A million-dollar garage, weird rivalries, and who are we fighting,
anyway? You might feel a need for speed after watching the "Top Gun" movies,
but you’ll also be left with more questions than answers.
Integral to the ethos of the "Top Gun" movies and the TOPGUN school is the idea that these pilot
trainees are the best of the best. It's where the top 1% of new pilots go to study the most advanced
flying maneuvers. But at the end of "Top Gun," a few of our brand-new class of graduates are called
away urgently for a "crisis situation." In "Top Gun: Maverick," the entire movie is based around
teaching recent TOPGUN grads to fly a dangerous, urgent assignment to destroy a nuclear facility.
Maverick ends up leading the mission himself in "Top Gun: Maverick," of course, but are there
no other veterans out there with any chops at all? In the first "Top Gun," the cadets don't even have
time to enjoy their graduation banquet. The plot intervenes to place them in a deadly situation
that just doesn't seem like an actual entry-level assignment, even for the "best of the best."
The most cognitively dissonant part of the first "Top Gun" is the relationship between our
protagonist Maverick and his arch-rival, Iceman. If you just read the dialogue in their scenes,
you might assume Iceman is actually the lead role, because every single thing he sneers
at his reckless nemesis is actually just a very sensible thing to point out. Iceman
is described as a talented and polished pilot, and he points out multiple times that Maverick
acts irresponsibly by defying protocol and taking needless risks. The way the scenes are acted, and
the tension that Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise capably bring to their roles, make you more likely to root
for Maverick just out of movie-watching habit. Why is this blond jerk being so snide to our hero?
The thing is, Iceman is right: Maverick is talented but pure chaos,
and even his superiors admit they have grave doubts about how his attitude
will translate to combat. Maverick even indirectly gets Goose killed,
and Iceman takes the high road and offers his sympathy instead of saying "I told you so."
"Mitchell, I'm sorry about Goose."
At the end of "Top Gun," Maverick saves Iceman's life in combat
and they become lifelong friends, so all's well that ends well.
But no one brings up that Maverick learned nothing. He ignored Iceman's level-headed and
reasonable advice, and it all just kind of worked out for the best in spite of him.
Any moviegoer that's seen a war movie is familiar with the iconography of military dog tags.
In countless scenes, they're recovered from the fallen as a symbolic gesture of carrying
the memory of their service, and in due course passed on to the soldier's next-of-kin. Why then,
in "Top Gun," does Maverick keep Goose's dog tags instead of giving them to his widow?
At first, distraught as he is with grief, it's understandable that he would hold onto
them as he pondered whether to continue his career as a pilot. But ultimately,
after the big climatic dogfight, Maverick cathartically throws them into the ocean,
ensuring Goose's family will never get them. It could be argued that this is in keeping
with Maverick's rather self-centered nature, but "Top Gun" lets us know with the score
and general tone of the scene that it considers this a meaningful, thoughtful moment.
Maverick's appeal in both "Top Gun" movies is a self-fulfilling paradox. He's the main
character and beautiful women are drawn to him, so presumably he must be charming. But that doesn't
hold up when you watch his actual interactions with Charlie Blackwood, played by Kelly McGillis
in "Top Gun." First, after a mildly amusing but also embarrassing impromptu karaoke session,
he follows into the women's bathroom to make a fool of himself and aggressively hit on her.
Instead of being even momentarily cowed or apologetic when he realizes
she's actually a TOPGUN instructor, Maverick interrupts her presentation
and embarrasses her again in front of all the other recruits. There is some vague
pillow talk about how she's impressed by his flying skills, and wants to hear more
about the inverted maneuver with an enemy MiG he pulls off in the beginning of the movie. Still,
their romance largely unfolds with a dreamlike inevitability. It's almost as if they conclude
that they should fall in love just because they both look like very attractive movie stars.
Early in "Top Gun" it's insinuated that Maverick has succeeded in spite of the reputation of his
late father, himself a pilot who died during the Vietnam War under mysterious circumstances.
Much like how he would later work against Rooster in "Top Gun: Maverick,"
Maverick is denied entry to the naval academy because of Duke Mitchell's negative reputation,
implying that the military holds grudges for more than a generation. Eventually,
Commander Mike "Viper" Mitchell reveals to Maverick that his father died a hero.
