The sequel to the 1986 classic hit, Top Gun: Maverick is finally in theatres. The highly awaited sequel begins again with the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell played by Tom Cruise as he equips a league of fighter pilots for an impossible mission, which includes Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw played by Miles Teller. He is the son of Maverick’s best friend, Goose, and an arrogant Top Gun named Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell).
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According to the reports, these two young stars hesitated to approve their positions in its sequel. For this, Tom Cruise personally had to visit Miles Teller’s place to encourage him to accept the role of Rooster, and Glen Powell wouldn’t get too easy either.
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How Glen Powell’s Plan to Play Top Gun: Maverick’s Hangman Saved the Character?
Credits go to the “Hollywood Reporter” who reported, that Glen Powell’s hesitation to portray Hangman steered to a reworking of the role that adapted him from a difficult affliction to a surprising hero. Glen Powell was interested in characterizing Rooster and went confronted Miles Teller for the role. Tom Cruise looked satisfied from the beginning that Miles Teller was the right man for the role. He sent a script to Hawaii where Miles Teller was taking time off with his wife and toured Florida to privately persuade him to audition for the role.
Glen Powell and Miles Teller battled it out for some time, but Tom Cruise’s impulses were to the point, and Glen Powell lost the role. However, he didn’t go empty-handed.
“The way it was originally written, I didn’t consider him to be a great pilot or a personality that I engaged with all that much. He didn’t have any redemption. He just sorts of faded off into the sunset. He didn’t make the mission, he had a terrible reaction to it and you never heard from him again.”
But the team wanted Glen Powell so badly, that they added an extra touch to the character of Slayer. But Glen Powell turned down the Slayer role, so they re-watched the original movie for insight to change his mind and knew exactly what the character was missing. After he was given the flying skills of Maverick, the footprint of Ice Man, he was renamed “Hangman.” Later Glen Powell said that he and Miles Teller are “both incredibly competitive,” which led to big competition for the role of Rooster.
“With Hangman and Rooster’s relationship and dynamic, our own competitiveness can’t help but seep in there. [Rooster] was a role that I missed out on, and since this is a competition movie, that thing inevitably seeps into a performance, whether we were aware of it or not. There are moments that you see in this movie in which we’re sort of talking about that and not talking about it. So it’s just interesting.”
The competition between Miles Teller and Glen Powell’s characters is an interesting aspect of the movie and is a respectable callback to the competition between Maverick and Ice Man.
Top Gun: Maverick was released on May 27, out in theatres now.
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