Top Gun

When I was a kid, I refused to see Top Gun when it first came out. My brother wanted to see it, you see, and I was a little pain in the ass so I said "Uh-uh! I don't wanna see that!" I did this also with Untouchables the next year. Hell, I even did that with the movie Sexy Beast in 2001. I can be quite aggravating, as many no doubt have noticed.

When I finally did get around to seeing the movie, oh boy! Fighter planes! Missiles! I saw it 14 times in the movie theater. 14 times. I made everyone take me. I don't mean family even. I mean I'd go spend the night at people's houses who hadn't seen the movie (and many of whom I didn't even like) just to make their parents take us. I loved, loved, loved Top Gun.

I just watched it again for the first time in possibly 2 decades and boy did I miss a lot. First of all, and most obviously, there're a hell of a lot of scenes of sweating men in little or no clothing. As a seven year old, I only remember closing my eyes when the screen went blue for the love scene between maverick and "charlie." Speaking of which, "Charlie"? Oh jeez, how 'bout subtlety on the innuendo?

Homosexual subtext or supertext aside, the main thing that struck me was that the whole point of the film was that the Navy sent its best pilots to this school to get better at dogfighting. The lead instructor makes a big speech at the introduction to the school about how pilots had gotten too reliant on missiles and not used their guns enough.

After graduating from, supposedly, the world's best dogfighting school, what happens? The Americans get into it with the Russians...and it's the Russians who use their guns and outmaneuver the lame-o Americans, even shooting one of the Americans down (Hollywood to be specific). How do the Americans win? By shooting down the Russians with missiles. Great, thanks for wasting my time by making me watch an hour and a half of pointless training. What? Let me get this straight...you are going to send Maverick, who apparently didn't learn a damn thing at the school, back to be an instructor? Brilliant. And the US taxpayers get to pay for an ultimately pointless school where, apparently, the real training is in giving lusty glances at your fellow pilots and navigators while you're sweating in your tidy-whities. Oh, and playing sweaty volley-ball while flexing your muscles. Sweet!

If they do a remake, I say they let the Village People do the Kenny Loggins songs.