"His F-4 was hit. He was wounded but he could have made it back.
He stayed in it. Saved three planes before he bought it."
This quick explanation raises a multitude of questions that Maverick doesn't bother to ask.
How does a wounded man in a damaged plane save three other planes?
Viper says it was all covered up because it happened on the wrong side of a border, but
doesn't explain why the elder Mitchell ended up being blamed for his own death instead of
lauded as a life-saving hero. Maverick's surface-level acceptance of a secret
he's waited his entire life to learn just makes it all the more confusing.
"Top Gun: Maverick" trades the shallow, glossy romance of the first movie
for a deeper, more lived-in love story as he reconnects with Penny Benjamin,
played by Jennifer Connelly. Penny Benjamin is referenced in "Top Gun" as the "admiral's
daughter" that Maverick had a dalliance with, among his many other insubordinations. It adds
an element of nostalgic sweetness as the characters bond over paternal struggles.
Bit by bit, it's revealed or implied that Penny and Maverick have gotten together and
split up several times over the years. Indeed, if they first became involved before the events
shown in "Top Gun," by the time "Top Gun: Maverick" takes place they've been on again,
off again for nearly four decades. Penny's daughter even somewhat coldly warns Maverick
not to break her mother's heart again. Though the actors have chemistry, the vague references
they make to a shared past don't really seem to reflect the actual amount of time that the
characters have known one another. They pick up where they left off entirely too easily, and
never have to hash out what drove them apart in the past at any length or in any depth.
The biggest gaping hole in the screenplay of both "Top Gun" movies is the identity of the
ever-mysterious "enemy." Devotees and armchair sleuths have various explanations for both movies:
in short, based on a few clues, it's likely either Russia or China in "Top Gun,"
and could more or less only be Iran in "Top Gun:
Maverick." But the movies themselves dance around the topic with an unsubtle deliberateness that
requires us as viewers to just quiet down the basic deductive parts of our brains.
In "Top Gun," the "enemy" is only represented by a few MiG fighters seen in action sequences,
so you don't have much time to wonder about their point of origin. But in "Top Gun:
Maverick," we see extensive, clear footage of the enemy nation's
"5th generation" advanced fighter jets — the pilots of which wear conveniently tinted visors.
Later, Maverick and Rooster run onto an enemy airfield and steal one of their planes,
all without catching a glimpse of a human face or any kind of telltale flag or insignia.
Ultimately neither "Top Gun" movie can afford to identify the enemy nation involved,
because to do so would risk inflaming international tensions in the actual
world and raise impossible questions to answer in their fictional one. Namely, wouldn't the
climax of both movies rise to the level of an incident that could incite World War III?
In "Top Gun," set in the waning days of the Cold War, shooting down a few MiG fighters
could perhaps be reasonably settled with whatever country they came from without further escalation.
It's "Top Gun: Maverick" that truly makes no sense. The nation that America is so keen
to prevent from enriching uranium may not have nuclear capability just yet,
but it has sophisticated surface-to-air missiles. They also have 5th generation fighter planes that
are superior to what Maverick and co. are flying. Such a nation would definitely have
long-range missiles that would lay waste to our heroes' entire aircraft carrier more or
less immediately after the mission, and presumably incite all-out war from there.
The years have apparently been very kind to Pete "Maverick" Mitchell between "Top Gun" and "Top
Gun: Maverick." He barely looks any older, he still gets to fly planes, and he's stretched
every penny of his Captain's salary to the limit as he owns two absurdly expensive vehicles,
as does his love interest Penny Benjamin. Mav has his own personal hanger with a vintage P-51 plane
worth $4.5 million, as well as a vintage green Aston Martin worth more than $22 million.
Not to be outdone, the bar that Penny owns is either incomprehensibly successful or her
admiral father has helped her out considerably. She owns a sailboat valued at more than $300,000,
and shows up at the end of the movie in a Porsche worth $181,000. Maverick must have a type: in
the original "Top Gun" his love interest Charlie drove a similarly-priced black Porsche speedster
as well. It's hard not to wonder: how do all these characters afford such expensive vehicles?
"Just wanna manage expectations."