Word: thunderously
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...everyone knows has talent moves from boring aircraft duty/ California sprint circuit to big time Top Gun flight school/NASCAR circuit in order to prove he's great. During adjustment period Cruise gets picked on by other pilots/drivers and the flight instructer/pit crew chief, played by Robert Duvall in Thunder. Pilot/driver has the shadow of his father hanging over him; discusses it with flight instructor/crew chief...
Cruise meets with emotional setback when his best friend and fellow pilot/driver (Michael Rooker in Thunder) dies in plane crash/incurs brain damage in car crash, which he blames himself for. Begins to doubt his abilities and can't fly/drive anymore. Looses nerve in aerial engagements/NASCAR races...
Cruise regains form after (brief) emotional dilemna with help of understanding flight instructer/crew chief and love interest (in Thunder played by Nichole Kidman), and her role as his superior is compromised by their entanglement. Love interest is beautiful bright professor of astrophysics/neurosurgeon who can't believe she is sleeping with infantile pilot/driver and feels forced to give Cruise a lecture on his immaturity...
These similarites are hardly accidental. Half the story credit goes to Cruise, who should have known better than to try his hand at scriptwriting, much less forging Top Gun. But it was Simpson and Bruckheimer who saw to it that Thunder bore their tired blockbuster stamp. The producers bought themselves one of the best screenwriters money can buy in Robert Towne and he responded by slavishly helping Cruise plagiarize...
...prime example is Thunder's emotional climax, in which Duvall shouts at his young charge, "You're scared, you're scared!" To which Cruise deftly retorts "You're scared, too!" Typical of the entire movie, Towne does not set up this, or any other of the films' emotional turns, with any believability. Cruise's breathtaking response is preceeded by a bewildering psychoanalysis of Duvall's character which would seem to require telepathy and clairvoyance to produce...