At the start of a surprise appearance at CinemaCon this morning, Tom Cruise took a moment to honor his Top Gun co-star, the late Val Kilmer. Kilmer passed away earlier this week at age 65, after battling pneumonia. 

Before asking the audience to “take a moment,” Cruise, hand on heart, said, “I’d like to honor a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer. I really can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how much I thought of him as a human being, how honored I was when he joined Top Gun and came back for Top Gun: Maverick. I think it would be great if we could all just take a moment and think about all the wonderful times we had with him. Would you all mind doing that? Let’s just take a moment.” With that, the Colosseum went silent as Cruise bowed his head. He concluded, “We wish you well on your next journey.”

Kilmer’s breakout role was as LT Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Cruise in 1986’s Top Gun. Thirty-six years later, he reprised the role in the $1.5 billion-grossing Top Gun: Maverick sharing a single scene with Cruise that provided an emotional center to the film. After the blockbuster’s release, Cruise told Jimmy Kimmel, “I was crying, I got emotional. For him to come back and play that character… he’s such a powerful actor, that he instantly became that character again… you’re looking at Iceman.”

Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015. A procedure performed as part of his treatment damaged his vocal cords, and thereafter he had difficulty speaking. In the Maverick scene, he mostly types his dialogue as Iceman, who has gone on to become Admiral Kazansky, but speaks up to advise his rival-turned-close-friend Maverick before the two share a poignant embrace.

Cruise is here at CinemaCon in support of Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and of the theatrical experience as a whole.