This is part of a series.
- Here’s the last post on Dune - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=122490
- If you want the full set of links covering the Too Big To Fail era or earlier, click on my profile.
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Top Gun: Maverick (2022) - ****½
Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga & Hans Zimmer; score produced by Lorne Balfe; additional music by David Fleming,
Andrew Kawczynski & Steve Mazzaro; additional arrangements by Steve Davis, Sven Faulconer, Stuart Michael
Thomas, Max Aruj & Steffen Thum; featured cello Tina Guo & Ro Rowan; featured drums Chad Smith; featured
electric guitar Lexii Lynn Frazier; orchestrated by B&W Fowler/Moriarty, David Giuli, Jennifer Hammond & Booker White;
sequencer programming Omer Benyamin & Steven Doar; technical score engineers Chuck Choi; technical assistants
including Florian Faltermeyer & Michael Bitton; digital instrument design Mark Wherry; score coordinators Shalini Singh
& Queenie Li; Cynthia Park & Nicole Jacob as Zimmer’s assistants; ‘Hold My Hand’ by Lady Gaga, BloodPop &
Benjamin Rice; ‘I Ain’t Worried’ by Ryan Tedder, Brent Kutzle, Tyler Spry, John Eriksson, Peter Morén &
Bjorn Yttling; music consultants Jason Bentley, T Bone Burnett, Kathy Nelson & Ryan Tedder
After decades of rumors and an attempt sadly cut short by director Tony Scott’s tragic passing, Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer would finally move ahead with a Top Gun sequel in 2017 based on an idea pitched on the set of Mission: Impossible - Fallout by Joseph Kosinski, who had directed Cruise in the earlier film Oblivion. A key decision point would be how to continue the musical legacy of the first film, as the 1986 movie had one of the iconic soundtracks of the decade. Part of that came from Harold Faltermeyer’s main theme, which was actually conceived for Fletch until Billy Idol, who was working in an adjacent studio at the time, suggested he use it for Top Gun instead. But what likely stuck with most viewers and listeners were the songs, namely:
- Take My Breath Away, the film’s love theme by Italian songwriter Giorgio Moroder, the “Father of Disco” who’d worked on Bruckheimer’s Flashdance and American Gigolo.
- Danger Zone by Moroder, Tom Whitlock, and Kenny Loggins which was used to great effect in the opening scene and was given wonderful new life decades later thanks to the many references scattered throughout the animated spy comedy series Archer.
- Loggins’ Playing with the Boys for the film’s famed volleyball match.
Bruckheimer would unsurprisingly have opinions. So would Cruise, who in the decades since the first film had taken more active roles in non-acting parts of moviemaking, including having a role in Danny Elfman replacing Alan Silvestri on the score for his first Mission: Impossible movie. Kosinski had an established penchant for electronic music, including having composer Joe Trapanese collaborate with Daft Punk on TRON: Legacy and with Anthony Gonzalez of M83 on Oblivion. And Chris McQuarrie, who had a hand in the last three Mission: Impossible movies and did a mid-production rewrite of this movie’s screenplay, gave notes on the score and the songs. Lotta cooks in the kitchen for one composer to deal with.
But the film would feature not one composer but FOUR of them (and TEN credited additional composers). Harold and Hans were friends and had been on board since 2018; Harold had worked on Bruckheimer’s Beverly Hills Cop as well as Top Gun, while Hans’ history with Bruckheimer and Cruise stretched back to Days of Thunder (a job he got after Harold elected to work on a Pet Shop Boys album instead). Lorne Balfe’s involvement wasn’t made public until late 2021; he’d recently scored Mission: Impossible - Fallout for Cruise and McQuarrie, was already on board for that franchise’s next two films, and had scored multiple Bruckheimer films since 2017. And it turned out the pop artist Lady Gaga wasn’t just doing a song for the film but had participated in its scoring as well.
