I can't believe none of the reviewers caught this one: my Top Gun 2 review

[jmowreader]

I just attended "Top Gun: Maverick." This review will contain spoilers.

Capsule review: If you even slightly liked the first one, definitely go to this. It is SO much better. And if you can, see it in IMAX. This thing is bigger than the big screen so find the biggest screen you can to watch it on.

Apparently they were trying to keep the religious right from boycotting the film: in the Big Love Scene between Tom Cruise's Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell and Jennifer Connelly's Penny Benjamin, who as Top Gun fans will remember was the admiral's daughter Mitchell made a "high speed pass" over, Penny is fully dressed and she forces Pete to climb out the window to keep her daughter from seeing him. (It doesn't work.)

I'm also surprised the Hard Right hasn't been screaming about the wokeness of this movie, in that the 12 "best of the best" fighter jocks include a woman, a complete spectrum of races, and one nerd who is so boring his callsign is his real first name. If they would have been able to find an Asian guy with the "need for speed" they'd have had every ethnicity there is.

So on to the film. After the mandatory footage of the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln launching and recovering F/A-18s and at least one F-35C to the tune of Kenny Loggins' Danger Zone, we visit Captain Mitchell who has been sent so far out in the desert he's got to live in a van down by the river...well, an abandoned hangar he keeps his personal P-51 in because of course an active-duty squid can (1) afford a $3 million airplane and (2) find purple avgas to run it on...because there's no housing for him, test-flying a hypersonic jet with a slight resemblance to an SR-71. There is absolutely no way this thing would ever be useful to the Navy, which is why they have a sailor test-flying it, right? Some admiral wants to unilaterally kill off Mitchell's program so he can illegally transfer the funds to his UAV program; he uses "but you haven't flown Mach 10 yet" as an excuse. Naturally, our hero goes out and does it, destroying the hypersonic jet in the process. After the medics scrape the not-so-good captain off the desert floor and reinflate him, he learns that his patron "Iceman" Kazansky has arranged to have him shipped to TOPGUN to train a group of hotshot young aviators for a suicide mission.

When he gets to "Naval Station San Diego" which is supposedly "Fightertown USA" and home base for the TOPGUN school - it's actually at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, but we won't talk about that right now - he is briefed on this mission which bears a striking resemblance to attacking the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope. And on this I am not kidding: you have this long complex canyon you need to fly through with surface-to-air missile batteries all around the rim, a little bitty hole you've got to hit exactly if you want the mission to succeed, and an insane climb to get the hell out of Dodge after you've unloaded because "turn around and go back the way you came" never occurred to anyone. The only thing they missed was Maverick telling his crews to trust the Force. This mission is so dangerous it nearly killed several aviators just in training, but they did it anyway.

After that it's pretty much what you'd expect: lots of thrilling aerial footage, interpersonal conflict between Maverick and Goose's son "Rooster" - who plays Great Balls of Fire on a piano in the bar all the aviators hang out in just like his daddy did - a slightly homoerotic flag football game on the beach, a weepy cameo between Maverick and the terminally-ill Iceman, Maverick pissing off admirals left and right, several maneuvers that would have gotten any real Naval Aviator kicked out of the service for even thinking about doing them, one buzzed control tower, Maverick riding the same motorcycle he had in the 1986 film - well, once; he has a new one for most of the film, Maverick getting canned for...well, being Maverick - and a successful mission that didn't really start World War III so stop saying that as the movie's climax.

Interestingly enough, the Fighter Weapons School flightline footage for this movie was shot on Marine Corps Air Base Miramar, where the school was located when the first movie was made. You don't see close-ups of the jets parked there, which is good because they all say "Marines" on the side.

We didn't know we needed a love letter to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, but the one we got is more fun than it deserves to be. Highly recommended.

[VMA131Marine]

1. The canyon attack sequence in Star Wars is itself not original

It was based on the fjord attack sequence on the Nazi heavy water plant in “633 Squadron” starring Cliff Robertson. (Almost) The entire squadron gets wiped out in the process.

[whistler162]

2. Sorry I see no reason to see

Top Gum : Maverik the story of an almost geriatric former flier with early-onset dementia!

[hlthe2b]

3. The flight sequences were incredible. I stayed to see the almost endless credits of military

advisors, flyers, and participants in screen after screen after screen at the very end. It felt good to stay and honor their accomplishments as this was not a mere CGI movie. If you recognize this, then the presence and participation of Cruise is almost an afterthought. They are the reason it will succeed and to me, to focus merely on an actor, no matter how critical his role to getting this movie made--rather than the real real-world talent behind-the-scenes--is to totally miss the point.

[hlthe2b]

4. I enjoyed your review, however...

I find the dismissive comparison of the canyon flying (which was largely the real deal in this movie thanks to the expertise of some incredible military pilots) to a CGI movie (Star Wars) to be ridiculous. As I stated in a later post to someone dismissing the movie as some mere paean to Cruise, staying to watch the almost unending scrolls of credits to those military advisors, consultants, and yes, actual flyers really underscored the accomplishment.

