Director Joseph Kosinski reveals aftermath of filming Darkstar scene in a top-secret hangar for TOP GUN: MAVERICK

Top Gun: nonconformist was undoubtedly the film of the year, which was a great success at the box office and thrilled fans around the world. The movie just came out on Paramount+, as well as DVD and Blu-Ray, so it’s back in the spotlight a bit, and the film’s director Joseph Kosinsky he recently sat down with Collider to talk about the making of the action-packed mega-movie.

When asked if there was anything in the film that Kosinski really had to fight to use or make, the director related the following story:

Decidedly. The Darkstar sequence, that hangar. I went to China Lake Naval Air Station, which is a Navy base in the desert. I’m sure you pass by it when you drive up to Mammoth. It’s on the right and includes a huge amount of desert out there. But I was walking around the base looking for a hangar for the Darkstar sequence. And they said, “You can take pictures as long as you don’t point your camera over there.” I look over there, and there’s this really cool looking hangar with a tower and some barbed wire around it and a blue door. And I’m like, “What’s that?” And they say, “Oh, don’t even think about it. You’ll never be able to shoot over there. Don’t photograph it. Don’t even look at it.” I’m like, “Well, can we walk past it if I don’t take a picture?” And they’re like, “Okay, okay. We can come by, but you can’t take a picture.”

So we go, we walk past it, and I look at it, and it’s just perfect. I mean, it looks like a top secret hangar inside a top secret base. And I’m like, “We have this sequence where we have this secret plane that they take out at night, and it just feels like it’s the perfect place to do it.” And they said, “Well, it’s no surprise that you’re interested in that particular building.” So, I’m like, “Oh man, wow. That would be great to shoot there. Too bad.” Then a couple of days later, I get a call. And they’re like, “Okay, if you tell us when you want to shoot there, we’ll take what’s in there and move it a few days earlier so you’ll have a building.” And we finally got to shoot in the top secret hangar, and we actually built Darkstar, and put it in a hangar.

And when we took it out to shoot, I was told that some satellites owned by other countries actually moved into space to photograph it. I guess they were able to track it down which I thought was just great. If they were able to zoom really close, they’d see that Tom Cruise is in the cockpit, which is pretty cool.

It’s so wild! It’s so nice that he was able to pull it off and that he had such a fascinating result.

Top Gun: nonconformist is now available to watch on Paramount+, as well as for digital rental or possession, and on DVD and Blu-ray.