The Big Picture

Glen Powell’s aviation passion shines through in his latest project, The Blue Angels, a thrilling IMAX documentary.
Powell’s collaboration with top-tier experts and filmmakers like J.J. Abrams offers audiences an unprecedented thrill ride experience.
Despite his long Hollywood journey, Powell remains humble and grateful for the opportunities to work with top directors like Edgar Wright.

Glen Powell is killing it at the box office. It feels like his engine took off with Top Gun: Maverick, but the actor, writer, and producer has actually been around for decades — though 2024 is undeniably a banner year for him. While in Austin, Texas to celebrate the premiere of Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, Powell sat down to chat with Collider’s Steve Weintraub about his Hollywood journey and, more specifically, his team-up with filmmaker J.J. Abrams for their documentary, The Blue Angels.

Filmed for IMAX using some of the same methods as Maverick, The Blue Angels chronicles a year of training and show season for the elite Navy squadron, who perform impossible aerial stunts in precise formation. What began as an idea to celebrate the Blue Angels’ 75th anniversary by Greg “Boss” Wooldridge took flight when Powell and Abrams got involved. In his own words, Powell says the doc is “a culmination of a lot of really wonderful chapters in [his] life,” and allowed him to pull together a top-tier team of experts to give audiences “a thrill ride they’ve never had before.”

Check out the full conversation in the video above or the transcript below to find out who was involved in the making of The Blue Angels, why Powell wanted to be a part of it, and why IMAX was the ideal way to put viewers in the cockpit. He also talks about future projects, including working with Edgar Wright (Baby Driver) on The Running Man and his upcoming A24 project.

The Blue Angels (2024) Follows the veterans and newest class of Navy and Marine Corps flight squadron as they go through intense training and into a season of heart-stopping aerial artistry.Release Date May 23, 2024 Director Paul Crowder Main Genre Documentary

Glen Powell Assembled the Aviation Avengers for ‘The Blue Angels’

COLLIDER: I’m gonna ask the most important question up front, which is, when did you decide that you would only do airplane films? We have Devotion, Top Gun: Maverick, and now producing this.

GLEN POWELL: Well, after being around Tom Cruise on Top Gun: Maverick, it’s impossible to not catch the aviation bug. The best part about it is while we were shooting that movie, you’re filming on naval bases, you’re around the best pilots, you’re flying with the best of the best, so when you’re flying with the best of the best, it’s impossible for that experience to not be infectious in any sort of way. That world becomes inspiring because you’re seeing it at the highest level up close. So for me, I really got a chance to bring a lot of that aviation experience to Devotion with different sorts of planes in a different era in a different way, sort of in a different emotional context.

Then with this, when this opportunity came around and I was connected with Boss Wooldridge at the Blue Angels, and started realizing that those other experiences in the aviation community and the relationships and the family that I had built within the naval aviation community, I could kind of take this family and this new technology and put them together to give audiences a thrill ride they’ve never had before. So, it’s always interesting in this business how things sort of happen and evolve at the same time. Did I think I was gonna make three naval aviation things back to back? Absolutely not. But you know what? You always have to chase your interests in this business, and that’s definitely one of my great passions.

Also with this business, and I think a lot of people don’t realize, if there’s an ability to get something done, you take it because you never know where that opportunity will come from.

POWELL: No, absolutely. That’s the other thing that is a very cool moment that I’m starting to realize is that, as a struggling actor who used to make calls on his own behalf to try to get acting jobs, to now pick up the phone and be able to actually assemble a team that has a real weight and merit in all these different communities — from Boss Wooldridge to J.J. Abrams, to Kevin LaRosa and Michael FitzMaurice, the aerial team from Top Gun — and really put all these great minds together to allow audiences unprecedented access into this community and really put audiences on that thrill ride, that’s my new function and something that’s been kind of a privilege in this new phase.

