How The Blue Angels Completely Transformed Top Gun Into A $357M Success

Summary A 1975 documentary on the Blue Angels inspired groundbreaking filming techniques in the 1986 classic Top Gun.

The Blue Angels have played a significant role in the production of Top Gun: Maverick, with a former pilot performing risky stunts.

Without the elite standards of the Blue Angels and the inspiration from Threshold, Top Gun may not have soared to success.

The new 2024 documentary The Blue Angels offers an updated look into the esteemed group of pilots who provided real-world inspiration for the Top Gun franchise. Upon its 1986 release, the original Top Gun was a critical and commercial success, reining in $357 million worldwide and cementing itself as an instant classic for Tom Cruise and the action genre at large. A 1975 documentary about the Blue Angels inspired many of the filming techniques put on display in the 1986 blockbuster.

Top Gun was impressively made for just $15 million, while its 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick had a budget of $170 million. The gargantuan box office success of Maverick cannot be overstated, becoming the 12th highest-grossing movie of all time with a worldwide total of $1.496 billion and becoming a historical landmark following the closure of movie theaters around the world during the pandemic. While both Top Gun movies have resulted in two of the greatest box office feats in film history, the franchise owes some of its inspiration to the lesser-known 1975 documentary on the Blue Angels.

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A 1975 Blue Angels Documentary Inspired Top Gun's Filming Techniques

Paul Marlow's documentary Threshold offered unprecedented access & techniques

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The 1975 documentary Threshold: The Blue Angels Experience acted largely in part as the inspiration behind some of the filming techniques seen throughout Top Gun. According to The Columbian, the director of Threshold Paul Marlow originated various in-flight filming techniques that were then emulated in the 1986 blockbuster classic. The 1 hour, 33-minute documentary, narrated by Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!, The Naked Gun), was Marlow's only directorial credit but laid the foundation for the billion-dollar franchise as it exists today.

“We came up with shots and camera angles that had never been seen before,” said Marlow. Eric Christenson, who acted as a liaison between Marlow's documentary film and the production crew of Top Gun, was the leader of the official "Top Gun" training program between 1981 and 1983. He was very much a part of Top Gun's development and instructed members of its crew, which likely spread to cinematographer Jeffrey L. Kimball and director Tony Scott, to watch Threshold if they wanted to understand what it was really like inside the cockpit.

How The Blue Angels Made A Big Impact On Top Gun & Top Gun: Maverick

A former Blue Angel stood in for Cruise for risky aerial stunts

Apart from Threshold, which inspired many practical and technical aspects of Top Gun, the Blue Angels have also contributed to the onscreen production of Top Gun: Maverick. According to Stars and Stripes, former Blue Angel and Navy fighter pilot Cmdr. Frank “Walleye” Weisser was brought in to fly at "extreme low altitudes" for the filming of Maverick. Weisser stood in for Cruise to fly "F/A-18 Hornets for risky scenes close to the ground" and handled other maneuvers seen as potentially dangerous. Without the elite standard of the Blue Angels and Threshold, Top Gun may have never gotten off the ground.

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