So many people have asked me how is it that I have never seen Top Gun, and now that I have seen Top Gun, I have to ask myself why it took me so long. I loved Afterburner in the arcade, why wouldn’t I love this? Then again, I loved Spy Hunter and didn’t see my first James Bond movie until junior year of college.
Watching Top Gun is like watching someone’s idea of what the military would be like if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell finally was repealed. Plenty of cabaret singing? Check! A hell of a lot guys close talking to the point where you’re waiting for them to just kiss already? Check! Tom Cruise standing in towel with his leg up on a bench trying to get Anthony Edwards to look? Double-check!
But just so that no one would accuse of Top Gun of being homosexual propaganda, Tony Scott sticks in as many scenes of the grossest make-out sessions as he can between Tom “All Tongue, All The Time” Cruise and Kelly McGillis. I thought actors usually didn’t go for the tongue action during kissing scenes. Not Tom Cruise. He slobbers McGillis’s face like he’s Jabba the Hutt.
I recently heard that some actors were complaining that they don’t look as good in HD as they do in standard definition. Kelly McGillis should join that group. Blu-Ray and HD are not her friends. Her teeth are as green as the gates of Oz. Green smoker’s-teeth have freaked me out since I was a kid. I don’t know what it is about them, but whenever an adult with those kind of teeth would laugh, it would freak me out more than any horror movie could. I still shudder just thinking about it. Some kids feared clowns. I feared middle-aged women with two pack a day habits.
There are pretty much only two songs in Top Gun. They are Danger Zone and Take My Breath Away. Each one serves to let the audience know what kind of scene to expect. Action scene: Danger Zone. Make-Out Scene: Take My Breath Away. Are Goose and Maverick going to make out here? No, Danger Zone is playing. Oh, what a different movie this could have been if those two songs were flipped.
The New York Times reported that Tony Scott might make a Top Gun 2. If Indiana Jones, Transformers and Wall Street are any indication, it will star Shia Lebeouf.
Hey, don’t forget the closing credits: I almost cried when I saw that, of all the Cheap Trick on my iTunes, none of those songs are Mighty Wings. So, so radical.
I find it ironic that lesbian Kelly McGillis and closeted Tom Cruise break the no tongue kissing rule. This fact would have passed me by if not for Tuesday Night Movies.