Top
Gun
1986
Director: Tony Scott
Starring: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis,
Anthony Edwards, Val Kilmer
Is
there a movie as inextricably linked with the 1980s as Top Gun? I think not.
Sure, there are many great eighties classics, but Top Gun takes all the
classic, cheesy eighties tropes and one-ups them all. The soundtrack, the characterizations, the
narrative structure… wow, this one is a product of its time. But y’know what? I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad
thing. Top Gun is an entertaining
movie – whether it intends to be or not.
Lieutenant
“Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) is a hotshot navy pilot who has qualified for the
elite fighter pilot training school. He
clashes with fellow student pilot “Iceman” (Kilmer), who is just as good as
Maverick, and just as arrogant. He hangs
out with best friend and co-pilot “Goose” (Anthony Edwards), whose depiction as
a family man spells out certain doom. He
falls for sexy and smart flight instructor Charlie (McGillis) because she takes
less of his crap than his previous conquests.
And then, somewhere along the way, he fights Soviet MiGs. Because, y’know, this was the eighties.
So. Where to begin. I’ll go with the easy target first. When you look up the definition of
“homoerotic” in the dictionary, there must be a reference to Top
Gun there somewhere. I mean
honestly. Charlie is one of two women
who speak in this film (the other is Goose’s wife, played by Meg Ryan), and
every other scene is all about men dealing with men. And not just “normal” men, either, no, these
are men whose machismo is off the charts.
Which of course, lends itself for all kinds of cracks about latent
homosexual tendencies. During one year
in my teaching career, I had a quarter of the school’s football team in one
class. These were big, burly sixteen
year old boys, very macho, extremely muscular, and I swear to god, I have never
dealt with more handsy students than these kids. Every week, practically every day, I had to
tell them to stop touching each other, and I honestly wish I was kidding or
exaggerating. They couldn’t keep their
goddamn hands to themselves; every few days, they’d break out in a spontaneous
wrestling session, touching, hugging, and flat out groping each other (and, may
I add, that sort of physicality in a chemistry classroom is fundamentally
unsafe, which made things even more of a headache for me). This movie completely reminds me of that
class of students. Every time Iceman and
Maverick share a scene, I keep waiting for them to kiss – because that’s the
kind of chemistry they have. I mean
honestly, Iceman and Maverick… together… alone… in a locker room… no one
watching… Maverick is feeling emotionally vulnerable… the slash fanfiction
writes itself, for crying out loud. I
haven’t even mentioned the beach volleyball scene, either.
 |
| Just kiss and get it over with. |
And
on top of the ridiculously obvious sexual tension between Iceman and Maverick,
when you add lines like “This gives me a hard-on,” “I want some butts!”,
“Carnal knowledge… of a WOMAN this time!”, and “They must be close, I’m getting
a hard-on,” my husband and I were falling off the couch laughing. If I were a gay man, I would organize festive
parties around watching Top Gun.
Alright,
putting aside the all-too-obvious man-on-man subtext, Top Gun is filled with
grade-A quality 1980s vintage cheese.
Thing is, though, sometimes I’m in the mood for cheese. Top Gun reeks of summer blockbuster;
easy, crowd-pleasing entertainment that can satisfy all audiences, with a heavy
hand of pro-‘Merica nationalism to placate a Cold War era audience. Is all of that a bad thing? Hell no.
Easy, crowd-pleasing entertainment is just that – easy and
crowd-pleasing. You want to sit back and
make the movie do all the work because you need to turn your brain off on a
Friday night after a long week? Top
Gun will pick up the slack and let you relax. I can understand why this movie was a smash at
the box office. It has that kind of
calculated mass market appeal that hits straight at the vein of American
masculinity. No need to think too
deeply, sweetie, about why Maverick was only an elite fighter pilot for one
week between graduating from fighter pilot school and being offered a position
as fighter pilot school instructor – it’s far better if you simply accept the
weave-thin plot and go with it. You’ll
have more fun that way.
It’s
laughable how many times a character in Top Gun tells Maverick not to do
something, and then thirty seconds later he does it anyway. It’s laughable every time the soundtrack
cranks up and we hear “Highway to the Danger Zone” - AGAIN. It’s laughable how heavy-handedly the film
plays up Goose’s family man status so utterly out of nowhere about halfway
through. It’s laughable how randomly the
Soviet MiGs pop up in the film – it’s as if the screenwriters realized they
didn’t have a true villain, so “shit, let’s throw in some evil enemy dogfight
scenes, because why the fuck not – ‘Merica, Fuck Yeah!” Writing is not the strong suit of this film.
All
of this adds up to a particularly not good film, but hell, it’s funny. I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny, but
jesus, it’s funny to me. Get a cocktail
or two in me on a Friday night after a long week, and watching Tom Cruise
pretend to be all “emotionally distraught” is right good evening entertainment. But usually, I’m annoyed by poor quality, not
amused by it. Despite the really crappy
writing and the eye-roll inducing soundtrack, there’s fun here to be had. The flight scenes are exciting and it’s hard
to deny Tom Cruise’s star power. He, Kelly
McGillis, and Anthony Edward’s porn ‘stache have charisma enough to carry the
movie. I’m never bored when I watch Top
Gun, and honestly, that’s a compliment.
Frankly, I’d rather watch a poor-quality movie that amuses me than a
better quality one that bores me.
If
you want to take a trip back to muscle shirts, ridiculous facial hair,
over-simplified senses of right and wrong, and synthesizer music up the wazoo, Top
Gun will get you where you need to go.
It’s some weird, sun-drenched male fairy tale, full of trash-talking
arrogant hotheads (and a rather funny sense of physicality) and just enough
heterosexual love scenes to appease the ratings board and hide its unintentional homosexual
agenda.
Oh,
and I would be remiss to not mention that my husband continually refers to Tom
Cruise as “THE Actor.” He has this weird
ingrained notion that if anyone needs to cast a superstar, they go to Cruise –
and he’s not entirely wrong. Top
Gun certainly helped to cement Cruise’s status as THE Actor. (Expect my future reviews to refer to Cruise
this way, as this is how he’s commonly discussed in my house.)
Arbitrary
Rating: 6/10. I think. I’m not entirely sure. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, but I’m not so
sure it’s good. But heck, *I* had fun
with it. It makes me laugh. One of the best unintentional comedies from
the eighties.
