Which Top Gun Character Are You?

Learn More About Top Gun

Top Gun roared into theaters in May 1986, directed by Tony Scott and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer for Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. grew out of a 1983 California magazine article titled Top Guns by Ehud Yonay, and the film follows hotshot naval aviator Pete Maverick Mitchell at the Navy’s Fighter Weapons School at NAS Miramar in San Diego. On a budget of roughly 15 million dollars, it earned about 360 million worldwide and became the highest-grossing film of 1986.

Much of the film’s staying power comes from its callsigns. Tom Cruise played Maverick, Anthony Edwards played his radar intercept officer Nick Goose Bradshaw, and Val Kilmer played the cool, methodical Tom Iceman Kazansky. Kelly McGillis played civilian instructor Charlie Blackwood, with Tom Skerritt as Viper and Michael Ironside as Jester. The rivalry between Maverick’s instinct and Iceman’s discipline is the spine of the story, and Goose’s death in a flat spin is the moment that turns a swaggering action movie into something with real weight.

Then there is the music. Harold Faltermeyer composed the score, Kenny Loggins performed Danger Zone, and the band Berlin recorded Take My Breath Away, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The soundtrack reached number one on the Billboard 200 for five non-consecutive weeks in 1986 and went nine times platinum, proving that the film’s sound was as famous as its jets.

Top Gun is also a real place. The Navy’s Fighter Weapons School was based at Miramar, known as Fightertown USA, and the movie dramatizes it heavily. The character of Charlie was inspired by civilian analyst Christine Fox, and Viper was based on Pete Pettigrew, who advised the production. The F-14A Tomcats came from Carrier Air Wing Fifteen, while Northrop F-5s played the fictional MiG-28 enemy jets. The film was often credited with a recruitment boom, though later analyses dispute the famous 500 percent figure and suggest a far smaller rise of about 8 percent.

Thirty-six years later, Top Gun: Maverick landed on May 27, 2022, directed by Joseph Kosinski and dedicated to Tony Scott, who died in 2012. Tom Cruise insisted on a theatrical-only release, and the gamble paid off with about 1.5 billion dollars worldwide, making it his highest-grossing film. It earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won Best Sound. Critics and audiences were nearly united, with a 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and an A+ CinemaScore.

The sequel introduced a new generation of pilots. Miles Teller plays Bradley Rooster Bradshaw, the son of Goose, while Glen Powell plays the confident Jake Hangman Seresin and Monica Barbaro plays Natasha Phoenix Trace. Jennifer Connelly joins as Penny Benjamin, Jon Hamm plays Vice Admiral Beau Cyclone Simpson, and Ed Harris appears as Rear Admiral Chester Hammer Cain. Each of them has a clear personality, which is exactly why the franchise works so well as a character quiz.

The flying is one of the most talked-about parts of the sequel. Cruise designed a three-month boot camp covering aerobatics, high g-forces and underwater evacuation, and the actors flew in real F/A-18F Super Hornets, learning to operate the onboard cameras themselves. More than 800 hours of aerial footage were shot, and the production paid the Navy about 11,374 dollars per flight hour for the jets and pilots. That commitment to real flight is a big part of why the dogfights feel so physical.

Val Kilmer’s return as Admiral Iceman was the emotional center of the sequel and became his final film role. His voice was his own, digitally altered for clarity, and Iceman’s funeral scene with a missing man formation gave the character a graceful goodbye. Whether you see yourself in the daredevil, the loyal wingman, the cool strategist, the showboat or the precise professional, there is a Top Gun pilot who fits. If you love personality-style character quizzes, you might also enjoy our Which Street Fighter Character Are You? quiz.