Best of the Worst

A few years ago when I discovered the hilariously offensive TheBestPageintheUniverse, I was instantly drawn to one particular article titled, "10 Shitty Movies that Everyone Loves." "Oh yes," I mused. "Like Top Gun, for example?" Needless to say I was right: author Maddox had granted Top Gun the number one spot on this prestigious list.

And while Top Gun is in many ways indeed a ridiculous movie, Maddox's inclusion of it among movies "that everyone loves" is also pretty accurate, and quite interesting. Because for all its ridiculousness, Top Gun was actually a pretty important movie.

For a movie that was supposedly about the "best of the best," Top Gun was a movie that succeeded by aiming low: by appealing to all the major lowest common denominators. Let's take a look at what the film actually had to offer its audiences:

Sex...romance...action...stuff blowing up...beach volleyball...fast-moving vehicles...faceless enemies from foreign countries...macho military tough guys...a hot teacher you can potentially score with...cheesy fast tempo rock music...

No kidding, this movie really did have it all. It's safe to say that whatever primal need you've got to satisfy, this movie will engage - no pun intended - it at some point or other.

Then there's Tom Cruise. Back before the high profile divorce, the Scientology bullshit, the weird eccentricities and the so-so movies, Tom Cruise was just a good-looking young guy on his way to becoming the biggest movie star on earth. And Top Gun was the movie that would start the ball rolling.

In fact, Top Gun actually defined the whole genre of the "big budget summer blockbuster." It proved that going to movies could be just plain fun, over-the-top decadence. Corny dialogue and unrealistic action scenes were okay, as long as your movie was slick enough, fast enough, and edited well enough to give audiences something to get excited about during the lazy days of summer.

The strange thing about Top Gun's familiarity is that even though I've theoretically "seen" it many times (in bits and pieces on cable TV, usually) I've only ever actually seen the entire film once. And sadly, I didn't see it in a theatre, it was a VHS rental. I'm convinced one of the defining moments of my youth was when I, as a 12-year old kid in the summer of 1986, opted NOT to go see Top Gun in a theatre, in favour of some forgettable martial arts flick. When the second theatre emptied out, and excited teenagers raving about Top Gun poured out into the parking lot, I knew I had made a poor decision.

So what better way to kick off the start of summer - with a huge hit of 1980s nostalgia - than to dig up a copy of the movie - the whole movie - on DVD and watch it again.

It actually held up pretty well. The absence of CGI effects in favour of old-fashioned models and actual aerial photography gives the movie a refreshingly gritty feel compared to more slick, modern fare. The dialogue is as lovingly ridiculous as I remembered, and the action is fast and brief enough to maintain even the shortest attention spans.

One of the best parts of the DVD was actually the old promotional TV spots from back in '86. Hearing that gravelly Movie Trailer Guy's voice rumbling, "Tom Cruise...Kelly McGillis...Top Gun" still gives me a little shiver.

And don't get me started on the music videos...can you say gigantic hair? Holy shit, can I ever. The soundtrack from Top Gun proved how important the link between a film and its musical score can be. It's basically impossible to hear that annoying Kenny Loggins song, Danger Zone, without its accompaniment by some flickering mental image from Top Gun.

The DVD also included a huge 3-hour behind the scenes documentary of the making of Top Gun. For those unwilling to sit through the entire thing, here's a few of the most interesting trivia bits:

-The film was saved by very clever editing. The original cut had aerial combat sequences that were so confusing and lacking in plot that no one could follow them. Fortunately, the pilots were all wearing masks covering their lips, so whatever dialogue was needed to convey the action was added later.

-The scene with Cruise and McGillis together in the elevator was added after the rest of the film was finished, to give their romance a more gradual development. Both actors had moved on to different projects and had completely different hairstyles when they were filmed together in an elevator.

-The close-up footage of Val Kilmer during the volleyball scene was apparently ruined, and Kilmer joked that a jealous Tom Cruise was responsible for its destruction. Director Tony Scott remarked that he had really "no idea" what he was doing with the scene, besides making "soft porn,"and it was actually the most difficult scene to do.

-All of the good hits in the volleyball scene were done by professional volleyball players who looked almost exactly like the actors.

-After Top Gun proved to be a success, plans were underway to create a sequel, but the studio wanted to avoid the hassle of arranging the co-operation of the navy and government again. The plan was to use whatever aerial footage was left over from the original film, but Top Gun's producers insisted that every piece of worthwhile footage had already been used to create Top Gun. They were right, and plans for the sequel were scrapped.

-The scene in which Iceman sneezes and says "bullshit" while Maverick is telling the story about the MIG was a complete ad lib on the part of Val Kilmer. No one knew he was going to say it, and the other actors' reactions were completely natural as a result.

-The "flat spin" sequence in which Goose dies was based on technical advisor Pete Pettigrew's memory of a similar accident from his long career as a fighter pilot (I was surprised to discover this, thinking it was one of the film's more unrealistic moments). In real life, the ill-fated pilot did manage to eject succesfully.

-Although the "Top Gun" academy does exist, the "Top Gun trophy" did not. Pettigrew insisted it would be an extremely bad idea: the Top Gun pilots were already so competitive that any extra incentive to perform would've pushed them completely over the edge.

-Val Kilmer loathed his final line in the movie, "You can be my wingman" so much that he originally refused to say it, and it took a lot of convincing to change his mind.

-Michael Ironside originally had doubts that he could pull off his role as a naval officer. He later changed his mind after he was mistaken for an actual naval officer while in costume.

-Renting an F-14 Tomcat jet fighter cost a whopping $7600 per hour.

So love it or hate it, Top Gun has an important place in movie history. It's the best of the worst, the original over-the-top blockbuster, the movie that proved you could become a gigantic movie star with a ridiculous, made-up name, as long as the movie you starred in was equally ridiculous. Watch it again, because you know as well as I do, you can't pretend to be back in summer of 1986 without it...

And remember: "...even you could get laid in a place like this."