Unlike No Time To Die, where the music was completed before lockdowns and the film sat on a shelf for over a year, Top Gun: Maverick would have its music reconceptualized as COVID raged. A recorded score was tossed, as was a music supervisor. Material by Moroder and Loggins went unused. Harold went from being super-excited and talking up his kid’s involvement to being super-disappointed. Hans ended up in his most substantial rip-it-up-and-start-again case since his three scoring attempts on 2002’s Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, not to mention that his focus would get increasingly pulled towards Dune the longer the re-scoring process went on. Researching everything that happened can make a person feel like that shot from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Charlie Day’s character points at newspaper clippings on a wall and yammers about a conspiracy. But to properly tell the story of the music of Top Gun: Maverick requires diving deep into its chronology and the many, many statements its makers made in the four-plus years it was being assembled.
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2018: The film starts production with a target release date of July 2019.
- Harold signs on. Cruise mentioned using Harold in an interview in fall 2017, which surprised the composer. “I called my agent and he [didn’t] know anything about it. A little later, Paramount contacted me, and only then did I say yes. Tom said right at the beginning that he wanted it to be like it was [in 1986].”
- Principal photography commences in May, the same month Hans wraps a three-month European concert tour. Three months later the film’s release date moves to June 2020 to allow more time to film the action sequences.
- In June, Kenny Loggins claims that Cruise told him they’d use Danger Zone. “I’m hoping to do it, maybe as a duet. We have feelers out to some pretty cool rock acts.”
- At the October World of Hans Zimmer concert in Vienna, Cruise announces via a prerecorded video that Hans will score the film alongside Harold. Hans goes on another European concert tour the next month.
- In a December podcast appearance done alongside Lorne, Chris McQuarrie says he’s flying out the next day to help on Maverick.
- Harold visits the film set in December and runs into Tom. “He hugged me and said, ‘Hey, buddy!’ We [haven’t] seen each other in all these years. It's so typically American! He then said, ‘Do you know that I still have the original demo that you gave me in the studio at two or three in the morning? I play it every July 4th.’”
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2019: With the film slated for a summer 2020 release, the composition process begins in earnest.
- Harold relocates to the U.S. in January to collaborate with Hans. “I set up a studio in his building complex in Santa Monica. Once a day we met and exchanged ideas. It wasn't like we sat keyboard to keyboard and invented something.” An unmentioned element is that Harold prefers to work during the day while Hans is a night owl who often jokes he works a 9-to-5 job from 9pm to 5am.
- Hans Zimmer Live hits Europe in March and April, the same month principal photography wraps.
- By June, Harold is taking a two-month hiatus and is excited they have “finished phase 1. Seeing Maverick, did we shoot Top Gun in slow motion? The old Top Gun [was] a romantic movie, not an action movie. We want to use a lot of the original, but compose in a more modern way. It's a lot of fun.”
- Harold also says his son is a big contributor. “Hans has a crowd of helpers. I was always more of a lone fighter. Suddenly there was so much work, so I said I'll bring Florian over. Everyone loved him. He's super knowledgeable about Pro Tools and all that modern stuff. It's a godsend for the boy.”
- In July, Giorgio Moroder is in the running for the new song. “They asked me to write, like they asked everybody. It’s very difficult. If I were to do something too similar, they’ll say, ‘Oh, he did this 30 years ago.’ If it’s too different, maybe it doesn’t fit. [I have] a great melody, but it’s a lot of notes, so I’m taking out 30-40%.”
- Also in July: Hans picks scoring Dune over scoring Tenet, ostensibly on the basis that after he’s done with Maverick in early 2020 he’ll only be able to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to one of them.
- Also that summer: electronic music disc jockey Jason Bentley steps down from the L.A. radio station KCRW to become the movie’s music supervisor. “I’m glad we’re not in crazy rush mode. We’re in ‘let’s develop great ideas’ mode. It’s exciting. I can have my fingerprints on the picture and do some great things for artists.” Bentley would even speculate about syncing up the music with the following year’s Super Bowl. I would be shocked if the decision to hire him didn’t come from Kosinski, given their similar taste in music and Bentley’s music supervisor credit on TRON: Legacy.
- Hans Zimmer Live hits Asia and Australia in September and October, plus Europe in November and December.
