Premiere of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ was fraught with uncertainty

Tom Cruise was “stressed and afraid” when debuting the 2022 thriller Top Gun: Maverick at the Cannes Film Festival, the festival boss has claimed.

The Mission: Impossible star, 62, attended the festival for the premiere of his film, a sequel to the 1980s classic Top Gun.

During an appearance at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, Cannes head Thierry Frémaux recalled Cruise’s demeanor around the time of the festival.

Speaking about the need to balance smaller independent films with higher-profile fare, he said: “You can’t [programme] in Cannes five days with only radical films. Sometimes, you want a comedy, you want an easier film. And by the way, when we screened … Top Gun: Maverick is a very good film for what it is.

“And it was a triumph,” he continued, per The Hollywood Reporter. “But Tom Cruise inside the room was … stressed and afraid of the reception of the room because he was in Cannes. And if a film is not good in Cannes, you feel it, I can tell you.”

The film was ultimately a hit, with Cruise drawing rave reviews for his return as the ace fighter pilot known as “Maverick”.

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes ultimately named Top Gun: Maverick the best film of the year, and was nominated for six Oscars (winning for Best Sound).

Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (© 2022 Paramount Pictures Corporation. All rights reserved.)

Cruise’s concern at the time was sure to have been heightened by the uncertain state of cinema at the time: Top Gun: Maverick was produced during the pandemic, and arrived on screens amid a time of slumping ticket sales.

In a four-star review in The Independent, critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “Top Gun: Maverick is as thrilling as blockbusters get. It’s the kind of edge-of-your-seat, fist-pumping spectacle that can unite an entire room full of strangers sitting in the dark and leave them with a wistful tear in their eye.

“The film is a true legacy sequel. In the tradition of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it’s a carefully reconstructed clone of its predecessor, tooled not only to reflect changing tastes and attitudes, but the ascendancy of its star Tom Cruise to a level of fame that borders on the mythological. Do we still think of Cruise as a man these days, or as an idea?”

The film is available to stream now on Netflix in the UK and Ireland.