison had asked him (and Ashley Edward Miller) to "to shape the third act of Top Gun 2 around a real incident that happened to Bob Hoover during WW2". In concrete terms, Maverick stealing the enemy F-14 was inspired by Hoover stealing a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 as a prisoner of war and escaping into allied-held territory with it. Stentz' admission has been reported by a German film website and adopted into the German Wikipedia article on the film. As far as I have seen, no English media have taken up that confession at all. Though some sources noted the similarity and assumed a connection, Stentz' revelation was unknown to them: "So far, nobody has come out and directly said the Bob Hoover story inspired Maverick’s return to the silver screen". Is there a reason not to believe Stentz, or why was he ignored? --KnightMove (talk) 11:51, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If nobody else has said it but the scriptwriter, is that a sufficient citation? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:45, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would say so, yes, at worst with the explicit qualification "according to Zack Stentz". Jerry Bruckheimer's claim that Ridley Scott "was laudatory in his praise for the film and the kind of care that Tom took to honor Tony throughout the movie..." persists in the article, and for a long time without qualification, although Bruckheimer is the exact opposite of a neutral source here. In this specific case, Zack Stentz should know what he is talking about, and no motivation is obvious why he should make that up (several witnesses could expose this as a falsehood). --KnightMove (talk) 13:17, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I believe there is confusion about what it means to say "based on" in this situation. There is a necessity in the script. The main character is an old F-14 pilot being brought back. The United States retired all of the F-14s. The only ones still in active service are in Iran. So, the script either has to pretend that there are still some imaginary F-14s somewhere or have a reason for the pilot to use one of Iran's jets. Because the production very quickly began financing an F-14 refurbishment project, it is clear that they knew an F-14 would work into the script somehow. So, having the main character somehow take an Iranian F-14 came out of necessity. Once that is known, what are the particular elements of that process? That could be based on an actual event of a POW stealing an enemy jet. If memory serves, the main character in the movie is never a POW. He is shot down (along with a partner) and steals an F-14 from a nearby enemy airbase. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 18:54, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the overall plot and limited duration of the film would not allow a line where Maverick becomes prisoner of war. All what you have said is right (of course a Top Gun sequel without any F-14 would have also been possible). But then, there is no contradiction. David Ellison wanted to have Maverick fly an F-14 again, which were only flown by enemies anymore, and he remembered Hoover having stolen an enemy aircraft. So he used that as a baseline. --KnightMove (talk) 05:14, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]