- Hans works on the replacement score for No Time To Die late in the year. Two days of additional orchestral recordings for Wonder Woman 1984 are also required at some point that winter. “[That score] was done except Patty had some more ideas.”
- Cruise is filmed being an enthusiastic audience member at a Lady Gaga concert in Las Vegas in December.
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Early 2020: Work continues to get the music done by March in time for a summer release.
- Harold says they recorded an entire score, including parts with an orchestra. “Tom wanted themes from the first Top Gun, like the anthem. We tried not to make the score from back then worse. [Hans] contributed a few things, for example the action scenes. Otherwise there is a lot rearranged from the original. A killer project that we are proud of.”
- Harold later claimed that Bruckheimer called him and said, “It's all great, Tom loves it.” But Tom didn’t love it, saying around the time of the film’s release that “it just wasn’t right.” Per Lorne, the “massive change in direction” was because the first pass at the score was “more electronic and nostalgic to the original. But it didn’t work with the story. What [was] missing was something that represented love for aviation and [a] deeper meaning of love.”
- Speaking of Lorne, he joins the team around this time. “Bob Badami was working with Harold when I was on Bad Boys. Bob said, ‘Do you want to meet Harold?’ and I chickened out. Then my father was very ill, and I quit for a while. Then they relocated to London, and I left Scotland and came back to London. Jerry and Hans had been talking about it because they knew about my relationship with Chris and Tom after Fallout. And Hans asked, ‘Do you fancy…’” Hans would later say Lorne “came in to fix things and add his creativity.” It seems it was easier to bring in a fresh composer rather than to have only Hans and his team start over from scratch.
- The Gaga song emerges. Bruckheimer says he and “Joe flew over to London to present it to Tom and McQ and Hans in his studio in Soho. Tom leapt up and loved it. Hans started playing the melody on his synth and said we should play this as a love theme.” Lorne’s initial reaction was “close to crying, which is hard to say when coming from a Scotsman.” The public wouldn’t get wind of her involvement until the pop culture site Showbiz 411 broke an unsourced rumor about it in April 2021.
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2020-2021: The COVID-19 pandemic pushes the movie’s release date later, then much later.
- Hans returns to the U.S. “Tom and that team [were] supposed to start [the next] Mission: Impossible but couldn’t, so we started playing around on Top Gun a bit more.”
- Hans gets COVID and is “in bed sick as a dog,” which he claimed catalyzed Lorne taking more of a primary role on Maverick, just like it did for David Fleming on Hillbilly Elegy. Lorne saw advantages to the pandemic-related release delays. “It gave us time to reflect and step back.”
- By June 2020, Hans is juggling this and Dune, with both due to come out in December. “I’m in the middle of all these experiments, and I have no idea if any will end up in [Dune].” Hans gets some relief the next month when the Maverick release date is pushed to summer 2021. Three months later Warner Bros. pushes the Dune release date to fall 2021.
- In January 2021, Jason Bentley is “done. I’m not convinced any of my work will make it. As I finished up in 2020, the prevailing idea was to cast Maverick as a timeless classic, and the music supporting that was old fashioned rock n roll.” Harold would later say “we had a change in music supervisors,” which was was less extreme than a story told by a member of the band Twenty One Pilots about “working with the music placement person on a song and then Tom Cruise came in and fired everyone.”
- Kathy Nelson, a music supervisor / consultant on many films including Beverly Hills Cop, comes on board to help with what Kosinski framed as an immense trial-and-error process. “The soundtrack had to be a blend of old and new. We tried hundreds of tracks to find the tone of the film.”
- Hans and David Fleming help Gaga participate in scoring the film. Per Lorne, “there were quite a few writing sessions. The song changed things. How do we incorporate it into the film so it’s not just a needledrop? They were working on it for a long time.”
- Ryan Tedder of the band OneRepublic was “working on the score also” per Lorne.
- Also in April 2021: the Maverick release date gets pushed closer to Thanksgiving 2021. Five months later it gets pushed to Memorial Day weekend 2022.
- Continued restrictions defeat a near-term ambition to have the re-score prominently feature an orchestra. “You could only have 30 or 40 musicians [at once].” The gang initially relies on soloists recording in their homes.
