Danny Ramirez went from going to Tom Cruise’s boot camp for Top Gun: Maverick to playing Anthony Mackie's wingman in the latest of the new Marvel movies. However, what did he learn from Hollywood’s stunt king that helped him play the Falcon, a superhero who can literally jet through the sky, in Captain America: Brave New World? Well, Ramirez recently spilled what wisdom went through his head while catching up with his fellow Maverick cast member Lewis Pullman.
In a new profile for Interview Magazine, Danny Ramirez chatted with Pullman about making his MCU movie debut in the Captain America movie that recently premiered on the 2025 movie schedule. Here’s how Tom Cruise came up when the new Falcon actor was asked about “flying” in Brave New World:
Well, that was because of the experience on Top Gun. I felt like if Tom [Cruise] saw my body positioning, he’d be judging the aerodynamics. … You’ll see in the BTS, I’m holding proper form, so whether or not body parts were replaced, that’s not on me. I was aerodynamic, and banking when I had to bank, and trying to make sure that my head was in the right position because wind will then affect lift, and all these things.
Hey, once you’ve been trained by Tom Cruise like the Maverick cast was, they can expect the actor to support them from then on, and they, of course, want to be on his good list to get his famous Christmas cake every year. So, while Danny Ramirez was filming the stunt scenes for his Captain America movie, he was very careful to maintain his form while being in the air. He had a feeling the actor would be paying attention to his form, and he didn’t want to disappoint him should he see the movie.
In the interview, Pullman, who played Lt. Bob Floyd to Ramirez’s Mickey "Fanboy" Garcia and will soon make his own Marvel debut in this summer’s Thunderbolts*, understood exactly what he meant, pointing out that it was likely important for him not to get “whiplash” on set. As Ramirez continued:
I think that’s what was instilled in me having done Top Gun. ‘Tom’s maybe going to watch this and if he does, I better come correct.’ So there were days that I would be the only one putting on a G-force face.
Now, when the Top Gun: Maverick cast signed on for the long-awaited legacy-quel, a whole lot was expected from them in order to star in the movie with Tom Cruise. They did flight training for three months so they could be in the planes with real pilots pretending to be flying themselves in the backseat of real F/A-18Fs. That meant they had to learn how to withstand high G-forces, which can lead to a lot of fainting while people are going through it.
You can check out more about the making of Captain America: Brave New World through our interviews with Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez and more. The movie is currently in theaters, and you can look forward to seeing another Top Gun album in the MCU thanks to Lewis Pullman’s role inThunderbolts*, which hits theaters on May 2.
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