“I Hate It.” With that blunt confession, Tom Cruise once again drew a hard line between himself and much of modern Hollywood. The thing he despises most about acting is not long hours, physical exhaustion, or even genuine danger—it’s green screens. To Cruise, sitting in front of a wall of digital nothingness feels “totally disconnected,” stripping cinema of the very magic that makes audiences believe. And nowhere was this philosophy more aggressively tested than in Top Gun: Maverick, a $4 billion-defining franchise chapter built on the radical idea that authenticity still matters.
For Cruise, acting has always been inseparable from physical reality. While Hollywood increasingly embraces CGI-heavy Volume stages and virtual environments, he has spent the last decade leading a quiet rebellion against what he calls “faking it.” His belief is simple but uncompromising: if an actor isn’t truly experiencing the danger, the audience will instinctively feel the lie. That conviction shaped every creative decision behind Maverick, especially its legendary flight sequences.
During production, Cruise famously forbade the use of extensive CGI for aerial combat. Instead of simulating G-forces with digital tricks, he insisted the cast experience them firsthand. The result was a punishing, three-month aviation boot camp that pushed actors like Miles Teller, Glen Powell, and Monica Barbaro to their physical limits. They began in small single-engine aircraft, advanced to the Aero L-39 Albatros for aerobatic training, and ultimately graduated to flying in the back seats of F/A-18 Super Hornets.
Cruise argued that certain truths simply cannot be acted. Under 7.5 to 8 Gs—equivalent to more than 1,600 pounds of force—faces contort, blood drains, and fear becomes visible. “You can’t act that,” he explained. Nearly everyone vomited during training, earning the sessions their infamous “barf factor.” But what the cameras captured was something no visual effects house could manufacture: real strain, real terror, and real exhilaration.
The realism didn’t stop there. Because fighter jet cockpits can’t accommodate film crews, Cruise required his co-stars to become cinematographers. Under director Joseph Kosinski and Oscar-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda, the actors learned to operate cameras, manage lighting, and check their own framing mid-flight. Every shot was earned, not rendered.
That commitment extended beyond the skies. The hypersonic Darkstar jet seen in the opening sequence was built as a full-scale prototype in collaboration with Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. The emotional finale featured Cruise piloting his own P-51 Mustang, not a replica. This wasn’t spectacle by simulation—it was cinema by risk.
When Top Gun: Maverick soared to nearly $1.5 billion worldwide, its success became symbolic. Even Steven Spielberg famously told Cruise he had “saved Hollywood’s ass.” By rejecting the safety of green screens, Tom Cruise proved that audiences still crave something tangible. For him, the magic of cinema survives only when the danger is real—and felt on both sides of the screen.