Then Joe Flaherty shows up with a special delivery: it’s an advertisement for the next movie! Then time marches on, killing us all eventually.
RATING: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
I’d Prefer a Highway Away from the Danger Zone, but Okay
Controversial yet objectively factual opinion: Anthony Edwards is hotter than Tom Cruise in Top Gun. First of all, the mustache? WORKS. Second of all, he’s fun! Third of all, Maverick is such a desperate, narcissistic, posturing, alienating, twerpy little prince that I find myself disorientingly at odds with a former self who long ago considered Tom Cruise to be attractive. Who was she? That woman who could look at a picture of young Tom and not flash immediately to this jittery rat terrier with a barely contained rage problem, a monomaniacal fixation on personal glory at the expense of the safety of everyone around him, and an approach to women that can charitably be described as Biff-esque? I don’t know her.1 Fourth of all, Maverick’s hair is bad! It needs to be EITHER SHORTER OR LONGER.2
Maverick is the villain of Top Gun.
I hadn’t seen Top Gun as an adult, and what I found watching it in my thirties was equal parts bloodcurdling and blood…emulsifying. Like, yes, watching movie stars in their electric youth will never not be life-affirming, as close to the pure beating heart of art as you can get, even if they are just yelling nonsense about planes, and the unapologetic homoeroticism is, frankly, woke as hell (?). Also, Meg Ryan is so good in this! So louche and alive! But, on the other hand, like I said, if he were a real person I would shoot Maverick with a crossbow.
Maverick is a navy pilot who’s out flying around with his friends in their planes when they encounter some…Russians? Who are the enemies in this movie? They never say! Maverick can’t shoot this son of a bitch, so he decides to see if he can have a lil fun with him. He goes upside down and takes a Polaroid giving the son of a bitch the finger. Dude, that jet is really expensive. How about you be a maverick in your own plane that you buy with your own allowance?
Meanwhile, Maverick’s wingman, Cougar, is buggin’. He almost got missiled by one of the enemies, and now he’s too freaked out to land, which, is that a real disease? The navy’s take appears to be, “We’ll just let him fly around until he runs out of fuel and crashes into the sea, oh well,” (???) but Maverick goes against orders and escorts Cougar back down to the aircraft carrier. In the first of about infinity times that Maverick breaks the rules and is rewarded for it, he and his friend Goose get picked to go to TOPGUN, an elite fighter pilot combat weapons academy training fly gun bad boy bang bang school in San Diego.
Maverick is so excited about San Diego that he rides his motorcycle next to the fighter plane runway and he is racing the plane and the plane takes off and Maverick does a big fist pump!! Yeah!!!! Boys rock!
At TOPGUN, Maverick and Goose meet their instructor, Viper (Tom Skerrit), their nemesis, Iceman (Val Kilmer), and all the other guys in the program: Sniffer, Stinky, Stumpy, Candle, Bandit, Bratwurst, Rapunzel, LilHorsie, Dustpan, Corncob, Marge, PeePeeBoy, Flipper, and Bingbong. Maverick is pretty arrogant, but Viper likes that in a pilot (WHY?). Maverick is positive that he will be the number-one top gun (WHY?).
Goose: The list is long but distinguished.
Bingbong: Yeah, so’s my johnson.
I want to hate it, but “Yeah, so’s my johnson” is a real workhorse of a phrase. It goes with anything, like using florals as a neutral. Try it!
They go out to a bar to bother women—“this is what I call a target-rich environment”—and Maverick spots a bangin’ blonde he can’t wait to alienate with his long johnson. He and Goose ambush her and sing, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” extremely aggressively into her face while the whole bar watches and laughs, and I tell you I would legitimately fucking catch on fire from embarrassment, but she’s just like, “Oh, you GUUUUUUYSSSSS,” as though this is a normal-adjacent thing to do. “I love that song! I’ve never seen that approach.” Truly praise be 2 the cinema for giving me this lifetime of extremely lifelike and believable female human characters!
Maverick’s like, “I’m Maverick” (why would you introduce yourself as your call sign!?!? She’s not a PLANE), and she’s like, “I’m Charlie,” and then she just kind of laughs at him and goes off to the little girls’ weewee room. And he follows her in there to ask her out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He’s so gross!
The next day, at plane Hogwarts, they’re having their first lesson with a civilian contractor who’s there to teach them about how planes stay up, and—OH SHIT. BATHROOM CHARLIE IS THE CIVILIAN CONTRACTOR. Maverick, did you sexually harass the civilian contractor AGAIN!?!? This happens every time we go to a new fighter boy pew pew school!
They discuss Maverick’s upside-down Polaroid maneuver, and Iceman asks, VALIDLY, “Who was covering Cougar while you were showboating?” Maverick is like, “Cougar was doing just fine,” but we know he wasn’t! He almost crashed and died and then literally quit the navy! Why is nobody but Iceman fact-checking Maverick here!?
We’re clearly supposed to resent Iceman for trying to stifle Maverick’s unbelievably bitching bad-boy flying skills in the name of “SAFETY” and “REGARD FOR OTHERS” (boooooo!), but,
