Top Gun – tape 945

This tape opens with the end of the LWT weather (Sponsored by Zone Phone, that short-lived proto-mobile service I mentioned a while back).

Then, Top Gun. It’s fair to say it’s not a film I love. I don’t mind Tom Cruise in many things, but at this stage of his career, he was concentrating on his hyper-macho persona. I wonder if part of my antipathy to this is because I actually liked Cruise in Risky Business, where he was much more of an everyman, and this was him as the ultimate alpha male, which doesn’t really interest me.

Everyone in this movie appears to be sweating. All the time. It’s quite weird. I can understand it for the pilots just off an encounter with ‘The Migs’ (as the always unnamed enemy are referred to) but even their boss, James Tolkan (Mr Strickland from Back to the Future) is all shiny.

Cruise, as ‘Maverick’, gets a chance to attend the navy’s elite fighter training school, the titular Top Gun, along with his co-pilot Goose (ER’s Anthony Edwards), after the best pilot in his group loses his nerve after the Mig encounter.

This movie is almost like a time capsule of the 80s, a distillation of everything, good and bad, that I think of when I think of 80s movies. It’s got the synthy Harold Faltermeyer score, heavy with the classic 80s drum beats, it’s chock full of 80s rock and power ballads, many courtesy of the peerless Giorgio Moroder, including two iconic hits – Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins, and Take My Breath Away by Berlin, which were also huge single hits.

It’s also a textbook presentation of Tony Scott’s directorial style, honed by years working in commercials. Almost everything is shot using long lenses, which has the effect of compressing everything on the frame, and increasing the effect of all the smoke he uses to make the light rays shine just right. And he’s never met a sky that doesn’t look better with a graduated filter slapped all over it. He must have loved it when digital grading came along, and he could do most of these tricks in post-production. I bet it saved him a ton of time on set.

And then there’s the cast, filled with the brightest young actors of the time, before they moved on to greater (or sometimes lesser) things. Val Kilmer is Iceman, whose role in the movie is supposed to be the ‘bad guy’ – Maverick’s competition for the top of the class – but who, in actual fact, is the best pilot mainly because he’s controlled, does things by the book, and cares about the safety of his fellow flyers. Let’s face it, in this movie Maverick is the villain.

Other familiar faces in the cast include Rick Rossovich as Slider, who seemed to be in quite a few movies at this time, but never quite got his big starring vehicle.

There’s even a young Tim Robbins in the final dogfight scene.

Before classes begin, Maverick spots a beautiful woman in the bar, and tries to impress her by singing ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’. This almost made my ears hurt it was so painfully off key. This scene was later co-opted by Robson Green and Jerome Flynn in Soldier Soldier leading to their brief pop career.

The beautiful woman turns out to be Kelly McGillis, a civilian instructor at Top Gun. Because this is a movie, naturally, she and Cruise develop something of a relationship, and because this was the 80s, she’s not fired for it.

The sexual politics in this movie are about the only thing I don’t have a problem with, which is odd when so many older movies now seem really troubling. Their relationship, ignoring the teacher/student power differential, while it’s a bit quick off the mark, seems entirely mutual, and Cruise is charming throughout, with the exception of the one scene when McGillis criticises Cruise’s flying in class, and when she tries to talk to him afterwards he’s just revving his motorcycle engine at her. He was definitely a dick there.

Other 80s legends in the cast are the great Michael Ironside (call sign Jester).

Also, Tom Skerritt (Viper).

And Meg Ryan makes an appearance as Goose’s wife. She’s not in it much, but I do like the way she’s written and played, and the scenes with her, Edwards and Cruise very clearly illustrate a strong bond not only between Ryan and Edwards, but also with Cruise.

As for the oft-discussed homo-erotic subtext that many other people have talked about, I’d have to say there’s very little that’s ‘sub’ about it. It does feel like the gayest blockbuster ever, especially when the obligatory sports scene is a beach volleyball game. It only seems odd because we’re not used to seeing men presented on screen this way, so in that way maybe it’s massively progressive. I did also think, in the last scene when the pilots have just defeated the ‘Migs’ in a life or death battle, and Maverick and Iceman square off and do their “You can be my wingman any day” stuff, I did actually shout “Just kiss, already” at the screen.

So, this will never be a movie I love, but it’s by no means a movie I hate.

After this, recording continues, with the start of what looks like a made of TV movie called The Return of Desperado. The tape ends during this.

This is the first tape I’ve looked at since I’ve been back from a two week holiday visiting Disneyland Paris. So I was quite surprised to see that one of the first adverts on the tape was for Lunn Poly, featuring Big Thunder Mountain.

That’s from Walt Disney World in Florida, though, and not the one in Paris – this tape predates the opening of Disneyland Paris by at least a couple of years. Still, it’s another of those strange coincidences that just keep happening with this project.

Adverts:

• Metropolitan Police Recruitment
• RAC
• Lyons Decaffeinated Tea Bags
• Sunday Times
• Lunn Poly
• Burger King
• trail: London’s Burning/Hale & Pace
• Heineken – Josie Lawrence and Celia Imrie
• Lloyd’s Bank – Nigel Havers, Jan Francis
• Heineken
• Vauxhall Calibra
• Mail on Sunday
• Heineken
• trail: Desperado
• Royal Navy
• Tilda
• Tennent’s Pilsner
• General Accident
• Nintendo

• trail: The Tall Guy
• Tesco – Dudley Moore
• Irn Bru
• KP Frisps
• Weetabix
• Castella Classic – Russ Abbott
• Tesco – Dudley Moore
• trail: London’s Burning
• trail: The Tall Guy
• Bisto
• Sunday Mirror
• Robocop 2 in cinemas
• Lycra
• Allied
• Gillette Sensor
• Woolmark
• Capri-Sun
• Capital Radio
• trail: Sunday on LWT
• Yorkie
• National Savings
• Johnny Handsome/Next of Kin on video
• Radio Rentals
• British Telecom
• Sellotape
• Robocop 2 in cinemas
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Tennent’s Pilsner
• RAC
• Woolmark