The New Need, Same as the Old Need
PH2 Michael D.P. Flynn, U.S. Navy [Public domain]
Maverick is back. #TopGun pic.twitter.com/8ZDeE5h6fs
— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) July 18, 2019
I don’t care that its 34 years since the original. I don’t care that Tom Cruise at 58 on premier night will be 5 years older than Tom Skerrit (53 at the time) was in the original movie. I don’t care that the writers are going to have to do retcon Olympics to make plotlines and timelines all work. I don’t care and ignored all the snark on social media.
When I heard that bell…
“Very early on, I found that the only beauty of a DX7 is when you have two (Yamaha) DX7’s,” explained Harold Faltermeyer of that sound on one of his signature pieces of music. “Then the TX816 came along, which had eight DX7’s in it. This was a heavenly instrument because you could slightly change parameters on each voice. You could daisy chain them. I had two of those, so the low bell sounds in Top Gun, for example, are 16 DX7’s. That’s actually a stock sound. It’s a tubular bell, just slightly detuned and tweaked. We had this extreme, fat low C. That’s how the Top Gun anthem starts.”
That’s a musician explaining. I wish I was a good enough writer to tell you how 39 year old me suddenly was 8, or 9, or however old I was the first time I saw Top Gun instantly. Just from the bell. It was visceral, it was emotional, and its something that instantly cut through a whole lot of cynical, years of grumpiness over movies, and frankly instantly washed away a rather bad day.
The trailer is amazing, especially as a fan of the original and as an aviation geek in general (don’t think I didn’t catch that long-since retired F-14 flying at the end). As promised, and as the legacy of the first movie demanded, the aerial photography is jaw-dropping. Early on, the promise was that CGI would be kept to a minimum, and it shows. The production was troubled by years of attempts to make, and seemed almost totally derailed after the suicide of original director Tony Scott. But Cruise and others wouldn’t let it go, and super producer Jerry Bruckheimer keep the hope alive till finally we are nearly there.
Being in the age of internet snark, there will be complaints. I’m sure some will find something about the plot they will immediately declare to be the end of all civilizations (There’s girls flying planes! The ages don’t match up! What happened to such and such character! Why isn’t X, Y, and Z included!) but this time I’m just going to drown them out. Movies like Top Gun hold memories because the experience of the story, the framing of the visuals, the lingering effects of the soundtrack, and the memories of just watching a movie to enjoy a movie are strong. Stronger than any plot holes, or cheesy parts, or soft core volleyball porno of the original. It was just great.
I hope this film will be great, too. It’s not that I don’t have concerns, I do, but I’m choking them down.
I don’t like theaters these days. They are too crowded, too loud, too much assault on the senses.
I’ll be there for this one. I’ll feel every bit of it. I have a need to. I want to hear that bell as loud as possible, feel the bass of the low dirty C wash over me. I want to have a stupid, mindless, utterly happy grin when it does so my kids will roll their eyes and pray I don’t embarrass them further during the film. If they play Great Balls of Fire, there is a high probability I will.
For once nothing is going to squash my mellow in the year-long wait. I didn’t know that I had a need for speed, a need to revisit that old friend I’ve seen hundreds of times before, a need to experience the feeling of being a kid again with my own children along for the ride.
But I did. The bell reminded me in a way nothing else probably would have.
Can’t wait.
Saw the trailer last night. I had a big grin on my face when I heard the theme song as well. And yeah, the visuals were stunning. Looking forward to it.
I am not a HUGE aviation junkie but I know a bit about military planes from my military history classes and just being a dude I guess. We have two customers that build for the military. One builds engines for the F-35 and I have been to their facility and seen the engines up close. Like, they let me put on a white glove and touch it close. It was awesome. They also built the engines for the SR-71 Blackbirds, which are one of my favorite planes ever (thanks GI Joe). They have huge models of them in their facility that I wanted to steal and put in my basement. I would have been so popular with my buddies.Report
My father worked for that company, making, maintaining, and continually upgrading the engines for the SR-71 Blackbirds. Earlier this month, he gave an address at the Blackbird Reunion about the engines and how they work. So I grew up around military aviation, and in particular the Blackbird, and have lived in proximity to military aviation for most of my life. Basically all of it USAF and NASA.
For me, Top Gun was the eye-opener realization that the Navy had fighter planes too and those pilots were pretty bad-ass to land them on aircraft carriers. While Cruise and Kilmer and the rest had over-the-top attitudes, the cockiness and swagger was a real thing with the pilots. The movie was incredibly fun, felt realistic enough, and left you feeling proud of the military and the country in a wholesome way.
Also, when I took a girl to the movie she announced afterwards that she loved the volleyball scene and proceeded to ferociously make out with me. So that was how I learned that eye candy works on women, too.
So naturally, tons of nostalgia for Top Gun and I’m hoping I get a date to go with me to the new one.Report
Their original facility is an amazing place. They still have an air control tower and an old runway from when they used to test planes onsite. You can see parts of the facility that are really old and then turn a corner into an area that is state of the art. Very, very cool place.Report
I remember spending time during band practice in middle school figuring out the anthem on the upright piano with some classmates.
