The Navy’s list of grievances against Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) can easily be characterized as “long but distinguished.” As Commander Tom “Stinger” Jardian (James Tolkan) admonishes the rebellious naval aviator at the beginning of “Top Gun,” “You’ve been busted, you’ve lost your qualifications as section leader three times, put in hack twice by me, with a history of high-speed passes over five air control towers and one admiral’s daughter!” To which Lieutenant Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards) clarifies, “Penny Benjamin?” It’s a throwaway line, to be sure, but one that winds up serving as a significant callback in “Top Gun: Maverick,” the film’s long-awaited sequel, which hit theatres to extreme fanfare this past May and has been breaking box office records (to the tune of $1.4 billion!) ever since.
An incredible 36 years in the making, “Maverick,” which is finally available to purchase via VOD on Amazon, iTunes and the like, boasts numerous nods to the 1986 action classic, the most prominent of which is Penny. Though she’s never actually seen in the original (she is only referred to twice), the character is fully fleshed out in the sequel, with Jennifer Connelly sublimely stepping into the role as both a new love interest for Maverick and the proprietor of the Top Gun pilots’ favorite local hangout, The Hard Deck bar.
Unfortunately for fans, the rowdy beachfront watering hole doesn’t exist in real life – it was an elaborate set created by production designer Jeremy Hindle on the sands of Breakers Beach at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, a spot that is not accessible to the public. A few places from the film that can be visited? The famed Halfway House Cafe, a historic eatery in Santa Clarita that was initially established in 1931 and has been featured in countless productions since, most memorably serving as a backdrop for Cindy Crawford’s iconic 1992 Pepsi commercial. In “Maverick” it plays Cecil’s Cafe, where our hero heads at the beginning of the movie upon crash-landing his plane after achieving Mach 10 speed and becoming “the fastest man alive.” Popping up as the home of Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) is Wattles Mansion and Gardens, a public park in Hollywood that Cruise has long been familiar with thanks to a scene he shot there back in 1988 for “Rain Man.”
