Top Gun (1986)

[Chedney Honks]

Watched those last night on UHD Blu-ray and it's one of the best all-round discs I've experienced. The Atmos mix is immense. We cranked it up and the sound of the jet engines is one of the most intense, exciting things I've heard in movies. HDR is stunning with those blazing amber skies and the jets and military men in silhouette. Mai waif and I kept looking at each other whenever there was a cool sound or imagery. Really great spectacle.

The actual movie I think I saw as I kid but I didn't remember anything, maybe just some iconic shots and bits of music, but they could have been cultural osmosis. Absolutely loved it. Pure big stick of cheese, beating off all over itself. Real homoerotic bonanza. Sweaty bods, stiff collars, even stiffer upper lips. What was it really about? Some guys training to be fighter pilots. At the end, they have to put it in practice. That's plenty.

Great camaraderie. Better dialogue. Goddammit. Amazing soundtrack, maybe topped by the enormous warm pads and crisp Linn drums of Harold Faltemeyer. A real brooding surge to make the hairs on your neck stand up. I don't think I've ever seen anything so unashamedly, sincerely cheesy. Cruiser is fantastic here. Pure cocksure buck with a shit eating grin, a diamond cutter in his tight jeans and bollocks heavy with boiling spunk.

Anyone seen Top Gun?

[bgmnts]

I listen to the Top Gun theme on a plane when it's maneuvering to take off on a runway. I then switch it to DANGER ZONE when the plane actually takes off.

Makes me feel a million bucks. It takes my breath away.

[Chedney Honks]

That's a fucking brilliant idea, thanks. In fact, I'm going to play Flight Sim this evening and do just that. Will get on the flying dinghy.

[greenman]

Yeah the UHD is really good although I tend to think that Tarantino rant maybe plays it up as homoerotic actioner more than it actually is, really I think its as much romance film, classic flawed hero healed by the love of a good woman.

Was the obvious start point of Hollywoods working closely with the US armed forces although perhaps not as jingoistic as you'd expect compared to a lot of what followed like ID4.

[Butchers Blind]

I've never seen Top Gun, should I? Does it hold up well compared so some 80's actioners which look a little dated?

[Chollis]

I've never seen Top Gun, should I? Does it hold up well compared so some 80's actioners which look a little dated?

it's good

[Chedney Honks]

I've never seen Top Gun, should I? Does it hold up well compared so some 80's actioners which look a little dated?

The OP gives you a perfect description, to be honest. It's 'dated' in the sense that it's completely devoid of irony and unashamedly cheesy, but that's also what provides its enormous charm. It's one where you want to high five, holler or punch the air after a lot of the dialogue. The action sequences are not only 'not dated', they've arguably never been surpassed. I can't remember ever seeing fighter jets or aerial combat filmed like that. There must have been massive involvement from the military. I've no idea how Scott did it, to be honest

[dissolute ocelot]

My problem is that there's a shortage of plane-based action and far too much lads larking around with a bit of unconvincing romance. Does anyone need to hear Tom Cruise sing? Even the climax is a bit of a damp squib:

Spoiler alert

it's hardly saving the world, it's just meaningless Cold War banter in the skies rather than on the volleyball court

[close]

.

Still, can't knock the soundtrack, Cruise-singing excluded.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Weirdly I've never seen this but I'm going to watch it tonight, though if I don't like it I'm going to fucking destroy you.

Edlt: Fuck, meant to send this by pm.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I played a drinking game while watching it once. If I remember rightly, you had to drink any time you saw a sunset, barrel roll, or anything deemed homoerotic. I had once of the worst hangovers of my life the next day.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Before I start I'd like to point out that I often admire Mr Honks taste in cinema, we love many of the same films and even if I disagree he tends to make a great argument as to why a film is worth watching.

But not today. And sure, it's a much loved acclaimed blockbuster that took millions at the box office and is still often shown at cinemas to this day, but Mr Honks and everyone who likes it is wrong and I am right, just so you know.

Great camaraderie. Better dialogue. Goddammit. Amazing soundtrack, maybe topped by the enormous warm pads and crisp Linn drums of Harold Faltemeyer. A real brooding surge to make the hairs on your neck stand up. I don't think I've ever seen anything so unashamedly, sincerely cheesy. Cruiser is fantastic here. Pure cocksure buck with a shit eating grin, a diamond cutter in his tight jeans and bollocks heavy with boiling spunk.

Anyone seen Top Gun?

Now I'll agree that visually the action scenes are quite fun, at least when it's not a shot of the pilot in the cockpit. But the dialogue is fucking atrocious, embarrassingly poor idiocy (I mean at one point after being insulted Cruise hits back with "You stink", and that's one of his smarter comebacks), during the flight scenes there's a huge amount of repetitive nonsense, and during the flight school lessons it's filled with a lot of technical tedium.

