Categories

#snarkathon – Top Gun

Kirsti: Snarking Top Gun has been on the radar for a long time. I don’t remember who first suggested it, but I *do* know that my reaction was “HOLY SHIT YES PLEASE WE HAVE TO DO THIS OMG IT IS SO SNARKTASTIC”. So obviously, when it came to me picking a movie for Snarkathon, there was only one possible option.

Also, if someone wants to remake this movie with Logan Echolls as the main character, I would be 100% okay with that.

ANYWAY. Let’s get down to recapping, shall we?

We open with an overly long scene of fighter jets taking off and landing, and the ground crew scurrying around, accompanied by the Top Gun theme. That morphs into Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, because it’s the 80s. That throws us to the “present day” – something that gets funnier with every passing year – in the Indian Ocean and an aircraft carrier doing its thing.

A couple of US F-14A Tomcats are out on patrol or whatever when SURPRISE!! An enemy MiG turns up. (Sidenote: the enemy remains unnamed, but it was the mid-80s and the pilot’s white so I’m guessing RUSSIA. Quite what Russia’s doing in the Indian Ocean remains to be seen…) They think everything’s under control, then another MiG turns up. There’s a brief scuffle, and one of the US jets get missile lock on a MiG, which buggers off. However, the pilot – callsign Cougar – can’t shake the second MiG, which has missile lock on him.

Cougar pleads for help from the pilot of the other jet, Maverick (Tom Cruise). His callsign should give you a hint or two about his attitude. He’s high above Cougar and the MiG, and can’t get into position behind them. So he decides he’ll invert the plane and drop down to a couple of metres above it to give the MiG pilot the finger. His RIO, Goose (Anthony Edwards), grabs a camera and snaps a photo. The MiG bails, and both Tomcats head back to the ship.

PLOT TWIST. Cougar’s freaked out about his near-death experience and can’t land. Against orders and with no fuel, Maverick aborts his landing and goes back to help Cougar. Once landed, Cougar promptly turns in his wings, because quitting the military is totally something you can do on a whim.

Maverick and Goose are called to their commander’s office. Sidenote: the most important person on the Top Gun crew was the person who manned the fake-sweat spray bottle, and they took their job VERY seriously. Everyone is dripping in sweat like 85% of the time. Aaaanywho, Sweaty Commander berates them for being rule breakers, and utters the fabulous line “Son, your ego’s writing cheques your body can’t cash“, then earns himself a gold star by saying that he’s sending them to Top Gun – a special training school for elite pilots.

title star

Cut to Miramar, California. Maverick – further proving his callsign by riding a motorbike sans helmet – rides alongside the runway and fistpumps as a jet takes off. It’s awkward. In a briefing room, the all-male-and-mostly-white pilots are told how things are going to work. Maverick makes intense eye contact with another pilot named Iceman (Val Kilmer), who’s apparently the guy to beat. Or bone, based on their eye contact. (AO3 backs me up here – almost all the Top Gun fanfic on there is Maverick/Iceman slash).

“Hello, sailor”

That night, the pilots head to a local bar to get away from the homoerotic tension. It doesn’t work because Iceman and Maverick stare at each other some more. Goose informs Maverick that in order to win their usual bet, he has to have sex – with “a lady, this time” LOL – on the premises. Maverick immediately spots a candidate (Kelly McGinnis), and informs Goose that “she’s lost that loving feeling“. Goose groans, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of Tom Cruise’s terrible singing voice.

Maverick serenades this poor woman with You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling until she says he can sit down. She plays dumb to his egotistical “yeah, I’m a pilot” talk, then leaves because her friend’s arrived. Maverick watches, then FOLLOWS HER INTO THE LADIES ROOM BECAUSE HE’S A FUCKING CREEPER. He flirts and she eyerolls. Back in the bar, she informs Goose that “Your friend was magnificent“. Considering they were in there for like two minutes, it’s not even a believable lie. But whatever.

The next morning, Maverick discovers that his mystery woman is one of their instructors, Charlie. Womp womp. We get a lot of close ups of Maverick’s face, and OH MY GOD WHY DIDN’T THEY FIX HIS MONOBROW BEFORE THEY STARTED FILMING??? Charlie starts telling them all about the MiG and what they know about it, and he’s all “Yeah, no”. She calls him on his sassiness, and he tells her about the encounter he and Goose had with the MiG. She’s impressed.

Later, they head out on a training mission thing. IDK, you guys. The flying parts of this movie are hard to recap. It includes the fabulous line “WATCH THE MOUNTAINS!” which seems like pretty good advice. Jester – one of the instructors – has Maverick and Goose on lock, so Maverick slams on the brakes (or the Tomcat equivalent??) and Jester flies past. He scrambles for the “do not engage below…” limit, and they give chase, getting a lock on just as he goes below the limit. They cheer, but Jester’s pissed at them for breaking the rules.

Maverick requests a landing position, and the tower controller replies with the iconic “Negative, Ghostrider, the pattern is full.” Maverick buzzes the tower, making the controller spill his coffee. In the locker room, they stand around in towels comparing notes. Iceman gets all up in Maverick’s face, and they may as well just kiss. Maverick and Goose get called to the principal’s commander’s office in time to hear the tower controller yell “I WANT SOME BUTTS!“, which really doesn’t help how homoerotic this movie is. The commander, Viper, tells them to obey the rules or they’ll be kicked out.

