Warning! Beware! This film is pure concentrated Eighties! 100% pure! Always dilute for Shave-Shampoo-Massage-Dental-Soap Bath!
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 an argument 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 has 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 penchant for older ladies, so they seem like a fun couple).
When they get into a hassle with some aerial 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 man 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 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, and suddenly we find ourselves in a class taught by
military hardass Michael Ironside (callsign: “What Do I Need a Butch Callsign
For? My Name is Ironside), but it’s a
different class than the one taught by military hardass Michael Ironside in
Starship Troopers. A beefy, bleached blonde pilot (callsign: “Rocky Horror”)
turns to Val Kilmer (callsign: “My Career Didn’t Really Work Out the Way I Thought It
Would”) and whispers in his ear, “This gives me a hard-on.” Meanwhile, Rick
Rossovich (callsign: “Slider,” I guess because “White Castle” was already taken) casually
slips his arm around Val’s shoulders 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 dispense the Special Sauce.
Cut to a bar, where Val and Tom are face-to-face, drinking
longnecks and making steamy eye contact again. 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, because 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 “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 lick each other so much this movie should be
called Top Tongue).
More flying scenes, did you say? “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 Maverick 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 in a grief-off with her. Then he mopes around for a few scenes, but
fortunately, the Indian Ocean is having a crisis (just a regular crisis, 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 the 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 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 some
guy spill his coffee.
Tom and Val hug on the deck while men pump their fists in
the background. Then Tom throws Goose’s
dog-tags off the carrier, symbolically freeing himself from the burdens 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 the faculty advisor 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 did a masterful job of framing the shot so you
can’t see Tom's booster seat.
The end.
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