Neil deGrasse Tyson says Tom Cruise should've died in Top Gun 2

(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Twitter fact-checker/fun-spoiler (depending on who you ask), has set his sights on Top Gun: Maverick.

The sequel, which sees Tom Cruise reprise the role of Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell for the first time in 36 years, features plenty of jaw-dropping airborne stunts and complex action sequences, with Cruise enrolling cast members in a three-month boot camp to get them used to being in the air. However, these scenes didn't pass the Tyson test.

"Late to the party here, but in this year’s Top Gun, Tom Cruise’s character Maverick ejects from a hypersonic plane at Mach 10.5, before it crashed. He survived with no injuries. At that air speed, his body would splatter like a chainmail glove swatting a worm," Tyson tweeted.

"At supersonic speeds, air cannot smoothly part for you. You must pierce it, which largely accounts for the difference in fuselage designs between subsonic and supersonic planes. For this reason, the air on your body, if ejecting at these speeds, might as well be a brick wall."

He added: "When Maverick ejected at Mach 10.5, he was going 7,000 mph, giving him 400 million joules of kinetic energy – the explosive power of 100 kg of TNT. A situation that human physiology is not designed to survive. So, no. Maverick does not walk away from this. He be dead. Very dead."

Cruise can next be seen in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which arrives on the big screen on July 14, 2023. In the meantime, check out our guide to the other upcoming movies that should be on your radar, this year and beyond.