Time for some tragic backstory! Viper and Jester discuss how Maverick is just like his father, who was also a pilot and who died in a dogfight in Vietnam. Elsewhere, Goose tells Maverick to play nice because he has to think about his family. In class, Charlie flirts with Maverick a little and slips him her address. But first, he has to go and play shirtless volleyball and make intense eye contact with Iceman.

He goes straight from volleyball to Charlie’s, and immediately asks if he can take a shower. Dude, no. Over dinner, we get some more tragic backstory – his mother died not long after his father, and he’s not even really sure how his father died because CLASSIFIED. Maverick leaves to take a shower. Cut to the next morning. They run into each other in the elevator and flirt, then spring apart when a senior officer enters and gives them side eye.

Cut to the airport. Goose’s wife (Meg Ryan, with some truly incredible hair) and kid have come to visit. Bless. Later, they’re in another class and Charlie is wearing the most monumentally awful glasses. She runs them through Maverick’s encounter with the MiG, and basically says he did everything wrong. He looks pissy, but other pilots tell him what a gutsy move it was.

Maverick storms off and revs his bike when Charlie tries to talk to him about it, then speeds away. She follows and nearly gets in an accident. They yell at each other, then make out. Obviously. This throws us to a weirdly blue-lit sex scene. Incidentally, the lighting is wonk-tastic because they added this scene in reshoots and Kelly McGinnis had already dyed her hair for another role.

The sex is oddly hilarious anyway, because Maverick keeps staring around the room throughout, and it gave off a “Just pretend she’s Iceman, and it’ll be over soon” vibe.

Another flying session. It starts with this classic:



Maverick bails on his wingman to go after Viper, and ends up getting “killed” by Jester. He’s pissed. In the locker room, Iceman informs him that his flying is awesomesauce but his attitude stinks. Maverick looks moodily at a photo of him and his father. At a bar, Goose plays piano and sings Great Balls of Fire to his kid, and it’s adorable. Carole tells Charlie that it’s obvious Maverick’s fallen for her. Later, Maverick and Charlie make out on his motorbike, which seems like a terrible idea.

Flying thing. Iceman cuts Maverick off trying to get a shot at Jester, but can’t get a lock. Maverick yells at him to shit or get off the pot, and eventually Iceman flies off. Maverick and Goose get stuck in his jet wash and their engines fail. The Tomcat goes into a spin, and Maverick can’t recover it. They eject, but Goose hits the canopy and dies, depriving us of the best character in the whole damned movie.

Maverick stands around in his enormous granny panties and blames himself for Goose’s death, though an investigation clears him. Carole tearfully tells him that Goose would have kept flying. Jester and Viper get Maverick back in the air with a new radar guy, but he won’t engage. Iceman offers his condolences, and Maverick quits. Charlie finds him at the airport and tells him that it wasn’t his fault. He has no fucks to give, and she storms off.

Maverick goes to Viper’s house, and Viper tells him what really happened to his father – they were in enemy territory, and weren’t supposed to be there, which is why it’s so super-classified. Daddy Maverick’s plane got hit, but he refused to leave his fellow pilots. He saved three planes before he was shot down. Viper says that Maverick has enough points to graduate from Top Gun, and Maverick looks thoughtful.

Graduation. Iceman and his radar guy win the ugly trophy. Maverick congratulates them. Of course, this can’t be the end, so there’s an unexpected crisis, and five of them are given orders to head to said crisis. Cut to 24 hours later, back on the aircraft carrier from the start of the film. I find it hard to believe that the crisis waited for them to arrive, but whatever.

Iceman and Hollywood provide air support, while Maverick and Cougar’s radar guy, Merlin, wait on the flight deck as back up. Five MiGs turn up, and Hollywood gets shot down. He and his radar guy eject. Maverick takes off to provide back up to Iceman. The catapult breaks, so no other jets can be launched. Maverick ends up stuck in jetwash again but regains control. Still, he freaks and turns back to the ship. But then he strokes Goose’s dogtags (IDEK, you guys), and that gives him the courage to get back to his wingman. Iceman gets hit and has to shut down an engine, but they beat the Totally Not Russians, and triumphantly buzz the tower.

Back on deck, Iceman and Maverick hug, and JUST KISS ALREADY.

Maverick builds a bridge over his problems, and throws Goose’s dogtags into the ocean. RUDE. Give them to Goose’s kid, yo. Sweaty Commander tells Maverick that he’s a hero and can have any post he wants. Maverick says he wants to be a Top Gun instructor. Cut to a bar in Miramar. You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling starts playing on the jukebox, and Maverick looks up to see Charlie there. He grins at her and they kiss. The end.

As always, the Twitter content was better than the movie. Especially the parts where our good friend Wendy ranted about military inaccuracies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Join us next month when Alex takes the lead and we watch Commando – 7 March 2015 at 8pm GMT.

 

K (all posts)

I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.





Written by

K

I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.