It’s been 36 years since Top Gun. The house where Tom Cruise seduced his flight instructor, Kelly McGillis, is now a pie shop on the grounds of Hyatt’s Mission Pacific hotel.
Now it’s been rebooted and aviation geeks may find it “two thumbs up, five stars, and a must-see.” It’s close-up aviation scenes and cinematography. That’s also all it is [very few spoilers].
Top Gun is classic Tom Cruise. Days of Thunder, the Color of Money, The Firm and A Few Good Men were all about a young phenom – in three of those cases, whose defining feature was an ego and lackadaisical style. And in the original Top Gun, Maverick’s ego was writing checks his body couldn’t cash.
In many ways it’s a remake of the original, transporting you back in time and stripped of its 1980s patriotic politics.
Though the cast is more diverse than the original the movie “is not so much anti-Woke as pre-Woke, with cliched ethnic characters and adoring women waiting for the heroic men to come back from mission.” It is meant to be inoffensive yet may offend progressives at the same time.
The movie never even tells you who the enemy is. There’s a new threat. Young pilots need the tutelage of an ace veteran. They have to stop an ‘unauthorized’ weapoins facility in the mountains of somewhere. The Soviets were the enemy in 1986. You might expect it now to be China, the Taliban, or Russia (again). The movie isn’t even screening in China, which only accepts a limited number of U.S. films and presumably wouldn’t want to highlight a gung ho picture about the U.S. armed forces. For Taiwanese audiences Tom Cruise wears the flag of Taiwan on his jacket though we don’t get to see that.
It’s a generic film that will offend almost no one (just the Chinese government, a little bit) featuring a major star with a presence matched perhaps only by George Clooney, so unsurprisingly turnout was “unusually strong” in “Tennessee, Oklahoma, Utah, Oregon and northern Florida.”
In some ways it’s the ‘feel good’ summer film we all want after two years of not going to the movies. But it’s not going to be any kind of classic like the original, cult or otherwise. It does, however, contain enough nods to the original to keep fans entertained for 2 hours and 11 minutes. I’m jus grateful it was a sequel and not a Point Break or Red Dawn remake.
@ StrictlyFacts
@ GU Wonder “Just give it up, already … you’re now acting kinda DESPERATE”
You lost your credibility on the topic of Capitol Hill riots when you repeatedly described it as a “NON Event”.
It reveals you as an uncritical slave to the t*RUMP narrative. It exposes your lack of reason.
A survey of people’s perceptions neither proves nor disproves that certain events occurred. It merely samples their perceptions.
Once again you have confused belief and fact.
Once again, you have undermined the validity of your own argument.
You are but a trivial plaything for a sociopathic political like t*RUMP – so easily fooled and manipulated an fallen again straight into the trap of the right wing narrative.
@platy —
Pretty funny presentation! Actually, the word “Progressive,” as has been pointed out to me by others who are sticklers for details, is basically a misnomer and the “proper” word should be “Regressive,” instead, because most of the ideology behind today’s Progressivism had already existed in the past and, hence, “Progressives” should actually be properly called “Regressives,” instead! But most people don’t realize this, so I keep using “Progressives,” anyway …
Sorry to break your narrative on this one! 😛
I’m still planning on an appropriate (ie, longer) reply to our past exchanges … still hope to hit a project milestone in the next couple of days, so have patience!
@platy — “You lost your credibility on the topic of Capitol Hill riots when you repeatedly described it as a ‘NON Event’.” –>
Uh … did you forget what I had replied, about this NON-issue with calling it a NON-event? Once again, you need to take what I wrote IN CONTEXT — there was NOT an “insurrection,” so, from THAT standpoint, it was a NON-event … even the FBI conceded as much! Are you paying any attention?
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“It reveals you as an uncritical slave to the t*RUMP narrative. It exposes your lack of reason.” –>
LOL! Yes … I know that you are a NEVER-Trumper and the ONLY so-called “reason” that exists, in your mind, is that which agrees with YOUR ideology! Duly noted!
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“A survey of people’s perceptions neither proves nor disproves that certain events occurred. It merely samples their perceptions.
Once again you have confused belief and fact.” –>
Good grief! How many times do you need to be reminded about CONTEXT? The survey was meant to convey that the prior endless obsession with that January 6 NON-event (ie, NON-insurrection) has already been passed over by increasingly more and more Americans, as time goes on, and other more critical issues continue to manifest in its place! You like to read Data, so why not go and study that survey in its entirety?
BTW — over here, often when we say “NON-event,” that does NOT mean that that event never occurred, but merely that it was NOT as significant as originally portrayed! Just saying …
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“You are but a trivial plaything for a sociopathic political like t*RUMP – so easily fooled and manipulated an fallen again straight into the trap of the right wing narrative.” –>
ROFLMAO! Anything that you Progressives/Regressives do NOT approve of, suddenly becomes something “… easily fooled and manipulated … into the trap of the right wing narrative”! Sorry, but the TRUE FACTS behind that incident speak for themselves, and NO amount of trying to DIVERT from those FACTS will work, anymore!
@StrictlyFacts
“Pretty funny presentation!”
All good clean fun…glad taken in the spirit of such…;)
Go nail that work milestone – be brilliant!
Catch up on another thread…BTW when will the USA remove COVID testing for arrivals – how many times do I need to rebook my forward travel to de-risk the trip?!
Looks like gonna have to go the long way from Australia to S. America through Europe to avoid risk of becoming trapped unable to get home via the US…!