1 of 6 | Tom Cruise stars in “Top Gun,” returning to theaters Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures
LOS ANGELES, May 12 (UPI) — Top Gun, returning to theaters Wednesday along with its sequel, was one of the defining blockbusters of the ’80s. Forty years later, its trademark swagger, flight footage and soundtrack inspire nostalgia for movies that delivered such total packages.
Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and his copilot Goose (Anthony Edwards) get chosen for Top Gun, the Navy’s elite flight school. They compete with other pilots in exercises simulating aerial combat.
The footage of Navy F-14s and enemy MiGs by director Tony Scott and cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball is still impressive today. The military cooperated with the film to help facilitate filmmakers.
Maneuvers like flying upside down or cutting off a formation are flashy, but even basic flying around canyons and maintaining formation are impressive. Watching it, we take it for granted that it is difficult to keep four planes in frame at airspeed. There were probably a lot of takes where the camera missed.
The film explains the maneuvers to lay people in the audience. Maverick breaks so Jester (Michael Ironside) can pass. Close-ups of the cockpits match the spinning or tilting of the planes.
On the ground, it appears every exterior scene was filmed at sunset. Top Gun must have taken two years to film with only one hour of filming per day. Clearly, Scott knew how to get those shots done because he championed that style throughout the ’80s.
Top Gun is a sweaty movie. Not only are the pilots sweating in the cockpit, but in the classrooms!
Among ’80s movies, Top Gun has many memorable catch phrases. It’s not just “the need for speed.” “Your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash” is a powerful one said by Stinger (James Tolkan) before he sends Maverick and Goose to Top Gun. Even Goose’s wife, Carole’s (Meg Ryan) “Take me to bed or lose me forever,” is a bite-sized expression of passion.
Maverick’s love interest is instructor Charlie (Kelly McGillis). Serenading her at a bar was sketchy even in the ’80s. In 2026, even saying hi and offering to buy someone a drink is frowned upon in the age of dating apps, but back in the ’80s you would at least do that first.
He doesn’t yet know that Charlie is his teacher, and she plays it up like, “Wow, you’re a pilot!” Even when Maverick strikes out in the Ladies’ room, Charlie tells Goose “your friend was magnificent” which is already subverting the archetype Maverick represented in 1986.
Many movie heroes still adopt the mentality that the rule breaker has to teach the veteran instructors and the established system that what they are doing is wrong. There are blind spots and biases in any system, but collaboration is usually a better way to introduce modifications.
So it’s not a good plan for military strategy but it makes a good movie. Maverick is all bravado though. It only takes one real combat accident to make him give up.
This isn’t as explicit in the film, but that’s usually true of bravado. It disintegrates in real crisis. Stinger’s “ego/checks” line was correct.
Viper (Tom Skerritt) calls it a confidence problem. That’s the simplest way to put it, so for all its bluster, the script by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. does confront Maverick.
Maverick’s rival, Iceman (Val Kilmer), was typical of a certain ’80s nemesis role, the champion who resented another combatant who could take his place. In The Karate Kid, Karate champion Johnny was a bully but Iceman is only concerned about the blowback of Maverick’s actions.
Sure, Iceman wants to win the Top Gun competition himself, but he’s thinking ahead to combat situations. His concern that Maverick’s showboating could get others killed is proven valid when it happens in training.
Top Gun also followed the likes of Flashdance, Footloose and Valley Girl with soundtracks jam packed with hits. Composers Harold Faltermeyer and Giorgio Moroder wrote many of the songs sung by Kenny Loggins, Cheap Trick and Berlin.
There are still soundtracks, but few with power anthems and ballads like Top Gun. The flying footage would be at least 20% less exciting without “Danger Zone” and “Take My Breath Away” was surely played at many weddings in late 1986.
Hopefully, this will lead to a rerelease of Cocktail in two years. It was, after all, the Top Gun of bartending movies.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
