Jump to content

Top Gun 2: Maverick


Jaime L

Recommended Posts

I'm pretty sure Maverick would've hit the mandatory retirement age for a captain a while ago; gotta keep getting promoted or leave.

But, nitpicking aside, I'm all in on this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I'm pretty sure Maverick would've hit the mandatory retirement age for a captain a while ago; gotta keep getting promoted or leave.

But, nitpicking aside, I'm all in on this.

Yeah everyone is way too old in this film. Not only is he at mandatory retirement age, but he's also getting dressed down by a still-in-uniform now 88 year old Stinger in the trailer. And the plot centers around Maverick as a flight instructor guiding Goose's son to become a pilot. Except Goose died 34 years ago. So I guess his son is just a really slow learner...or something? 

ETA: Oh shit that is Ed Harris. I thought Stinger had just aged remarkably well. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The trailer really didn't inspire much excitement for me.  And I'm a person who as a teenager got to see the original movie in a theater a month before it was released to the general public and at the time thought it was the greatest movie I had ever seen and convinced just about everyone in my high school they had to go see it opening night because it was so amazing.  I had all the singles.  I had the poster on my wall.  I even had a Top Gun patch sewed on a shirt.  But this time around...no pangs of nostalgia watching the trailer.  Not even when that music that I at one time might have teared up hearing started playing.

I think TC is pretty much dead to me as an actor.  I have no interest in contributing to his wackadoodle cult.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was reading an article on TheDad.com about the trailer and one fact blew my friggin mind... the original Top Gun cost $15 million to make. :stunned: 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

 

the original Top Gun cost $15 million to make

 

The US Navy let them use their base and a lot of the vehicles and some equipment for free. They also just allowed the film crew on the Enterprise during normal carrier operations, so a lot of the action shots in the film (aircraft taking off and landing, some flybys, the crew doing their thing) are just the crew doing their normal thing, nothing special for the film. The shots they did specially need were all story-boarded down to the second so they knew exactly how much fuel they needed to buy (they got use of the aircraft for free, but had to pay for fuel and for the pilots' time beyond normal duties).

It was very economically done, and another sign that perhaps the insane cost of Hollywood movies isn't always necessary. A few years before this they had Star Trek II in the can for well under $10 million, and the original Star Wars was about $10 million (including marketing) where they had to pretty much build everything from scratch.

Just six years later, though, you had Terminator 2 as the first movie to break $100 million.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm mildly interested, but the very beginning of the trailer nearly turned me off. I can get behind Maverick still being just a captain, though I don't know why he isn't a Top Gun instructor at the very least. But I'm not sure why Ed Harris was dressing him down for not being a 2-star admiral. How many pilots end up being admirals compared to actual ship captains?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After 4 years of being the most famous actor in America you should at least be a governor by now, but you're just a laughable Scientologist, why is that?

It's one of life's mysteries, sir.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

I'm mildly interested, but the very beginning of the trailer nearly turned me off. I can get behind Maverick still being just a captain, though I don't know why he isn't a Top Gun instructor at the very least. But I'm not sure why Ed Harris was dressing him down for not being a 2-star admiral. How many pilots end up being admirals compared to actual ship captains?

A Captain in the Navy and Coast Guard is much higher rank than captain in the other military branches (roughly equivalent to a colonel), just below admiral, so not sure if he's that far behind schedule even at 60 years old. 

Lots of  pilots in the service retire rather get promoted to a desk job, and then they become commercial airline pilots so they can keep flying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My brother retired as a Coast Guard Captain a couple of years ago after a bit over 30 years of service.  He felt the reason he wouldn't/didn't make Admiral was not that he was an aviator but that he hadn't attended the Coast Guard Academy.  Most Navy Admirals come out of Annapolis - even at the lower levels plum assignments go to Academy grads.

Interesting side note - the house we grew up in is close enough to what was Miramar Naval Air Station - the then-home of Top Gun School - that we could see jets in the air routinely.  NAS Miramar became a MCAS Miramar in 1993.

The film Top Gun and seeing Miramar in action were the two biggest factors in his decision to pursue aviation.

On topic, I don't know if it is ever established in Top Gun where Maverick went to college.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Bronn Stone said:


On topic, I don't know if it is ever established in Top Gun where Maverick went to college.

I thought there was a line from Goose about Maverick getting a lot of crap "at the academy" for his dad's record.  Does that mean Annapolis?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Bronn Stone said:

If you are right about that quote, then yes that would be Annapolis.

I looked up the script and found the line: "The academy rejected you because you're Duke Mitchell's kid." So not Annapolis.

Thus ends my deeper than expected dive into the backstory of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean... if James T Kirk can get himself demoted so he doesn’t have to be an admiral, I don’t think we should be giving Maverick shit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I splashed down several times just now.   This is an event, right?  It feels eventful.    Sure, everyone's a senior citizen.   But that's Tom looking out for his peer group.  And younger Americans are too obese to fit in the cockpit, so the elderly are asked to stay on.  You can rationalize it.    Pops should see this.

 

What's weird is how normal Tom is, like on Conan tonight he wasn't culty at all.   Was it all carefully practiced normality, like another performance?    Eh, i guess if he happy in that life then I'll leave him to it and not bother him over the church;  the scientologists to worry about are the ones trapped in a weird manipulative hell they aren't happy about anymore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...