Beyond that, I don't mind the snark comparison to the original movie which did drip with nostalgia--not that that really bothered me (nor the audience that watched it with me). It was meant to be a tribute to that film and its characters (and yes, success) Frankly had they not included Kenny Loggin's now iconic song, I'd have been quite upset, but they did. And the inclusion of the real-life very ill Val Kilmer was incredibly touching to me. The technology used to allow him to speak a few words to Cruise's character was likewise impressive and worth googling.

[jmowreader]

5. Star Wars: A New Hope contains no CGI

That's all miniatures. IIRC the first CGI space epic was The Last Starfighter, and the effects company that did that one bought their own $8 million Cray-1 supercomputer to render it. (The $8 million doesn't include the power substation you need to run one. Those things were a bit heavy on their electrical requirements.)

And yes, I know Top Gun: Maverick is almost all practical effects using (for the most part) real Navy aircraft flown by real Naval aviators. (The F-14 sequence is CGI because there ain't no more F-14s - except for the handful of permanently-disabled museum pieces, every F-14 the US had was shredded to keep the Iranians from buying F-14 parts.) That doesn't change the fact that the mission profile for blowing up the uranium enrichment facility and the mission profile for blowing up the Death Star were a lot alike.

[hlthe2b]

6. Okay, Conflating/comparing actual flight scenes with film of miniatures?!!!

OMG

Oh, and though I see you want to credit Star Wars for all originality EVER, as posted upstream, the canyon flight was based on a REAL event with REAL people bombing a NAZI heavy water facility during WWII.

I'm glad you enjoy Star Wars, but maybe don't let it be the starting point for all comparisons... Your reviews are enjoyable but would gain considerable credibility...

[localroger]

8. Actually there was no Star Wars-like canyon run in Norway

The Norsk Hydro heavy water plant was taken out by Norwegian black ops guys on the ground. There was no air attack run through a canyon or otherwise. Other Norwegian power stations were bombed from high in the air; Rjukan for example was bombed from 14,000 feet with no losses on the part of the attackers. If there ever was a real attack through a fjord it was not against the heavy water plant because they had only one of those and like I said it was taken out by saboteurs sneaking in and planting bombs, then bombing the ferry with the last drums of completed product. Star Wars may have been imitating the canyon run movie, but that movie was itself a fantasy meant to make the raid more dramatic than it was in real life.

In the movie industry, miniature work, life-size work with props, and work with real functioning devices and vehicles are all called practical effects, because they all involve moving real objects around in front of a real camera exposing film through a lens. This is distinct from CGI which creates the image digitally within a computer, a technique that did not exist, at all, in 1977 except for a few experimental demo shorts by the company that would go on to become Pixar.

The first actual CGI sequence to actually appear in a commercial movie released in theaters was the animated Project Genesis demo in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. The first movie CGI work that could actually be mistaken for reality and not animation were some of the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park.

There was an orgy of CGI work in the early 2000's because practical effects are a giant pain in the posterior whether they involve miniatures, actors interacting with mechanisms, or real vehicles.

Practical effects with real vehicles are of course a particular kind of challenge, which is why stunt professionals exist. They can also pose surprising technical challenges. The first use of actual airplanes in a movie was arranged by Howard Hughes for the 1930 film Hell's Angels, which involved a record number of film cameras themselves mounted on aircraft and won an academy award.

When using real aircraft getting the aircraft that's on-screen to do the mission is less than half the problem. The real heroes are the people who figure out how to mount and control the cameras on the chase aircraft and those pilots, whose planes have to perform as well as or even better than the on-screen aircraft. One reason the scenes in TG:M look so good is they actually used fighter jets for some of the chase aircraft too, as well as cameras mounted in real on-screen aircraft to capture the actors being subjected to real G-forces. They're quite proud of that and it's a thing Tom Cruise mentions in the little "thanks for seeing this in a theater" spot that rolls before the film.

[hlthe2b]

9. You know what, equating use of CGI, miniatures, animation to actual special effects

and not appreciating the difference (to the tune of over $150million in the case of this film) is going to leave us all with nothing but the crap we've been saturated with the past decade--superhero crap, teen angst crap, animation (fine for the kids, but) and the CGI-fantasy, like the never-ending Jurassic World series. If that's your thing, have at it. Since it appears that many don't want anything but this and don't appreciate the difference, it seems to be a pre-ordained conclusion. This movie will more than recoup its massive costs but the die is cast, I guess. I get escapist fantasy, but the failure to appreciate the work of real human beings performing at the top of their ability is just sad to me. sigh...

[localroger]

10. You're not making your beef very clear

Nobody is equating anything with anything else. You're the one who said Star Wars is CGI -- it's not, it's something else very different. While miniatures, full sized mechanisms, mobile sets like the carousel in 2001 and a bunch of Chris Nolan's stuff, and stunt driving and flying are all related, they are also all different specialties. Nobody is unimpressed that they spent $150 million and involved a lot of top talent to make TG:M. But it is very heavily laden with Star Wars Death Star battle scene quotations. This is not mistaking practical miniatures for stunt work, it's saying that they are repeating story elements. The two versions of The Lion King tell the same story even though one is completely animated and the other is live action with practical makeup and CGI.

