Did John Carpenter Change Top Gun’s Original Ending?

There’s no knowing if the director was really responsible, but Top Gun’s original ending may have been changed because of John Carpenter’s comments over its believability. Released in 1986 and soon to receive a long-delayed sequel, Top Gun was a huge hit with audiences thanks to the star power of Tom Cruise, the mile-a-minute action sequences helmed by the legendary Tony Scott, and the surprisingly involving central story. A rare blockbuster with no clear hero or villain, Top Gun’s tale of the reckless Maverick learning to use his potential as a test pilot to work as part of a team is a story of drive, ambition, and the cost of obsession.

Despite that seemingly heavy summation, the movie is also a cheesy, fun ‘80s action classic, and its charmingly upbeat tone may be part of why horror legend John Carpenter turned down the chance to direct Top Gun. However, there was another cause for Carpenter to turn down the offer – and it’s a note that may have made it into the finished film.

It’s impossible to know whether the eventual rewrites took his opinion into account, but when the Halloween helmer turned down Top Gun, he reasoned the third act was irresponsibly inaccurate to reality. During a conversion with Entertainment.ie, Carpenter said of the aerial dogfight between Maverick and the Russian MiG-28s:

And Top Gun, come on. They fight the Russians in the third act? Come on. There’d be World War III. Stop that.

Indeed, given the political climate at the time of Top Gun’s original release, depicting all-out warfare between the heroes and the Russian military could have looked foolhardy… If that detail made it into the finished film, that is. If Carpenter’s summary of the ending sounds unfamiliar to Top Gun viewers, there’s a good reason for that, with the finished movie focusing more on Iceman’s relationship with Maverick than Russia’s relationship with the US. Sure enough, when Top Gun arrived in cinemas in 1986, those same enemy jets Carpenter refers to as Russian were now ambiguous in their nationality, with only a North Korean origin being vaguely alluded to. It’s possible the director’s scornful response to the implausible original finale may have led to a rewrite that resulted in the ending audiences eventually received.

Carpenter wasn’t the only creative to turn down Top Gun due to its implicit political themes, with Full Metal Jacket star Matthew Modine rejecting Maverick due to his belief the finished film would glamorize the military. Credit where it is due, Modine was effectively proven right since the movie’s success resulted in a 500% increase in Navy recruitment in the year following its release. With this context, it’s easy to see the success of such a high-profile blockbuster depicting American jets openly fighting Russian planes could have been seen as a petty provocation by Russia. It’s possible (if hard to confirm) the Russian villains were written out of Top Gun to avoid adding a more explicitly inflammatory, jingoistic political element to the story – whether or not the creators needed John Carpenter’s insight to realize this.