Neil deGrasse Tyson has debunked a death-defying stunt from Top Gun: Maverick (Picture: Steven Paston/PA Wire/Getty)
Tom Cruise’s death-defying stunt in Top Gun: Maverick would have caused his body to ‘splatter’ in real life, according to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
The stunt features in the early scenes of the film, and sees Cruise’s character Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell hit hypersonic speeds of Mach 10.5 (around 8,000mph).
When Mav’s attempt to hit those speeds begins to go wrong, he is forced to eject from the plane before it is completely destroyed, angering his superiors.
It was a scene that wowed fans of the film, which grossed over £1billion worldwide, but Tyson is not convinced.
Often a sceptic of the point where fiction meets science, he tweeted: ‘Maverick ejects from a hyper sonic plane at Mach 10.5, before it crashed. He survived with no injuries.’
He continued on by saying that in real life, ‘at that air speed’, Mav’s body would ‘splatter like a chainmail glove swatting a worm’.
Tom Cruise performed all of his own fighter jet stunts in the film (Picture: Paramount Pictures)
Cruise is no stranger to dangerous stunts in films, having performed many of his own over the years in the Mission: Impossible franchise. He even performed his own stunts for Top Gun: Maverick in the film’s iconic fighter jets.
Breezing past the fact that fictional stories and Hollywood movies don’t have to follow the physics of our world, Tyson continued to debunk the stunt.
Tyson, who is no stranger to applying logic and science to TV and film, said: ‘At supersonic speeds, air cannot smoothly part for you. For this reason, the air on your body, if ejecting at these speeds, might as well be a brick wall.’
He further critiqued the scene, describing it as a ‘situation that human physiology is not designed to survive.’
Cruise attends the South Korean premiere for Maverick earlier this year (Picture: Han Myung-Gu/Getty/Paramount)
As if that wasn’t enough, Tyson also shared some thoughts on the film’s climactic scene, during which Mav and his crew attempt to take out an enemy air base.
Tyson pointed out that Mav & co. ‘dangerously fly under the radar, through a narrow, winding canyon to destroy a target, avoiding multiple banks of surface-to-air missiles’.
Poking more holes in the sequel to the 1986 action film, he tweeted: ‘But why not first take out the missile banks? Could then fly without daredevil manoeuvres. Just saying.’
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It emerged last week that Tom Cruise may become the first civilian to do a space walk with the International Space Station.
According to Universal, ‘the actor would be flown into space, before disembarking from the rocket – all of which would be filmed on camera for the movie’.
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MORE : Flock of sheep force Tom Cruise to halt Mission: Impossible 8 filming – can ewe believe it?
Good thing he employed some artistic license then.