| Top Gun I feel the need, the need for speed! There is a term, a lovely colloquialism here in Holland: Popie-Jopie. Roughly translated it would mean popular-paul or some such thing. It is a charming moniker for those who feel they are all that, and a bag of chips. Who in their right minds would say things like “I feel the need, the need for speed” while high-fifing left and right? Maverick and Goose, silly! Because they are all that, and a bag of chips… or so I remembered them. Roughly 2 ½ years ago I had a minor kitchen accident. While slicing and dicing fixings for a carbonnara sauce I was asked a question and… Well, let’s just say that the sauce turned a little more on the pink side then anything. Remember kids, when using a sharp knife keep them away from your fingers! Feeling sorry for myself, while missing the comfort and safety of the parental home which means no mom to make me feel better, I decided that a purchase was in order. A couple of hours later, an odd thousand dollars poorer, I was the proud owner of my very own home entertainment center! Can I get an “amen” for widescreen t.v.? But what good does a widescreen t.v. do if programs aired are of the archaic 4:3 kind? None I tell you. Thus my latest addiction started festering its way to the surface; purchasing of DVD movies. Everybody has a list of classic movies in their heads, a list of “got to have’s” if you will. These can be true classics like Casablanca or Citizen Cane, or more contemporary classics like Trainspotting or Glen Garry Glen Ross. Whatever your poison, it sure taste good! Last Friday, while perusing the t.v. guide my heart beat a little faster. There, ranked 3rd in movies to watch that night was the ‘80s classic to rival all ‘80s classics: Top Gun. Being aired on the BBC no less, which is extra bonus as the BBC is one of few channels who air movies in widescreen format. Seeing as Top Gun was listed somewhere on my DVD to-get-list, I figured I would stay up and see if shelling out my hard-earned spondoliks were worth it. T minus several hours, and I was already starting to get tired, damn them Brits with their GMT. Finally, the midnight hour. Giddy like a schoolgirl awaiting her date for the first prom—except I am neither a girl, nor awaiting a date for the prom—I tuned in to the BBC. Opening credits speak volumes for a movie these days; it is like the cover to novels where the cooler they look the better the book will be. Using this rule of thumb I was sure to be in for a treat, NOT! The first time I saw Top Gun was in the movie theaters way back last century. Since then I have seen so many movies that I couldn’t even begin to sum them up. I have also seen the evolution ( or should I call it morphing? ) of MTV-style editing into mainstream editing. The first time you see the opening credits for the movie se7en you are blown away. Top Gun blew me away, but in a different form. From the moment the ominous names of Bruckheimer and Simpson appear till the final shot of a Tomcat jetfighter landing on an aircraft carrier I felt like I had been treated to a Navy commercial instead of opening credits. Thus starts the tale of one Maverick and his sidekick Goose, two lose canon aviators. Proud members of the naval flying corps, buddies, best buddies and possible even more... And so the movie begins where it will also end, East meeting West. Mav and Goose are flying around in their F-14, patrolling the skies of the south pacific. Actually, they are playing wingman ( second fiddle ) to Cougar and compatriot. Enter some ruskies, we are led to believe one stray plane, but oh-me-gawd it turns out to be two, or was that three? Anyways, after some basic dialogue, some interesting editing and sound, we find Goose taken a Polaroid snapshot of the Russian aviator who immediately knows he has met his match and takes off with his tail tucked between his legs—all this while in an inverted 4G turn, more at the top of the hour! If anything Top Gun can be described as Cheese with a capital C(liché), and I will not even bore you with the details. Let it be said that Top Gun, while entertaining, should not be taken serious. Not now, not then, not ever! I mean really, are we supposed to believe that the U.S. Navy has no problem sending an obviously stressed out pilot up in the air in a 45 million ( that’s 45 and 6 big fat zeros ) dollar piece of machinery? A pilot who constantly has to fight the ghost of his father who, in his time was Top Gun but managed to get shot down during the ‘Nam days and his name was drawn through the crap of 12873 horses and 54 donkeys (which is exactly the amount of horse/donkey power needed to pull an inverted 4G turn) as the “then” government needed a patsy! Can you feel the pain? Can I get an Amen? Top of the hour. For those of you who have never heard the term Top Gun before let me explain. Once the jet engine was introduced, and shortly there after the missile, the old fashioned art of dog fighting in the sky saw its end. No more Red Barons who, while sporting