- In September, Dune premieres at the Venice Film Festival. In October, it’s simultaneously released in theaters and on HBO Max.
- Also in October: Zimmer pushes his planned fall tour to 2022.
- On December 28th, Lorne retweets the Top Gun Twitter account’s tweet about Maverick being among the most anticipated movies of 2022. It is the first public indication that he’s involved. He resumes tweeting about the film the following March.
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Jan-April 2022: With the pandemic abating, the Memorial Day weekend release date becomes a sure thing.
- In February, guitarist Johnny Marr says “there was some issue with the theme. They wanted me to make it sound epic. Sure, I can do that!” Marr’s absence from the album credits suggests this was either for one of the film’s trailers or for an unused track. Getting less attention at the time but arguably more important is another thing Marr says: “Harold was who I got the music from, but then Harold wasn’t doing it.”
- Hans Zimmer Live hits Europe in March 2022. Dune wins the Oscar for Best Original Score near the end of the month.
- Work on the final cut results in some of the music being pared down, largely to navigate around loud jet engines and other elements of the film’s superb sound mix. Kosinski says “trying to find frequencies and octaves where music and sound effects can fit together is hard on a movie like this.” Lorne says “it was about pulling out as much as possible and choosing moments when it’s going to mean something to the audience.”
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May 2022: The film comes out.
- Studio music boss Randy Spendlove tries clarifying the credits but ends up muddling things. “Gaga wrote this amazing song, and as that evolved we asked her to contribute to the score. All the music in between - action sequences, dogfights, training sequences - was created by Hans and Harold. Lorne produced all that music from all those places.”
- With the exception of Spendlove’s confounding statement, Harold is only mentioned by others in interviews in the context of his pre-existing anthem. He is decidedly less excited than he was two years earlier and laments that Hans was pulled in other directions in 2019 and 2020. “I wish we could have spent more time together. He was doing two or three movies simultaneously, but that’s what he always does. Our creative moments, one on one, were limited. I didn’t know about the song placements; I learned very late we had Lady Gaga on board. I didn't know until the end which of our suggestions they accepted. A yes used to be a yes. Today it is said again and again: can we try this and that?” He doesn’t even attend the U.S. premiere event, ostensibly because it overlaps with the premiere of his German theater show.
- Harold is annoyed by Gaga’s scoring credit. “Completely unusual and incorrect. The songwriters belong in the credits. She wrote the song, and she’s a huge name. Of course you want to have that on the front page. [But] I've had my agent tell Paramount that I'm not very amused. I don't know how she managed to slip between our names. I assume that's how Tom wanted it.”
- Harold’s son Florian shows up on the album as a technical assistant, basically the same credit an intern gets and a far cry from how his role was framed by his dad in 2019.
- The album booklet suggests separate scoring efforts, as Hans’ usual helpers in 2018-2020 are credited with additional music while Lorne’s team is credited with additional arrangements.
- Loggins updated his songs. For Danger Zone, “I wanted something that would accommodate 5.1 [sound]. I added bigger echoes so that the drums would wrap around you. Instead of one or two electric guitars like in the original, I had six because I wanted a Foo Fighters-like wall of guitars.” But the filmmakers opted for putting the original at the start to “tell you this is a Top Gun movie, we love it as much as you do.” Loggins also wrote and recorded “a remake of Playing With the Boys” with Australian singer-songwriter Butterfly Boucher which went unused but was released as a single later that summer. The alternate Danger Zone remains unreleased. “I probably took it too modern and too far for Tom.”
- Ryan Tedder’s tune I Ain’t Worried gives OneRepublic its biggest hit in years. “We had no clue that it was gonna be [us singing it]. I was just trying to write the best song. Of course I wanted it; it’s Top Gun! Other artists in conversation were Post Malone, all these huge names. In my mind I was marginalizing us. ‘I don’t think they’re gonna put us right next to Gaga.’ [But] if you talk to Randy Spendlove he would tell you that from the beginning he assumed it would be us. Tom did too.”
