“I have a need,” Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell said in Top Gun: “A need for speed!” And how else would he measure his miles clocked per minute without the mechanical precision of his trusty Porsche Design Chronograph 1?
Top Gun: Maverick boasts a bunch of relics and loving holdovers from its predecessor: every sixth scene is a flashback sequence, shows off an old prop, or pointedly frames an old photo of Mav and Val Kilmer’s Iceman on the wall. Those of us with a Navy aviator’s 20/20 vision might’ve noticed one particular Easter egg — Mav’s trusty replica watch uk from the original, said Chronograph. While the rest of the airmen in the sequel wear UK AAA replica IWC accoutrements from the brand’s dedicated Top Gun line, the Cold War-era Porsche remains tightly wrapped around Mav’s wrist.
It’s not just some random Chronograph the prop department sourced from eBay, no no. According to Cruise himself, this was the best 1:1 fake IWC OG — only in the thirty-six year interim between Top Gun premiering and its sequel being birthed, producer Jerry Bruckheimer had appropriated it as his own private piece, so he lent it back to the 59-year-old.
“The Swiss made replica IWC I wear is the original watch,” Cruise confirmed to BBC Radio 1 at the end of May. “So I had to go, ‘Jerry, I need the watch for the movie.’ The second I was done shooting — that day — he [took it back].” Ah, the privileges of being one of the biggest blockbuster ship-steerers in the biz.
If you want a modern reinterpretation of the cheap fake IWC Pilots Chronograph 1, you can pre-order one at Porsche Design’s website — but it’ll set you back a hefty wad (read: £7,900). Maybe you’re better off spending the rest of your days working to become a super producer, wriggling your way into the good graces of one Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (yeah, that’s his real name) — he might just give you his luxury fake IWC…