fashionable white scarves, would zero in on their enemy to open up the guns and aim at the wings or engines. A missile means locking in on your enemy and, once the bleep tells you systems are a go ( that or the white crosshairs become red ) you press the button and watch the fire show all from the comfort of your cockpit several hundreds of feet away. Still, knowing how to “shake somebody off your tail” is a skill that shouldn’t be forgotten. So, once in a while in a place called Fightertown USA, the best naval pilots come together and have a little contest. The winner wins a plaque, the losers shame! Maverick and Goose, due to a fluke, are send to Fightertown as the obvious underdogs. Straight off the bat they make their mark. Pop quiz time: You find yourself in a bar filled with Navy officers and women wearing cocktail dresses. You spot a blond that needs your loving. What do you do? a) Chat her up with a one-liner—you must be tired cause you’ve been running around my head all night! b) Send in your best friend to ask her if she is seeing somebody special c) Have the bartender bring her a new drink ( preferably a screw-driver ) and approach with haste to throw a one-liner—you can either have this screw-driver, or screw this driver. d) Get all your flying buddies to line up and sing “you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling” What follows from then on is a potpourri if aerial extravaganza, love comes and unexplainably goes to eventual come again, lessons are taught; “being good is fine, being a team player is better”, volleyball game is thrown in for the chest-shots, hardship falls on our protagonist but in the midst of adversity he sees the light… can I get an Amen? All this brought to you by some tight editing and a Rock and Roll soundtrack to boot! Can I say it… What’s that? You want more details? Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn ya! If anything, the movie Top Gun teaches us some lore regarding naval aviation. Don’t leave your position as wingman! This is the main lesson being taught in this movie i.e. egoism has no place in the sky, not even when you have the clear shot and by the time you get to take this shot you are being sucked into a “jetwash” which will propel your plane into a “bellyspin” resulting in a frantic search of the “ejectionchord” which once pulled will instantly kill your navigator when his head snaps. (editors note: all words between brackets are spelled wrong!) You see, ego is what this movie is all about. It is the duality of the subject matter. Can we honestly expect people with names like Maverick, Iceman or Hollywood to have anything but HUGE egos? Is it fair to assume that these egos can work together as a cohesive unit? Yes, yes we can! Case in point; buzzing the tower. Three times during the movie this action is undertaken, though not once does it become clear to me why there is even a need to perform this act. Buzzing the tower basically means you take your air-o-plane and speed past the control tower just as the tower-commander is about to slurp up some coffee. Coffee spills on neatly pressed shirt, curses are made and we all cheer. Can I get an Amen? Maverick: Requesting permission for flyby. Air Boss Johnson: That's a negative ghostrider, the pattern is full. Goose: No. No, Mav, this is not a good idea. Maverick: Sorry Goose, but it's time to buzz a tower. Oblivious to the wishes of his friend, Maverick flies by and gets them into a jam with their commander. That’s a team player. Maverick: She's lost that loving feeling. Goose: No, no she hasn't. Maverick: Oh, yes she has. Goose: I hate it when she does that. Oblivious to the wishes of his friend Maverick exposes the “she” to having lost that loving feeling while all around people are playing air-guitar, causing milk to curd, cats to claw out their ears and Goose realizing that his dream to one day become a lounge singer should be thrown in the garbage just like 5/6th of the dialogue in this movie. That’s a team player. Later on we are exposed to a volleyball game, a heated contest between Maverick/Goose and Iceman/Slider. Winner gets a plaque, losers get nothing. If the reason they added this sequence into the movie to proof the point that only as a team one can accomplish something then the message was lost on me. M/G lose, but only by a narrow margin and Goose is sure they can win the next game, he even puts up 12 bucks American! What does Maverick do? He leaves to go get him some tail. This is the first time in the whole movie where he can prove to not be an egocentric bastard… Of course I could be wrong. It is possibly that the only reason the sequence was added to the movie was twofold: the ability to add one more rocking tune to the soundtrack, and eye candy as most of the imagery involves tight shots of 6 pack abs, flexed muscles and Mr. Olympia poses performed by Maverick, Iceman and Slider. Where was Goose during these shots? He was wearing a t-shirt is where he was—we find out later why during the shower scene, can