Tom Cruise paid tribute to his late "Top Gun" colleague Val Kilmer by leading theater owners in a moment of silence at the CinemaCon event before unveiling new footage from his latest film in the "Mission Impossible" series.

"I'd like to honor a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer," Cruise said at the start of his hotly anticipated appearance at the annual industry summit in Las Vegas.

"I really can't tell you how much I admired his work, how much I appreciated him as a person and how grateful and honored I was when he joined Top Gun and then came back for Top Gun 2," he pointed out.

Kilmer, one of Hollywood's greatest actors of the 1990s who rose to fame with his role as Iceman in the original 1986 "Top Gun," died at age 65 this week.

The cause of death was pneumonia. Kilmer had been battling throat cancer since being diagnosed in 2014, and appeared for the last time in the 2022 sequel "Top Gun" physically weakened and with a hoarse voice.

Cruise led the Caesars Palace casino audience in a prolonged silence. He asked attendees to "take a moment and just think about all the wonderful moments we had" watching Kilmer on the big screen.

"I wish you the best of luck on your next journey. Thank you all for doing this. I know he appreciates it" Cruise also said.

"Top Gun" is the role with which Kilmer broke through. Starring alongside Cruise, he plays the confident and mostly silent fighter pilot-in-training, Tom "Iceman" Kazanski.

When reprising the role of "Iceman" in the highly anticipated sequel "Top Gun 2," Kilmer's real-life health issues were incorporated into the character.

Cruise also unveiled a new trailer for "Mission Impossible: Retribution," which will be released on May 23.

The footage shows Cruise's ageless character Ethan Hunt holding onto the wheels of a small two-seater plane as it soars into a narrow canyon and flips over in the sky.

The trailer features extensive flashbacks to famous scenes from earlier installments of the eight-film blockbuster, such as Cruise hanging between lasers and climbing the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai.

"You have to trust me one last time," Cruise's character says in what Paramount is touting as the final film in the franchise. | BGNES