Mum's Monday Top Gun (1986)

 

Top Gun (1986)

With the announcement of Top Gun 2, I thought I would look back at the first one.

This film goes straight in with the action, as we see Lieutenant Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and his co-pilot Goose (Anthony Edwards) flying a Tomcat in a dog fight with 2 MIGS. Maverick manoeuvres the plane into a previously thought impossible position, upside down above 1 of the MIGS. Maverick and Goose, are pilots in the Navy and this should make it seem that Maverick is mature and responsible, but the opposite is true. Mavericks character comes across as immature, irresponsible and with not a care in the world (although he does, with little fuel go and help down a fellow pilot who has lost his nerve). His job is hanging by a thread, he is a good pilot even though he takes risks (a legacy from his late father) and likes doing a fly by passed the control towers whenever he gets the chance.

After a stern talking to, Maverick and Goose are sent to a top naval training school, this is known as Top Gun. At the beginning of this film I thought ‘Yes Maverick with Goose is going to win the Top Gun trophy at the end’ as most films the main character comes out on top. This film is better than that and does it in such a way that risk takers have to win the hard way.

This film is clever in that it shows the dangers of having a group of pilots in a bar when a woman is present. The unique chat up line Maverick uses gets everyone involved, much to the embarrassment of the woman however, the next day the embarrassment turns right back on Maverick. The woman he was chatting up is a civilian instructor Charlie (Kelly Mcgillis) at Top Gun. Despite knowing about the upside down manoeuvre, Charlie tells the pilots it still cannot be done, to which Maverick stops her and tells her it was him who did it. This film shows yes Charlie see a lot of pilots and it shows that other pilots have had a crush on her before, but this film makes Maverick stand out above the rest and Charlie is interested in the story of the first thought impossible manoeuvre.

The dangers of falling for someone at work. After a flying training session, at the debrief, Charlie can’t say how she really feels about Maverick’s flying because she thinks everyone will know she has fallen for him. This may seem a little paranoid as the pilots would be more focused on the job they are doing and not just two people.

Lastly the dangers of telling your wife too much information. When Goose’s wife Carole (Meg Ryan) and his son comes to visit him at Top Gun, one of the first things she says to Maverick is that he is in love with one of the instructors. This is a funny scene but awkward for Goose.

The film shows that sometimes to get the job done you may have to take risks but is you want to succeed you have to do things by the book like Iceman (Val Kilmer). Maverick learns this when tragedy strikes, even though he is cleared of all wrong doing, this changes his perspective on taking risks. This however, turns him into not such a good pilot as before. We see a real in-depth look into the character of Maverick and we then understand it is the risks that make him a good pilot.

One of my favourite scenes is in a classroom when Maverick asks Charlie out on a date. She flatly refuses but she is holding a clip board and writing. When she drops a piece of paper in front of him it has her address on it and time. One of the other pilots makes a snide comment about him being rejected and Maverick smugly tells him he stinks.

This film has stood the test of time as I still use some of the lines from the film about feeling the need for speed and great balls of fire and the dangers are still around today, men and women have asked people out and have not known who they really are, in some places an office romance is frowned

upon or forbidden completely and how many women have let slip something their husband, partner or friend have told them in confidence? Answer loads still today. The soundtrack is also memorable and when I hear “Take My Breathe Away” by Berlin it always reminds me of this film.

After all the pilots graduated from Top Gun they had immediate orders to go out into the real world and had a real combat dog fight to contend with. The character Maverick showed his true colours as a pilot and won the day and it was nice to see Iceman compliment him.

In the end it was nice to see Maverick where he wanted to be, a nice feel good ending to an action packed film.

Thank you for reading

Sandra