we say floppy breasts? I thought that team players all wear the same outfits! After Maverick polishes the tail, he and Goose head on out to pick up the rest of the Geese family. Banter follows, some singing and piano playing, but mainly we are treated to some lessons in over-acting101… all this serves as a build up to the death scene. Don’t you hate it when you are lead to believe all is copasetic to then have the rug pulled from under you? Bothered with the loss of his close friend, and the constant wedgie he has to deal with ( this based on the way Maverick walks throughout the movie ), Maverick not only manages to lose his girlfriend, but also any hope at winning the coveted trophy. But we aren’t at the end of the movie, and Maverick hasn’t lost his ghosts yet, so I wonder what the scripters have in store for us? The most useless piece of dialogue ever to have been uttered on the silver screen is what they had in store for us. We find out what happened to Maverick’s father all those years ago, and that he can still graduate with the rest of the Ego-clan. Which brings us to the final installment of East meeting West. In the air we have Iceman and cohort, and one other plane which is piloted by non other then Tim Robbins—in the credits his name is listed with the top 10, yet his on-screen presence is so short that blinking will make you miss out on his stellar performance… more at the bottom of the hour!—something that reeks of a Star Trek rip-off. They might as well have donned him in a red uniform and called him Ensign Johnson as we all know he is about to blown out of the sky. Serving as back up, third fiddle, is Maverick who is still dealing with his ghosts. Onboard radar shows 1 bleep, which turns into 2, which turns into 3, and palms become sweaty. Turns out that the ruskies are the villains we all know them to be, and have figured out a way to thwart the U.S.’s billion dollar radar technology business… by flying in a “tight” formation they manage to keep the suspense going. Maverick is send up to lend a helping hand, by now Ensign Johnson has already lost his plane, and off he goes. To add some suspense to the story we find out that some SNAFU happened which prevents any more planes from departing the flight deck. So there we have it, 6 vs 2, what odds… Once engaged in combat Maverick realizes that he can’t fly by the seat of his pants no more, tucks his tail and leaves the Iceman to his own devises. Of course Goose talks to him from beyond the grave, Maverick returns to the battle and whoops some ass ( can I say ass? ) and we all cheer and prepare to go to Disneyland. “Tell Maverick what he has won Don!” “Not only has he won a sporting now outfit, but should he choose the right door Maverick will get the girl and the opportunity to teach future Top Gunners how to chicken out of a fight to later come back with a vengeance, all this on the tax-payers tab!” Makes sense to me. Bottom of the hour. Setting aside to 2 second air time Tim Robbins gets in this movie, I feel it only right to point out some of the other cast members performances ( this in the style of the movie, so pretend there is a nice and fast Rock and Roll tune coming out of the speakers ): Iceman; Why Val, why? It is no secret that Mr. Kilmer is by far my favorite actor who has entertained me with some brilliant performances. But in this movie they might as well have used a stand in as the only actions he does correctly is the “who has better gums” contest between himself and Tom Cruise. Goose; as far as I know, and I will check the internet here in a bit, Mr. ER has only starred in three movies aside from this one. These would be Gotcha, Revenge of the Nerds and some flick where he sports a dangly earring and hails from the Bayou. How he ever managed to realistically portray an ER doctor is beyond me, but he should stick with that instead of opening up for Wayne Newton in Vegas now his medical career is over and done with. Charlie; I believe that after Top Gun Ms. McGillis her career kicked in it’s afterburner, except that her nose was aiming low instead of high. She did make the headlines a couple of times, but I believe they all had to do with her eating problems… Viper; here is an actor ( Tom Skerrit ) who never has, and probably never will be able to shake his tail clear from the “I am a moderate actor” note pinned on there. Yet I can’t help but like him… maybe it’s that crooked smile of his? Mrs. Goose; Meg Ryan… crap. Maverick; what can we say about Tom and this movie? Well, he is a whore, obviously. After this epic flooded the box office ( highest grossing movie of 1986 ) he re-partnered with Bruckheimer and Simpson to make the Nascar version of the same cheese. What can be said about Tom Cruise besides the fact that he is short, likes to show off his ass, when acting can only grasp three emotions; smiling, over the top pissed off, smiling. He is a bad actor with a winning smile. To end, I feel it fitting to say This movie did not take my breath away. Can I get an Amen? |