Didn’t get all of it, since we were playing from memory, but we got enough for it to be recognizable. Then we took that, went back to our brass instruments and had some fun with it.
It was a good day.
My uncle used to work at Top Gun, as a Navy Airedale, back when it was still at Miramar. When he got out, he flew 16 year old me out there and gave me a tour. I damn near exploded from aviation geek overload.Report
So Old Tom Cruise as “best at his craft” fighter pilot Maverick rather than 2-star Admiral dealing with younger Maverick?
That’s actually a cooler concept.
Any idea if they are making him 39 or 49 or dare we wonder 50+? Has there ever been a 50+ fighter pilot in the Jet era?Report
According to the trailer, he’s an O-6 (Captain) and should be commanding the Carrier Air Wing (all the air crews report to him). Captains still fly, but mostly just to maintain qualification. While it is technically possible a Captain would fly an air mission, there would have to be a very good reason for it.
So if he isn’t out there training the youngings, and is flying a mission, I will be interested in how they are going to justify putting the CAG in the cockpit.Report
Oh, I missed the nuance of O-6 and the move into middle management. I thought he was being mocked for still being a flyboy who couldn’t make the move to middle management, much less Executive Management.
Less cooler concept than I hoped.
I’m guessing the premise is this: EMP destroys all the fancy onboard flight computers and all they have left is this 80s vintage fly-by-wire F-14 that they were freighting to some museum. Cruise is the *only person in the world* who can fly it, so he uses his old-school tricks to beat the computer jockeys.
Basically Dwight vs. Dunder Mifflen Computer, but in the sky.Report
I saw that movie back in the 80s!Report
to be honest, an EMP that zapped the electronics of newer aircraft would definitely do for the F-14. If anything the older aircraft are *more* susceptible to such an attack because it was assumed that if they were hit by an EMP of that power it was because the airbase had been nuked and in three seconds the thermal shock would incinerate them; that meant nobody bothered trying to harden them against EMP, because they’d never be hit by just an EMP, and “hardening” against nuclear weapons happens in the post-boost phase with kinetic interceptors.
Anyway. The other thing is that the F-14 wasn’t actually all that great of a dogfighter. It had its strengths, but they were a lot more mission-dependent (the F-14 was designed to spot and shoot down waves of incoming missiles launched by Tu-22 or Tu-95 bombers, not mix it one-on-one over the Fulda Gap). If I had to pick a fighter for a no-radar dogfight it would be the F-16 (which was, as it happens, designed by Pierre Sprey and John Boyd specifically to be the best no-radar dogfighter in the universe.)
Here’s a link that discusses the F-14 and F-15 as fighter combat aircraft.Report
When you look at the F-14 it just looks like it would not be nimble in a dogfight. As you said, it served its purpose but when you see the F-16 it just looks like it would be a true dogfighter.Report
IIRC, the ‘MiGs’ in the original Top Gun were F-16s painted black with red stars.Report
Not surprised.Report
Most of the MIGs in Top Gun had dual engines. I’m not sure if they were a Northrop F-5(Tiger ii), or a fancy painted T-38 Talon.
F-16 were single engine, as I am sure you know.Report
[Training MIGS, were I think A-4 Skyhawk]Report
Just watched the final dogfight scene (thank you YouTube), and those are F-5s. The intakes are much more pronounced than the T-38’s.Report
Ah, that settles a long standing question I had, many thanks.Report
I don’t know. Did Yeager hang up his spurs yet?Report
Hrm… Chuck Yeager is still Tweeting like a master, but I’m not sure he’s broken the sound barrier since 2012, when he road back seat in an F-15 at Nellis to celebrate 65 years of supersonic flight. He’ll probably do it again for his 100th birthday.Report
Sorry, I meant does the Navy force fighter pilots to stop being fighter pilots at a certain age… not whether any given 50-yr old could fly a military jet – which, of course they could. Its the gamesmanship of combat I’m wondering about.Report
Is Kelly McGillis still going to be the love interest?Report
“Another ‘Top Gun’ movie? This is going to be stupid!”
“Damn…”
“Damn…I have to see this.”
And you’re absolutely right about the bell.Report
Ooops. Formatting got me. Was supposed to be **watches trailer** and **watches trailer again** before the Damn’s. But you get the idea.Report
When the trailer dumped to Twitter, my friends & I were stuck on one thing. The music. No talking about what the story would be, no concern on who was the love interest, nope. As one put it, there’s a distinct lack of Kenny Loggins in that trailer.
We all turned into giggly fans, just for a moment in our different adult lives. I really hope this movie doesn’t ruin the nostalgia lovin’ feeling.Report
I’m actually kind of glad that they have them in Super Hornets instead of Lightnings. Peter Mitchell is absolutely a Boyd fan and I imagine that the only way to get him to accept promotion would be to order him into the cockpit of an F-35…Report