- Lorne is the public face of the music. He does a ton of interviews that summer and posts videos of the string section on his YouTube channel. It’s cool to have the former underling prominently featured on one of the year’s the biggest movies, and for a guy who’s “spent a long time being the person brought in to fix things” it’s nice to have one of those jobs be something other than a bomb. But it’s strange that Hans, who has often been treated like a movie star by being a big part of the promotion of his films and sometimes has been paid more for those activities than for his composing, is not involved at all. Concerts probably weren’t the reason, as the Europe 2022 portion had wrapped in April.
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So, in short:
- The original music concept (score, use of legacy Top Gun songs, new songs, other needle-dropped hits) was probably much more in line with Kosinski’s preferences and vastly different from what we got in the finished film.
- Substantial portions of what Hans, his team, and Harold wrote and recorded by early 2020 were tossed. Harold likely had only minimal involvement during the pandemic, and maybe none at all.
- Lorne and his team were charged with composing music that had to reconcile with what was left of the Hans/Harold material and the love theme ideas coming from Hans, David, and Gaga. “Making all these elements seem like they were one idea instead of lots of voices.”
- Hans’ commitments to Dune became more pressing as the protracted post-production process persisted, and along with him getting COVID were why Lorne was top gun on the later stretches of the making of Maverick.
- Why Hans didn’t help publicize the score remains elusive, but one could infer it’s because much of the final score wasn’t authored by him. With another Oscar and his concert tour back on the road, he arguably didn’t need Maverick. But parts of Maverick didn’t really need him anymore either.
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Enough about the how. What did we actually end up with?
Evaluating that is tricky because the album didn’t have a ton of score material, a throwback choice per Lorne. “We looked at how iconic that first album was. The songs were there and [the] score wasn’t too overwhelming.” Admittedly, the two new songs were terrific; the whistle-heavy I’m Not Worried was outrageously catchy and Gaga’s Hold My Hand was the kind of spine-tinglingly overwhelming romantic power ballad that maybe one film a generation is lucky to receive. The following will stick to the score and songs featured on the album as they appear in the film.
1a. Main Titles - The film opens in a similar visual style to the 1986 film, and the music follows suit with a reprise of Harold’s bell sounds from the Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer. “We tried to replicate it as closely as possible.” Loggins’ Danger Zone swoops in with an abrupt edit just as it did in the original film.
3. Darkstar - As Maverick prepares to launch an experimental jet, the score unleashes the string rhythms and heraldic chords that comprise the new theme for Maverick, which mingle with the first three notes of Harold’s anthem. Lorne was the one who realized that “we don’t need the [whole] theme all the time; those three notes trigger enough for those that have watched the original.” For how present the new Maverick material is throughout the film, it’s shocking how late in the game it was settled on. “We were struggling for a long time. We were always looking at [Darkstar] as an action cue, and it’s not. Tom and Chris mentioned that it’s fun, this is somebody pushing the limits. It educated us on how to tell a story differently musically. That made us reassess other parts of the film.”
10b. Second half of Penny Returns (Interlude) - Heavenly-sounding versions of the chords from Gaga’s song back Maverick’s flight as he approaches Mach 10. Per Lorne, its use here was due to Cruise’s belief that the song was “a love letter to aviation, as well as love. You don’t know you’re hearing the Gaga song until the end of the film. You’ve been hearing it from the beginning.”
1b. You’ve Been Called Back To Top Gun - As Maverick is told he’s going back to the academy, synth bells toll before the anthem rolls out in full glory. Lower brass plays the three-note anthem motif as an image of Val Kilmer’s Iceman is shown. None of the score from the next 40 minutes of the film shows up on the album, though Miles Teller’s rendition of Great Balls of Fire does.
7b. Time To Let Go - Subdued strings and a surprise appearance of Harold’s theme for Maverick’s friend Goose accompany an emotional interaction between Maverick and Iceman. Beach football and I Ain’t Worried occupy the next scene.
