Top Gun at 30 – a rookie’s guide to an ​’80s classic

How many of us have read the Bible? Sure, most of us have dipped in – thieves in the tem­ple, scour­ing for pur­ple prose, lines from the movies or mono­lith­ic slabs of Old Tes­ta­ment mega-vio­lence. But how many of us have actu­al­ly read the thing? The point is, we all know the Bible. It is so deeply ingrained in West­ern cul­ture that there’s sim­ply no incen­tive to digest the book cov­er to cov­er – all of the teach­ings, prophe­cies and begat­tings con­tained with­in are famil­iar enough.

But can the same ever be said about some­thing as dis­pos­able and ephemer­al as a movie? Is it pos­si­ble to accu­rate­ly piece togeth­er a film you’ve nev­er seen from cul­tur­al clues, influ­ences, spoofs and ref­er­ences that have trick­led down through the years? How close would such an approach get you to the heart of, say, Cit­i­zen Kane? Would you be able to ade­quate­ly pre­dict its shat­tered puz­zle of non-lin­ear sto­ry­telling, cyn­i­cal icon­o­clasm, full-frontal nudi­ty and blithe­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary pho­tog­ra­phy, or would you envi­sion a fusty monot­o­ne num­ber about a rich old buffer who’s mis­placed his [spoil­er]?

What about sem­i­nal ​’80s arte­fact Top Gun? Could one assem­ble a work­able rough-cut from noth­ing more than Fam­i­ly Guy riffs, Avi­a­tor-sport­ing douche­holes at Hal­loween par­ties and half-remem­bered cov­ers of obso­lete teen-scream movie magazines?

I have nev­er seen Top Gun. A look back to 1986 reveals that my teen self was present and cor­rect for Heart­break Ridge, ​“Croc­o­dile” Dundee, Space­Camp, Star Trek IV and Pla­toon that year – three pun­gent cheese dish­es sand­wiched between charred slabs of war­rior beef­cake – so it was clear­ly not ear­ly-onset cin­e­mat­ic snob­bish­ness that kept me away. Nor was it a bur­geon­ing antipa­thy towards Tom Cruise. I wouldn’t have seen Risky Busi­ness and in Leg­end he was noth­ing more than a toothy sprite lost in a sti­fling haze of dan­de­lion spores and prog rock.

Once Top Gun became a cer­ti­fied smash, it swift­ly became adopt­ed as a style guide for small-town boy rac­ers in faux leather fly­ing jack­ets dri­ving spe­cial edi­tion hatch­backs with go-faster stripes down the side. Now that we live at a time where every­one dress­es either like Edwar­dian gen­try, bake­lite house­wives or farm­ers, it’s easy to for­get that the high streets, TV sets and dis­cos of ​’80s Britain were ruled by McDonald’s, Mia­mi Vice and Madon­na. It was enough to make any Smiths fan shud­der (and, nat­u­ral­ly, moan).

But unlike the films men­tioned above, Top Gun was a naked mar­ket­ing exer­cise in Amer­i­can cul­tur­al colo­nial­ism. And it worked. The iconog­ra­phy of Amer­i­cana was every­where. Mul­ti­plex­es sprang up, ads for Levis jeans were unavoid­able and for­got­ten ​’50s doo-wop toe-tap­pers flood­ed the charts. But it wasn’t for every­one. Cruise could keep his need for speed, and I would stick with meat is mur­der, thank you very much!

The inter­ven­ing years have done noth­ing to make me want to see Top Gun, but through cul­tur­al osmo­sis, edu­cat­ed guess­work, the plot of Days of Thun­der and sheer bloody-mind­ed­ness, I am con­fi­dent I can cor­rect­ly describe the events of the film beat for beat…

Cruise will have a dull, blue-col­lar name to coun­ter­point his innate cool. He’s been a Roy, a Jer­ry, a Mitch, a Vin­cent (twice) and a Jack (four times). He’s nev­er been a Steve, which seems fair­ly anom­alous. Let’s go with Steve.

Tom Cruise plays Steve Don­nel­ly, a scrap­py Irish-Amer­i­can kid from a tough neigh­bour­hood and with an alco­holic father. His immi­grant roots and hum­ble begin­nings are the source of much pride and inse­cu­ri­ty. He received lit­tle for­mal edu­ca­tion, but thanks to his street smarts he is able to get by – and to some­how save up enough mon­ey for a top-of-the-range Harley-David­son Road­ster. Dur­ing this peri­od he will also con­trive to run through a rain­storm on the way to an emo­tion­al­ly-con­flict­ed roman­tic ren­dezvous. He always does.

Steve’s attempts to join the Army/​Navy are scoffed at by the brass. He didn’t go to col­lege. He’s a hot, seething mess of author­i­ty issues. He’s too short to reach the ped­als on the planes. So he slinks off, drinks a bot­tle of Heineken and gets into a bar fight, pos­si­bly with Val Kilmer (nick­name: Clotheshorse) and his preen­ing posse of oily jerk-offs. Nat­u­ral­ly, Steve gets his ass hand­ed to him. He then dri­ves around on his Harley, paus­ing only to stare mourn­ful­ly out across the ocean at dusk/​dawn. He reap­plies to become a pilot. A gnarly-but-benign Sergeant Major gives him a sec­ond shot that will be sole­ly aimed at crush­ing Steve’s spir­it – pos­si­bly push-ups in the rain inter­spersed with bel­low­ing and down-home curs­ing. The Cruis­er trem­bles with fatigue, cold and rage, but will he quit..?

A first-day bunkhouse con­fronta­tion with (a top­less) Kilmer and his cronies sets the scene for the latent­ly homo­sex­u­al bi-play for which the film is appar­ent­ly leg­endary. It seems the Navy/​Air Force is a coquet­tish shad­ow empire of ​‘Top Guns’ where some­one is either screw­ing the pooch, dump­ing their pay­load, straf­ing your tail so hard you’re forced to eject and splash down, or giv­ing you shit in the mess (hall). It’s after react­ing to Kilmer’s cat­ty taunts that our hero los­es his shit and is sent to pour his guts out to an attrac­tive, blonde, matron­ly doc­tor who tells him that everything’s all right and that he’s sex­u­al­ly potent enough to get on with fly­ing and shoot­ing? Or maybe that comes after he flies ​‘too hard’ dur­ing train­ing, forc­ing him to eject from his spi­ralling jet, caus­ing mil­lions of dol­lars worth of dam­age and crip­pling some­one named ​‘Goose’ in the process.

There will also be gay vol­ley­ball. Even I know that.

And then the finale. Giv­en that the film is set dur­ing the end spurts of the Cold War, it seems unlike­ly that the cli­mac­tic aer­i­al bat­tle will be against the Rus­sians. It’s equal­ly unlike­ly, con­sid­er­ing the much-trum­pet­ed real-world involve­ment of the Air Force/​Coast Guard Recruit­ment Office in the film’s pro­duc­tion, that it would be an entire­ly fic­tion­al foe. Pos­si­bly the Libyans? Unnamed Cen­tral Amer­i­cans? Rene­gade Cubans? It real­ly doesn’t mat­ter. The final show­down sees Kilmer clean Cruise’s back door of incom­ing bogies just long enough for him to blow every­one to smithereens, fly back to base for high fives and hugs, then ride his motor­bike off into the sun­set one last time.