I once attended a talk by one of the top people in practical mechanism effects; his company created the insert shot where T.Rex's foot squishes into the mud in the original Jurassic Park. He spoke for some time about the difference between CGI and practical effects, and the different scale of practical effects. It was quite interesting and he spent a couple of hours talking about what he did to a room full of nerds who were nominally there to learn how microcontrollers were used in real world applications. Making movies is ridiculously expensive and complicated and involves all kinds of compromises most people never see; all we see is the final image on the screen, and if we notice at all where it came from it kind of means something didn't work the way it was supposed to.

[hlthe2b]

12. Your continuing to compare miniturization and CGI techniques to actual military pilots

performing the special effects is not just ludicrous, but deeply disrespectful. I'm glad the former fulfills your expectations. I'm happy to applaud ACTUAL skill.

[localroger]

13. I am comparing them because they are means to get an image on the screen

All of the movie trades involve a lot of actual skill, and few people appreciate just how much. My understanding is that it took a lot of skill with people building and mounting and controlling camera platforms to make it possible to even make use of the skill of the real pilots in TG:M. You don't seem to appreciate them much. It doesn't matter how well you can fly if someone can't get a camera in place to capture your performance -- and making TG:M required a lot of flying skill you don't see on screen as well as innovation and top skill and investment in other trades for that too.

And please get it through your head that it is not comparing the technologies involved to point out that TG:M visually quotes Star Wars. Movies do this all the time, partly because it provides a fun pastime for the critics and fans, partly because it's safe to use a trope that has worked in another story, and partly to honor the skill of people who came before who didn't have access to your budget or technology.

The flight scenes in TG:M were impressive partly because we'd never seen anything quite like them before, which was partly because they got top pilots to fly for them but also because they were able to put the technology in place to film that aerial performance. In 1977 Star Wars was full of images nobody had ever seen before because George Lucas worked out a host of technologies to synchronize images from different practical special effects systems in a way nobody had ever managed before. 2001 was full of images nobody had ever seen before because Kubrick invented a bunch of techniques, including those large moving sets Chris Nolan loves so much, to get his vision on the screen. Citizen Kane was full of techniques that people had seen before, but nobody had seen them all woven together so elegantly to tell a coherent story. You have to have seen a pre-CK movie to appreciate why every post-CK movie looks completely different because of CK.

I suspect a lot of post-TG:M movies will look different because of the techniques and skills showcased in this movie. Nobody is saying that the cinematography or stunt skills were the same as Star Wars. We are saying that the movie visually quotes the Star Wars scene in multiple ways, something which struck me hard while the movie was running. It is very weird that you somehow think it is some kind of diss to TG:M to point this out. This is a conscious decision the makers of TG:M made. I'm sure those pilots went to work knowing they were standing in for Luke Skywalker because it's something the director would have made sure to tell them. You don't get that kind of multiple point reference by accident. You get it because you want it and all the professionals on your team are on board with making it happen.

[TomWilm]

15. ... and this attack did not stop Germany from making a bomb ...

... since the German scientists had chosen a very slow route, and even were not really sure it could be done anyway. If the attacks had any value, except for background for movies, it would be to encourage the Germans, showing them how important everybody else thought this plants were for the war Though it was not. For the next movie: Double deception.

[localroger]

16. And at the time we knew this, but we got the plant destroyed anyway "just in case."

The Germans faced three big fails any one of which doomed their aspirations to an atom bomb. First, they had only one measurement for the neutron cross-section of carbon which in their case was contaminated with boron; this ruled it out as a moderator for reactors, forcing them to go to heavy water instead, which was much more rare and difficult to use. Second, they tried only one method of isotope separation, gaseous diffusion, because the guy who invented it was on their team, but it just happened not to work for Uranium Hexaflouride. We pursued other methods that did work. Finally, when Hitler got bogged down in Operation Barbarossa against the Russians, they had no more chance to amass the resources we now know were necessary to unlock the secret of the bomb, and the whole nuclear venture never amounted to anything more than a heavy water moderated experimental reactor pile that never even sustained a chain reaction.

[localroger]

7. They didn't miss telling his crews to trust the Force

There is a repeated theme where he tells them "don't think, do, if you have to think up there you're dead." Which of course is pretty much what Luke does when he shuts off the targeting computer and, uh, wings it to the target.

[jmowreader]

11. That also ties back to the 1986 film

Maverick had done something highly stupid during a training flight that resulted in Maverick winning the fight. Charlie asked him what he was thinking; he said something like “if you think, you’re dead.”

[localroger]

14. Now that you mention it that may have been what goosed the scriptwriters

I suspect that line wasn't a deliberate SW quote in 1986, but looking back from 2020 the filmmakers probably couldn't resist tying it in and it gave them a profile for the suicide mission everyone would immediately recognize.