5a. You’re Where You Belong - Other variations on the Gaga song appear earlier in the film, including the chorus melody when Maverick and Penny are sailing and the verse melody for a midfilm romance scene. But the first time elements of the song appear on the album are when piano, strings, and synths float around the idea as Maverick silently bids farewell to Penny. The theme again reinforces Maverick’s love of flying when the scene switches to an aircraft carrier.
5b. Give ‘Em Hell - In another welcome surprise, Lorne leverages Loggins’ song melody as the team prepares to head out. “Danger Zone has so much to milk. You can take the bassline and have fun with it.” The idea morphs into a Media Ventures-style power anthem as the planes are readied for takeoff.
7a. Dagger One is Hit - Emotional tones crescendo as Maverick saves Rooster’s plane from being hit. Strings lament as Maverick’s plane descends out of sight and the others are ordered back to the ship amidst what sound like deconstructed Danger Zone intervals. High string sustains reveal Maverick is alive.
8b. What’s The Plan? / F-14 - The new Maverick theme supports Maverick and Rooster as they attempt to steal an enemy F-14 and is joined by the three-note anthem motif and Danger Zone as they power up the plane. Harsh brass reveal the runway is cratered, but low strings and percussion announce they’re going to take off anyway, with tense utterances of the three-note anthem motif escalating as they narrowly avoid a structure. Synth bells toll the moment their team learns they’re still alive.
8a. Tally Two - BWAMs signal enemy aircraft have caught up to them. One can understand the desire to have an unnamed opponent not have any musical signifiers that give away a nationality, but these sounds come off like they belong in a Terminator movie! I suspect Tally Two is one of the few holdovers from the original scoring effort.
13. Canyon Dogfight (Japanese album release only) - Edgier electronic tones kick off the final fight. Urgent strings and hints of Danger Zone support Maverick’s evasion tactics. An ascending three-note idea from the end of Give ‘Em Hell reappears as Maverick gains the upper hand, and a valiant statement of the three-note anthem motif sounds as an enemy jet is downed.
9. The Man, The Legend / Touchdown - Brass announces the three-note anthem motif as Hangman saves Maverick and Rooster from the last enemy jet. Then, for the first time since Maverick arrived back at the academy, the anthem is played in full as Maverick attempts a difficult landing. Finally, in the emotional highlight of the score, the love theme emerges triumphantly (seemingly in a 9/4 time signature) as the team celebrates their victory and Maverick and Rooster embrace.
10a. Penny Returns (Interlude) - This understated love theme variant covers the final scene. Gaga sings an abbreviated version of Hold My Hand over the start of the end credits with a more orchestral arrangement that doesn’t appear on the album.
12. Top Gun Anthem - Lorne provides his own sensationally entertaining spin on Faltermeyer’s full anthem, complete with hints of the new Maverick theme, glistening synth sounds, and pounding drums. “We took chord progressions from Darkstar and melodic hooks from different cues. We didn’t want a remix for the sake of it. It was trying to make a new version that represented this film.”
There are at least 20 minutes of notable music that didn’t make the album. The aforementioned love theme appearances and the film version of the Gaga song are worthy of hearing standalone, as are the first use of the Goose theme when Maverick sees Rooster playing piano in the bar, several other training sequences including the first use of Danger Zone in the score for when the timetable gets accelerated, and the vintage Media Ventures drama as Maverick rushes to find a crashed Rooster. An expanded score album has been promised, and is definitely merited given the absence of those tracks as well as the huge success of the film. But the combination of Lorne’s busy calendar and the complexities of who-wrote-what will probably preclude that happening in the near term - a bummer since, for all the trials and tribulations that went into making the score pay tribute to the musical legacy of the original Top Gun yet still work in a modern context, the end result was pretty dang great and deserves to be heard in full.
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For Lorne, the success of the movie would also provide a vicarious joy. In 2011 he scored a short film called J.A.W. which included in its cast the actor Glen Powell, who was now charming audiences in Maverick as the charismatic heel character nicknamed Hangman. “It’s difficult [to get attention] when you’ve got somebody like Tom Cruise. [But Glen] really is great on the screen. It’s definitely changed his career.”
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Next time: “If I was remotely sane, I would have stopped a lot earlier.” Hey, that could be the saying for this rundown!
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