Top Gun (1986)

Warning! Beware! This film is pure concentrated Eighties! 100% pure! Always dilute for Shave-Shampoo-Massage-Dental-Soap Bath!

The 36 years between Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick isn't the longest gap separating a film from its sequel—that record is held by Bambi (1942), which waited 64 years for a follow-up, making Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest (2006) the first movie sequel to bomb at the box office yet still qualify for Medicare (this is assuming you don’t count 1969’s Bambi Meets Godzilla, which I would if I could). But it does offer further evidence, as if any were needed these days, that those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Like a verp.

So why are we now—over two decades into the 21st Century—circling back to the rah rah Eighties? Is it the similar geo-political situation, with an expansionist Russia threatening the West? Is it our billionaire-worshipping, Gilded Age economy? Or is it just that we finally got a President older than Reagan?

To discover why we're being forced to repeat History, even though we got a passing grade in it the first time, let's do a deep dive into the original Top Gun and see were we all went wrong as a civilization.

Top Gun (1986)
Director: Tony Scott
Writers: Jim Cash, Jack Epps, Jr. (screenplay), Ehud Yonay (magazine article)

As we know, Drama is Conflict, and this drama has so much conflict that it actually opens with a fight between the titles and the theme song. According to the superimposed dateline, we’re in the INDIAN OCEAN. PRESENT DAY. But the hit single by Kenny Loggins insists we’re in the DANGER ZONE, which seems to be a place where jets ceaselessly take off and land while men in glans-shaped helmets handle big hoses and vogue.

Tom Cruise is a Navy fighter jock whose callsign—“Maverick”—suggests he’s a reckless, hot shot pilot who doesn’t play by the rules, probably because he’s actually sitting in a mockup of a cockpit on Stage 14 at the Paramount Lot, and the rules don’t technically apply to the military equivalent of a dollhouse.

Tom flies with “Goose” (Anthony Edwards), whose callsign suggests he’s either the comic relief, or was force-fed grain by a French farm wife until he developed an enlarged and delicious liver. We join them for a jet-fueled playdate with “Cougar,” whose callsign indicates he’s a mature woman with a taste for boytoys, and his backseater “Merlin” (Tim Robbins, who we know from Bull Durham has a penchant for older ladies, so I assume they’ll go on a double date after the montage).

When they get into a hassle with some airborne Communists, Cougar loses control of his sweat glands, but Tom saves the day by flying upside down and giving the Russians the finger. Back at the aircraft carrier, Tom’s flying makes a traffic controller spill his coffee, so his commanding officer, Mr. Clean, shouts “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash!”, although you’d think it would be the other way around, since between the two of them, the body is the only one with a valid photo I.D. Then he sends Maverick and Goose to fighter school at “Fightertown U.S.A.”, home of the Fightin’ Fighters.

Tom rides his motorcycle to Top Gun school because apparently it’s Danger Zone adjacent. Military hardass Michael Ironside (callsign: “What Do I Need a Butch Callsign For? My Name is Ironside!”) teaches a class filled with impossibly pretty hunks, exactly the way military hardass Michael Ironside taught a class filled with impossibly pretty hunks in Starship Troopers, except he was maimed in that one, and Tom Cruise was played by Caspar Van Dien.¹

A beefy, bleached blonde pilot (callsign: “Rocky Horror”) leans in to Val Kilmer and whispers in his ear, “This gives me a hard-on.” Meanwhile, Rick Rossovich (callsign: “Slider” because “White Castle” was already taken) snuggles in close to Val from the opposite side, so this sandwich has three all-beef patties. But Val is too busy fingering his ballpoint pen as he and Tom trade smoldering glances to squeeze out some Special Sauce, if you know what I mean.

Cut to a bar, where Val and Tom are face-to-face, drinking longnecks and making steamy eye contact. But it was all just foreplay, because Goose and Tom make a bet: first one to have intercourse with a woman wins twenty dollars. Tom immediately picks Kelly McGillis out of the crowd and tonelessly serenades her with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” It’s a justly famous scene, and if you watch closely, you can actually see the moment when she became a lesbian.

Now we’re back in class, and guess what? We have a substitute today, and it’s Kelly! But instead of just showing us a film strip, we get more flying scenes: lots of guys shouting lots things like, “He’s on our tail!” and “Show me what you got!” and “You’re mine, now!” They “turn and burn” and “go ballistic,” and—well, basically it’s the Kama Sutra meets the Urban Dictionary.

Say, how about a stunningly long, boldly gratuitous volleyball game, in which Val, Slider, and Tom are hilariously oily and turgid? But Goose does teach us a valuable life lesson: When you’re the comic relief you don’t get the girl, but you do get a shirt.

Tom rushes directly over to Kelly’s house to fumigate it with his stank and pheromones while he fills us in on his dead dad (he always seems to have one) and why it drives him to be awesome. The next day after class they have silhouette sex (and by “sex” I mean they basically just lick each other so much this movie should be called Top Tongue).

More flying scenes, did you say? Let’s cue up the stale banter: “Stick with it!”, “Come on come on come on!”, “Was it good for you too?”

No? Well, how about more traditional erotica? Let’s head to the locker room, where everyone is in towels and beaded with moisture. Val lounges seductively against a pillar like Maria Montez, while Tom turns away from the camera, puts a foot up on a bench and points his ass at us almost menacingly, as though his rectum were the barrel of a gun.

More flying? Sure, dig in, we’ve got plenty. Unfortunately for Goose, it’s the end of the second act and Marverick needs motivation, so they blunder into their neighbor’s jet wash and go into a flat spin. Tom ejects safely, but Goose collides with a plot point and dies.

Tom visits Goose’s grieving widow, Meg Ryan, to pay his respects, but as we’ve seen, he’s driven and competitive, and just winds up getting into a grief-off with her. Then he mopes around for a few scenes, but fortunately, the Indian Ocean is having another crisis (just a regular crisis this time, not an identity crisis like it had at the beginning of the movie).

Val flies off into combat, while Tom walks around his plane and rubs the rounded tip of a missile. Meanwhile, that same guy from before announces another hard-on.

Val gets crawled by aerodynamic Bolsheviks, but Maverick flies off to his rescue (just as both catapults on the carrier break, so it can’t launch any more fighters. Tom and Val are on their own!). Tom gets himself into another flat spin and has a crisis of confidence, but after fingering Goose’s dog tags like worry beads he experiences a moment of pure epiphany and blows up the same MIG three times. Then he celebrates by making a air traffic controller spill boiling coffee all over his crotch.

Tom and Val hug on the deck while beefy hunks pump their fists in the background. Then Tom throws Goose’s dog tags off the carrier, symbolically freeing himself from the burden of their relationship, which was frankly going nowhere. Commander Clean sends him back to Fighter Town U.S.A., this time as an instructor. Not a flight instructor, I assume, since he can’t even walk to the bathroom without going into a flat spin, but maybe they’ll give him an autoharp and let him teach music, or be faculty sponsor for the Pep Squad or something.

The end.

Oh, wait…There’s a tacked-on conclusion where Kelly reminds us that we hate the Righteous Brothers now by playing “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” on the jukebox and sneaking up on Tom while he sits at the bar. I mention this only because director Tony Scott does a masterful job of framing the shot so you can’t see Tom's booster seat.

The end.

1. According to my Movie Star Conversion Chart, this is the equivalent of replacing the bespoke Michelin Pilot Sport PAX tires and custom rims on your Bugatti Veyron with those “donut” spares that are good for 50 miles at 50 mph.