'Top Gun: Maverick': Behind the Scenes of the Long-Awaited Sequel With Tom Cruise (Exclusive)

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is almost here! The long-awaited sequel hits theaters on May 27, and only ET has an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Tom Cruise's return to the skies as Captain Pete «Maverick» Mitchell.«My whole life, I've wanted to make movies or fly airplanes or go to space,» Cruise says in a new featurette for the upcoming film. «I wanted to jump off buildings, go ride fast motorcycles… My life has just been filled with stories — telling stories, creating characters.»For Cruise returns to his beloved character from the 1986 original.

Maverick's spent his time in the intervening years as a test pilot, refusing the Navy's attempts to promote him up the chain of command so he can stay in the air as much as possible.

But when a team of top recruits need to be trained up for a near-impossible mission, it's Maverick who gets the call.«It's a film about competition,» Cruise explains. «It's about teamwork.

It's a journey about a character, Maverick… he's someone who challenges authority and can't help himself.» Behind the scenes, however, Cruise was the authority on the film's high-flying scenes, explaining that he put his younger co-stars through their paces so they would know what to expect from a real-life fighter pilot's perspective — as well as how to film themselves in the cockpit with 's state-of-the-art camera setup.«I was able from that to create a whole program and a format for the actors, to train them to be able to get into an F-15 and to operate the cameras,» he recalls. «They were very, very dedicated.»«I get in the F-14, and we're doing three flights in one day and there is nothing you can do — you're going to puke.