Director Joseph Kosinski says:

"The original version of the script we actually followed Maverick in his freefall back to Earth, which would have I guess debunked that theory," Kosinski told Happy Sad Confused's Josh Horowitz. "It was a pretty spectacular sequence imagining what it's like to reenter from space in your spacesuit."

"I love it. Film is meant to be interpreted. I love that there's multiple ways to read it. It's, you know, hopefully it's a piece of art meant to be interpreted, and I love people reading those things into it. It's like The Big Lebowski Theory that Johnny's not really there so, no, I welcome that," he said."