>>183600, >>183601, >>183602, >>183603
Anish Moonka @anishmoonka - 40 years ago today, Val Kilmer walked into his Top Gun audition wearing ugly green shorts. He didn't want the part. He thought the script was silly and tried to bomb the audition by reading his lines flat. They gave him the role anyway.
On his own, he invented a whole backstory: Iceman grew up with a father who ignored him, which made him desperate to be perfect at everything. He kept the rivalry with Tom Cruise going off-camera too. The cast took sides. The movie became the biggest film of 1986, made $350 million, and every pilot at every airport for the rest of Kilmer's life would call him Iceman.
Then in 2014, throat cancer. The surgery saved his life but took his speaking voice. By 2017 he could only get out a few broken words at a time.
Years later, when they started making Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise told the producers "We have to have Val." So the writers gave Iceman the same illness. In the new movie, Iceman is an admiral who's also dying. Most of their big final scene together is just Maverick reading Iceman's words off a computer screen.
But Iceman does speak one line out loud. "It's time to let go." That line was made by an AI. A small London company called Sonantic used audio from his old movies to build him a new voice. They had way less to work with than they normally need, so they made over 40 different versions and let Kilmer pick the one that sounded most like him. (Spotify bought Sonantic for around $95 million a few weeks after Maverick came out.)
Both Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer had tears in their eyes while filming the scene. The director said it looked like two old friends saying goodbye. Maverick made $1.4 billion.
Val Kilmer died of pneumonia on April 1, 2025. He was 65. That one AI-made line was the last thing he ever performed on screen. The actor who didn't want the part, telling Maverick it was okay to let go.
Quote:
Top Gun - @TopGunMovie
The only Iceman we know. #TopGun
https://x.com/anishmoonka/status/2055714900941377573

Anna Kelly @AnnaKelly47 - Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Secures Historic Deals with China, Delivering for American Workers, Farmers, and Industry
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-historic-deals-with-china-delivering-for-american-workers-farmers-and-industry/
https://x.com/AnnaKelly47/status/2056082414926016851