Top Gun-Beautiful People Doing Exciting Things and Repressed Homosexual Longings
In 1986 Tom Cruise could have been the star of nearly any film and that film would have probably sold a couple hundred million dollars worth of tickets. Of course, this star power is what fuels, pardon the pun, Top Gun. On one level, the success of Top Gun is very simple and straight-forward as audiences love seeing good looking, young sexy people doing exciting things. This has become a time honored formula in Hollywood and is an integrated part of most of the scripts that ultimately become blockbusters. Sometimes it is easy to forget that this formula is in work because it is used so often, however, if one pays attention one will see it in films ranging from romantic comedies to horror films. Its more than sex sells, what we are talking about is sexy people having fun, not just having sex or flirting. Everyone likes fun and everyone likes sexy people, even if the definitions of these two categories differ from culture to culture. Top Gun is a film that really drives this formula home as the film is literally soaked in the beautiful people doing exciting, fun things formula.
The script for Top Gun, when stripped of its fluffy details and repressed homo eroticism, is direct enough as we follow the lives of a group of fighter pilots, who are secretly in love with each other, as they perfect their craft of dealing aerial death. All the exciting scenes one would expect are present in the movie, ranging from aerial combat and training to great cockpit shots. Needless to say the film taps into the every little boys fantasy of not just flying an aircraft but flying a combat aircraft. Going fast is fun and Top Gun does a find job capturing that excitement both via solid directing and at times imaginative cinematography.
Top Gun could have easily seemed more like a silly, cheesy film if it were not for the strong cast who treated the relatively fluffy script seriously. Tom Cruise as Maverick and Val Kilmer as Iceman both turn in very good performances as does Kelly McGillis as Charlotte. Michael Ironside and Tom Skeritt toss in very believable performances as commanding officers which greatly add to the films overall feel of quality. Part of the success of Top Gun rests in these strong acting performances by most of the major players and this should not be overlooked. In short, this is a film, that with inferior casting, might have felt much more like a B-movie than a $300 million dollar plus mega-hit.
Director Tony Scott and Tom Cruise would reunite a few years later on the less successful Days of Thunder which was essentially Top Gun set in the world of auto racing in an attempt to transplant the formula, but it just doesn't work as well. In retrospect, Top Gun seems a bit goofy and has been the source of much parody. Obviously, the film is not some sort of masterpiece, nor was it intended to be. In a real sense, Top Gun is a formulaic money grab like many other Jerry Bruckheimer films. Bruckheimer's projects tend to focus on mindless fun and scripts that are littered with logic errors, but these scripts do give mass audiences what they want. Which is fine on occasion, but after a couple of decades now it is becoming a bit redundant. Still one is unlikely to forget many of Bruckheimer's films, even if they are massive train wrecks like Coyote (very) Ugly. Criticism aside, it is obviously that Bruckheimer understands the “beautiful people doing fun, exciting things” formula very well, perhaps too well at this point. Jerry would it kill you to make a couple of intelligent action flicks every once and a while? And please don't reference Armageddon or King Arthur.
Story C-
Acting B+ (The actors work will with the script they were given.)
Visuals A-
Originality/Innovation C- (What Top Gun lacks in originality it tries to make up for in visuals and adrenalin, like most of Bruckheimer's films.)
Enjoyability Grade B- (The weak script is bolstered by the films visuals and acting.)
Home Theater/HD Factor B
Overall Grade B- (Top Guns budget of about $15-20 million dollars seems comical by today's standards and would obviously cost many, many times that amount with today's inflated budgets.)
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