IMAX Will Put You Up in the Air with ‘The Blue Angels’

I saw this in IMAX and the footage in IMAX is incredible. I’m sure you’ve seen this in IMAX, so what was your reaction?

POWELL: Absolutely. The most incredible thing is that when I flew with the Blue Angels, I flew in the number four plane. The four plane is in the center of the hive. They usually put people that they take up there in the seven plane, which is really dynamic, but it sort of flies outside of the main grouping. The four plane does a lot of really dynamic stuff — the inverted plane and the Double Farvel move. It really does a lot of things that people who haven’t had F-18 experience usually shouldn’t be in that seat for. But being in that seat, I got a sense of the proximity of that hive, and when people asked me what it was like, I was like, “It’s indescribable.” It’s really hard to put in perspective how close these planes are. They’re literally scraping paint, they’re so close.

So when this opportunity came about where I was connected with Boss Wooldridge, who expressed that he wanted to do a documentary, I thought about it, and I was like, “I literally know all the different players that can really plus this up, and really make this a thrill ride,” including my experience on Top Gun where Cruise and Claudio Miranda, Joe Kosinski, [Jerry] Bruckheimer really figured out a way to separate that camera head and the camera body where you could put IMAX cameras in places on these F-18s where you could never put them before. These IMAX cameras have gotten smaller and smaller. You can put them around the plane where they don’t affect the airworthiness.

In addition, you have Kevin LaRosa and Michael FitzMaurice and Cinejet, who are now allowed to be closer to these planes. They follow the entire show. They’re not interrupting that show, but they are getting closer to those jets than any civilian pilot ever. And so what’s really happening is this moment where technology is right now allowed us to give audiences that thrill ride. Then, I feel like, because I feel a part of the naval family, part of that community, we were allowed access to really get a sense of that human element in that cockpit like we’ve never had before either. So, it’s been pretty cool to feel the culmination of a lot of really wonderful chapters in my life.

Glen Powell’s Hollywood Journey Is Coming Full Circle
From Richard Linklater’s ‘Hit Man’ to checking Edgar Wright off his wishlist in ‘The Running Man,’ Powell is taking it all in stride.

You touched on it a little earlier about being a struggling actor. I know you’ve been in this business for a while. What has been like to all of a sudden I’m looking and I’m seeing your name with The Running Man and Edgar Wright, or I’m seeing your name with J.J. Abrams? You know what I mean? What the hell is this like for you all of a sudden to be attached to all these different things?

POWELL: [Laughs] I do know what you mean. It’s wild, and I feel like it’s something I’m still kind of digesting. It’s fun even being down here in Austin premiering Hit Man with Richard Linklater, a guy I’ve looked up to my whole life, and getting to premiere our film at the theater where I used to do theater as a kid, and getting inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame by Robert Rodriguez who gave me my first job when I was, like, 13 in Spy Kids 3. So, it’s been an incredible moment in all these ways.

I mean, Edgar Wright — I searched Edgar’s name in my email the other day because I was gonna send him an email, and I looked back at the first time I wrote Edgar Wright’s name in my email and it was right when I moved out to LA in 2008. Edgar is on my wishlist. Edgar’s name is at the top of, like, “Who do you want to work with?” It’s Edgar Wright. And so the fact that I’ve been struggling to do this thing and I’m getting to have these moments to work with people like Edgar Wright, it’s incredible. It’s extraordinary. So, it’s not lost on me. Hollywood is a place that can take a lot from you, but it can also give you a lot. Sometimes you have to kind of trust in the marathon, and I’m really, really happy I’ve trusted in the marathon because the delayed gratification of this ride has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

What are you actually filming this year? Do you know?

POWELL: You know what’s funny is, in a couple of hours I’m on my way to South Africa to shoot Huntington. It’s an A24 movie that John Patton Ford is directing, and I will be there. That is the next thing I’m shooting.

The Blue Angels is available to stream on Prime Video on May 23.

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