You know, if you haven’t seen Top Gun: Maverick, now’s a great time to do it. Talk about being “torn from the headlines!” Okay, we used the Air Force to take out Iran’s nuke facility, but now the Navy is fully engaged.
It’s worth noting that the original Top Gun opened as our naval aviators were busy shooting down Libyan jets, which was what everyone at time the figured were the otherwise unnamed bad guys..
Top Gun: Maverick is arguably a better movie, full of meaningful moments, complex and well-developed characters tied together with a solid story. Indeed, it’s one of the few sequels to actually add to the original, and bring its story arc to a satisfying completion. That’s vanishingly rare these days.
Marcia Lucas Says It All
I was quite surprised to see the ex-wife of George Lucas leave her seclusion and offer indisputable facts about the state of Star Wars, but here we are. Her insight is spot on: relationships, not special effects, were what made Star Wars great and enduring. George never could see that, and has spent decades pointlessly tweaking his peerless films, making them both retarded and gay in the process.
People of a certain age will remember (and hopefully a new generation will soon experience) the explosive audience reaction to Han Solo’s timely arrival over the Death Star. It wasn’t just that the good guys won, it was that a selfish mercenary was moved to think of things more important than himself.
Similarly, when Darth Vader lunges at the Emperor to save Luke in Return of the Jedi, total pandemonium broke out. People went nuts. Luke had been right! Vader did have good in him! I know Return of the Jedi gets beaten up for the crime of having Ewoks, but can we at least admit that it managed to do something no modern movie can do, which is provide a satisfying conclusion to an epic story?
The Empire Strikes Back was different because of its cliff-hanger ending, but even there, the film provided not one but three emotionally powerful moments by its’s conclusion. The first was Leia declaring her love to Han and his pitch-perfect response. The second was Lando Calrissian repenting of his betrayal and helping everyone to escape. Of course the biggest moment was Darth Vader declaring he was Luke’s father, and it is impossible for people who have grown up with the internet to understand the extended and intense playground debates over whether it was true. (“But that’s not what Ben said!” “Luke acted like it was true!”)
The only subsequent Star Wars film to come anywhere close to this level of emotion was the duel at the end of The Phantom Menace, when young Obi-Wan watches his mentor die at the hands of Darth Maul and positively radiates vengeance. The thing was, the writing was terrible and it was only the superlative acting skills of Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson that created emotional investment. The Hayden Christiansen/Natalie Portman relationship is one of the flattest, most sterile in film history. The subsequent films have spectacular visuals, but the acting is pure cringe. I mean, take sand for example. I’m not even going to touch the sequels, which relied on crushingly disappointing sucker-punches to produce any emotional effect. And despite all that, somehow Palpatine returned.
A Learning Experience
I famously predicted that Top Gun: Maverick would suck, and I’m quite happy to have been wrong. I’ve written before about how superlative a film it is, pitch-perfect and absolutely worth seeing more than once, but here I want to draw a timely contrast between it and the entertainment crime against humanity that is Starfleet Academy.
The real Top Gun is an advanced school for top-notch naval aviators, and both use it as vehicle to draw character portraits and – most importantly – show how they grow and mature. People who come in as strangers leave as friends for life. The original is basically a timeless story of someone with enormous raw talent learning the value of self-discipline, resilience and teamwork.
The sequel builds upon this theme, and now (to quote Star Wars) the student is the master. In both films, we get a sense of the passage of time, the lessons that are being learned and the rising stakes as the course nears completion. Finally, there is the moment we have long anticipated, when the lessons – and students – are put to the ultimate test. The death of Val Kilmer has added to the sequel’s poignancy.
In Starfleet Academy, the curriculum is a mystery. What do they study? What do they learn? Did the writers even attend school? Did they ever take a midterm and a final? I mean, they obvious have zero familiarity with the lore of Star Trek or how anything even military-adjacent works, but maybe they watched The Lords of Discipline or Taps in film class. Heck, Full Metal Jacket or even Stripes would be helpful in this respect.
Hollywood has a generation of writers who literally know nothing at all. When tasked to write what they know, all they have to draw upon are feelings of depression and random hookups. Their standard of excellence is not wearing shoes at work and getting drunk. All the time. Oh, and the gay. So much gay.
Sure, there are demonic themes and the usual hatred of men, but there is no actual story. So much of modern entertainment doesn’t conclude so much as just stop. There’s always another mystery box to open and maybe that one will have something interesting in it. The fact that Stranger Things ended not with a satisfying showdown but gay pride speaks volumes.
A better option is to re-watch the Top Gun films and say a prayer for our warriors in harm’s way.
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English (US) · 