Iceman approaches Maverick, just to twist the knife: “I’m sorry about Goose. Everybody liked him.” Curse you, Iceman! From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!
The villain of this movie literally only says kind and responsible things the entire time.
Maverick decides he’s going to drop out of TOPGUN, and, oh no? It’s hard to care about the loss of one insubordinate and only slightly above-average pilot when I have no idea who the navy is actually fighting or what’s at stake. Are we in a war? What do fighter pilots actually DO? Am I just supposed to be sad abstractly at the squandering of a great plane-flying talent? Because I’m not. Charlie takes a job in Washington and moves away. Maverick goes to see Viper and gets the classified scoop on his dead dad. I didn’t pay attention to what it was. Viper tells him, “You’re a lot like he was, only better, and worse.” (Thanks?)
It’s TOPGUN graduation day. Maverick shows up super late like an asshole and basically misses it. Iceman wins number-one top gun, AS HE SHOULD, and then all of a sudden there’s some sort of…enemy…plane…situation…! I don’t know what the story line of this movie is!
They have to do a real fighter plane mission like big boys. Maverick gets assigned to fly with Merlin, replacing Goose, and I gotta say I think it’s really nice that they let you have a friend go in the plane with you! Not sure how Merlin’s big pointy hat is going to fit inside his helmet but NOT! MY! PURVIEW! Iceman expresses some concerns to Viper about letting Maverick pilot a $30 million murder plane right now, and even that is totally reasonable! Maverick has fucked up every single fucking thing, his best friend just died, and he couldn’t even show up on time to graduation!
Viper sends Maverick out anyway, and they beat the bad guys (?) (or bad girls—women can be bad!) because Maverick finally learned ONE FUCKING THING, which is not to leave his wingman. Honk honk. Then, at the end, he buzzes the tower again and makes the tower man spill his coffee AGAIN! That’s what you get for stealing Merlin’s tower!!!!!
Iceman and Maverick have a tender moment, and then Charlie comes back from DC to be Little Miss Mrs. Maverick. Then Maverick emotionally drops Goose’s necklace into the ocean at the end, and in conclusion, I just have to say, FUCK YOU, MAN!! GIVE THAT TO HIS KID!!!!!!!
If they recut Top Gun with Maverick edited out, it would be a gorgeous short film about sunsets and friendship. Petition to recut real life with all Mavericks edited out.
RATING: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
Footnotes
1 Paradoxically, I do think that Tom Cruise is an excellent movie star, and I enjoy his movies!
2 ALSO ICEMAN’S HAIR.
Fabrizio’s Last Meatball
I don’t remember a lot of specifics about watching Titanic in theaters in 1997, but I was fifteen years old, which means my two primary concerns in life were 1) locating romance, and 2) not dying in a nautical catastrophe. So I think we can safely assume that I fucking loved that movie. I watched Titanic again on TV with my sister a few years later, making sure to switch it off right before the whole iceberg thingy (stressful!)—a strategy that turns the movie into a pleasant romp about two teenagers who take a perfectly safe boat ride and then bang in a horseless carriage. The end. Charming! Watching Titanic for a third time, for the purposes of this essay, I cannot imagine what I was thinking that second time around. I could not wait to get to the second half and watch all these motherfuckers drown.
Titanic is three hours and fourteen minutes long, which—fun fact—is longer than the actual journey of the Titanic (this is not a fact). It is sooooo ballsy to just assume people will watch your movie for three hours and fourteen minutes! Especially when everyone already knows exactly what happens in the end (spoiler: the boat is Keyser Söze). Sorry, Epcot Center, I’mma let you finish, but James Cameron’s balls are like the giantest balls of all time. It would take three hours and fourteen minutes just to walk around the circumference of James Cameron’s balls.
Anyway, here’s what happens in Titanic. In case you forgot, it is terrible:
It starts out on a modern-times submarine. Bill Paxton is snooping around on the ocean floor trying to find a big necklace to impress Britney Spears. James Cameron himself has literally done this, and Paxton’s character is clearly Cameron’s idea of what a cool person is like—he does stuff like wear male earrings and say “sayonara” in a sarcastic voice. Awww yeeeeah. Pretty cool. Bill Paxton finds this old safe in the ocean, expecting it to be full of Titanic diamonds, but instead it’s just an old doodle of some boobs. Total rip-off!…OR IS IT?
An old lady recognizes her boob-doodle on the news and goes to visit Bill Paxton on James Cameron’s rock-and-roll treasure boat, where they make her watch a gruesome CGI reenactment of the Titanic sinking (I believe the working title is Hey, Granny, Fuck Your PTSD). Then she tells her story, which is extremely not pertinent to treasure-hunting, unless by treasure you mean three hours of nonsense, garbage, terror, death, and Italian stereotypes.
Turns out, that old lady used to be Kate Winslet, and one time she rode a big boat named Titanic. But she wasn’t too happy about it! “It was the ship of dreams to everyone else,” she says. “To me, it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains.” Yes. Because generations of imprisonment, rape, and violently coerced labor are just like having to marry Billy Zane and live in a fur-lined bon-bon palace. (Also, it’s
