A few days ago, The Hollywood Reporter published a story saying that in addition to developing another “Top Gun” sequel, Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise is “exploring a follow-up” to “Days of Thunder,” the 1990 racing movie he starred in for director Tony Scott. At a glance, you can see how that decision might make sense: 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” another decades-later sequel to a Cruise-Scott collaboration, was a gigantic box office hit, so naturally Cruise is interested in revisiting his old characters, like NASCAR driver Cole Trickle, to see if there’s any more gold to mine from them. Currently, there are no writers, directors, or other stars attached, so this is very much a “Cruise wants to do it” type of story, and there’s nothing set in stone quite yet.
But there are a few reasons a “Days of Thunder” sequel may not make a ton of sense in 2025 or beyond. First, the original movie wasn’t nearly as beloved as the original “Top Gun.” Generations of audiences were asking for a “Top Gun” sequel for decades, and that same excitement is simply not there for a “Days of Thunder” follow-up. “Days of Thunder” had a terrific supporting cast (including Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid, Robert Duvall, and Michael Rooker, among others), but it did not produce a character as memorable as Val Kilmer’s Iceman from “Top Gun,” so even if they lured some of those actors back to the screen for “Days of Thunder: Cole Trickle” (or whatever it ends up being called), seeing those actors reprise those roles would not have the same effect as seeing Kilmer and Cruise share the screen again.
Even setting all of that aside, there’s another reason this sequel seems like a bad idea.
Days of Thunder 2 won’t have novelty on its side
In 1990, it was still relatively novel for an action movie to be set in the world of NASCAR and give the audience a peek behind the curtain at how drivers train and race. In 2024, that novelty has long vanished. Cruise, an actor who is famously committed to providing as immersive a big-screen experience as possible for global audiences, would love the idea of “Days of Thunder 2” putting the audience in a vehicle with him, showing off that he was doing his own driving, and translating that visceral sense of speed from the speedway to theaters everywhere. The problem, of course, is that audiences have already seen that on Netflix’s “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and in recent movies like James Mangold’s “Ford v Ferrari,” Neill Blomkamp’s “Gran Turismo,” and Michael Mann’s “Ferrari.”
Crucially, there’s one movie that has the potential to suck the momentum out of “Days of Thunder 2” before it even gets going: “F1,” the ultra-expensive new racing film starring Brad Pitt that’s coming out next summer and is directed by “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski. As you can see in the teaser trailer for that film, Kosinski is very much using the “Maverick” methodology to make us feel the need for speed, so I can’t help but feel that another “Days of Thunder” might pale in comparison. And as a prominent NASCAR driver once told us, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
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