I hated the music too, it reminded me of why I rarely listened to the radio in the eighties, and the incidental music was poor too,

Spoiler alert

that bit that plays over Goose's floating corpse is painfully melodramatic

[close]

and naff.

Apart from Tom Skerrit and that bald fella who smoked cigars a lot I couldn't stand any of the characters either, they're obnoxious, arrogant shits, and each time they took to the sky I hoped they'd crash and burn, and the only moment I genuinely enjoyed

Spoiler alert

was Goose's death

[close]

.

Again, I may be wrong, but I'm clearly not and could Mr Honks please pm me his address so that I can pop round tomorrow afternoon to do that destroying thing.

9.8/10

[Chedney Honks]

Haha, love it. I can't actually disagree with the facts there, but I think many of those things are the exact strengths of the movie. There's absolutely nothing clever or knowing or intelligent about it at all. All the pilot gobbledygook is pure flavour text, designed to give people with a military hard on a military hard on. Likewise, Cruiser and Kilmer and so on are total melts, but if you can embrace that ludicrous thin-skinned testosterone, it's the purest distillation of the that totals bullshit I've seen. Predator is spectacular for similar reasons except they're iron muscle Gatling gun super soldiers, not the fighter jet equivalent of sixth formers.

I think we have to just disagree on the music. I wouldn't listen to any of that in any other context, but it really suits those blazing sunsets and Cruiser petulantly ragging around on the fucking motorbike! Haha. Just remembered that Andrew his little jacket with the fur lining. I'm not enjoying it ironically at all, I think it's a genuinely entertaining powerhouse of blockbuster cinema.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Haha, love it. I can't actually disagree with the facts there, but I think many of those things are the exact strengths of the movie. There's absolutely nothing clever or knowing or intelligent about it at all. All the pilot gobbledygook is pure flavour text, designed to give people with a military hard on a military hard on. Likewise, Cruiser and Kilmer and so on are total melts, but if you can embrace that ludicrous thin-skinned testosterone, it's the purest distillation of the that totals bullshit I've seen. Predator is spectacular for similar reasons except they're iron muscle Gatling gun super soldiers, not the fighter jet equivalent of sixth formers.

I think we have to just disagree on the music. I wouldn't listen to any of that in any other context, but it really suits those blazing sunsets and Cruiser petulantly ragging around on the fucking motorbike! Haha. Just remembered that Andrew his little jacket with the fur lining. I'm not enjoying it ironically at all, I think it's a genuinely entertaining powerhouse of blockbuster cinema.

I wish I felt the same way and for the first 15 minutes or so I was quite enjoying it, and some non-action-y bits entertained (I mean that volleyball scene has rightly gone in to cinema history), but I think I disliked the character's so much that I started to lose interest. And the music is definitely a personal thing, I hated the songs at the time when I wasn't aware they were on the soundtrack, but to hear them in the movie today really didn't enamour it to me. I should have pointed out that Val Kilmer is quite good in the film though, he's an unlikeable turd but at least he's meant to be and he pulls off the role seemingly effortlessly.

[mothman]

I'm trying to remember if my youngest has seen this; if so I'll see what she made of it. I've a feeling she hasn't though. I feel the need to suggest it was very much of its time, but then that's what Yewtreed celebs say, so..?

But then she loves Jaws (Shark film), even though it was made thirty years before she was born. But then one could argue that's a much more timeless film than Top Gun (homoerotic flying film).

[evilcommiedictator]

Interesting fact, the movie, they're shooting down Libyan jets, as that was the conflict at the time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Sidra_incident_(1981)

And if you've enjoyed the movie, go and watch Hot Shots! afterwards.

[touchingcloth]

Is it as good as Top of the Guns?

[PlanktonSideburns]

Haha, love it. I can't actually disagree with the facts there, but I think many of those things are the exact strengths of the movie. There's absolutely nothing clever or knowing or intelligent about it at all. All the pilot gobbledygook is pure flavour text, designed to give people with a military hard on a military hard on. Likewise, Cruiser and Kilmer and so on are total melts, but if you can embrace that ludicrous thin-skinned testosterone, it's the purest distillation of the that totals bullshit I've seen. Predator is spectacular for similar reasons except they're iron muscle Gatling gun super soldiers, not the fighter jet equivalent of sixth formers.

I think we have to just disagree on the music. I wouldn't listen to any of that in any other context, but it really suits those blazing sunsets and Cruiser petulantly ragging around on the fucking motorbike! Haha. Just remembered that Andrew his little jacket with the fur lining. I'm not enjoying it ironically at all, I think it's a genuinely entertaining powerhouse of blockbuster cinema.

I like it in Preadator because they all shit their pants then die. If they had all bar the annoying one with glasses survived and whipped eachother with towels by a sunset I would have hated Preadator

Imagine how much better top gun would have been if every time they went back to the changing room, one of them was hanging up in the showers with all his skin off